I noted yesterday that I wasn’t entirely sold on the new look of the place. But you know what? I think it’s growing on me. My ‘problem’ with it, I think, is that I’ve essentially run a white-background-based colour scheme on Time to Loot since day dot.
So the change has felt… well, somewhat unnatural, frankly.
And speaking of unnatural, just look at that blog-opening post I linked. I was dropping bold-this and bold-that’s like it was going out of style. I wonder how long past me kept that up for? Hopefully not too long. Everyone knows italics are where it’s at.
Anywho, I’m struggling to even remember why I insisted on a white background for so long, buuuut, I’m I’d be willing to bet it was in some blogging advice I found somewhere while getting started that I latched onto and just never let go of.
But I’m ready now!
Pretty much!
…I think!
The strangest thing about my reluctance to shift this is when you consider that I run my desktop and all apps that allow for it (which is pretty much most these days) in dark mode by preference.
All that aside though, the single biggest piece of feedback (thank you!) was how difficult my layout had made it to find the comment box.
This seemed to stem from two issues:
- The content box won’t ever be shorter than the sidebar.
So if it’s a short post, there will be blank whitespace (silverspace) to scroll past first. But even once you’ve done that, - I had a ‘Related Posts’ block in a separate divider, which also took up a fair amount of space.
And only if you also scrolled past this, would you then, finally, see the comment box.
To help with the first issue, I’ve taken the Goodreads ‘Quotes’ box off my sidebar. While it was a fun enough addition, it did take up a lot of space, and I’m pretty irregular at actually updating my selected quotes with anything new.
On the second, I was initially resigned to turning it off. At the time, I was trialing the new blog theme’s ‘related post’ functionality against Jetpacks, and I preferred the theme capability.
It was the theme one sitting down below in no man’s land though, causing even more of a gap.
When I went in to edit the preferences of it though, I discovered I could set it to either ‘Contained’ or ‘Separated’. The latter was the default choice, and ‘Contained’ is what I have it on now.
In theory now, once you scroll past the bottom of the content box — the comment box should be immediately present, meaning I’ve hopefully solved the issue.
Let me know what you think! :)
This was posted during Blaugust 2024, the annual blogging event hosted by Belghast. Blaugust is an event aiming to welcome new blogger blood into the fold and revitalise those who’ve been at it a little longer.
The Blaugust Discord is still available to join in, year-round!
Oh yeah, that’s much better. Not only is the comment box easy to see now but it even remembers my details, which is more than I can say for comments on most blogs these days. Leaving comments is getting harder all the time. I’m going to have something to say about that at the end of Blaugust, i think.
Hopefully this is now better again!
Looked into Pete’s feedback below re: bringing the comment box into the content frame, and sure enough — turns out you can. So here we are!
re: Getting harder to comment — yes; I have noticed that too honestly. I try to keep the settings here fairly open to comments, as I know you do too. The occasional spam comment does get through, but it is rare even without having to lock everything down.
Yeah this is a big complaint of mine, too. Having to log in to WordPress to comment on certain blogs, dealing with an awkward password and 2FA via text message (fiddly, annoying), only to have to log back in to WordPress for all the blogs that don’t force it on you if I wanna hit that nice little ‘like’ button. Oh it grinds my gears. xD
Sorry if I’m being the difficult customer, but it still feels a little disconnected.
Is there a way to put the comment module into the left column right under the Related Posts, and still in the white background area?
I mean it isn’t like a critical flaw or anything, if just feels like it is still a little less noticeable down here.
Sorry, I’m kind of a tough website critic.
No, you’re not being difficult, more than anything I appreciate your time in considering and letting me know.
I did initially think I might not be able to achieve this one though — but went for another dig into the theme settings, and, sure enough, the comment settings — like the related posts ones — had an option for ‘contained’ rather than ‘separated’, and here we are. :)
I am still surprised at how much of a sucker I am for dark mode these days, I used to hate it… perhaps just a leftover feeling from the Geocities black background NEON TEXT days and the ensuing headaches that caused, haha. But a nice dark grey background with a subtle but very readable text? Aww yiss. I think the more my brain devolves, the more headaches I get, and being prone to migraines these days (that was a fun addition), light mode just sucks when you’re light sensitive. This grey is at least much nicer! Also the bolder text actually? That is surprising, gotta see if I can do similar on my site.
My own blog is still in light mode because the dark mode option is actually a Jetpack addition that breaks a bit of my theme and it just didn’t look good, so light mode it is, for me. xD
The bolder text is another credit to Pete’s starting of the conversation and Krikket bringing it over to discord a few days back.
I had an inkling my text size before was probably OK, but weight a little on the light side maybe. This is now weight 400, and I think I’ve got accustomed to it enough now that I like it. :)