Blocksy WordPress theme

Long-suffering reader(s) of this blog will need no reminder that [d/dn]’s been through more incarnations than the Wikipedia entry on Buddhism. But as my posts have become more sporadic in recent years, I’ve had fewer reasons to tinker with design and layout.

In fact, I last changed the theme for this site in February 2023: a mere nine months ago. I’d opted for yet another theme by Anders Norén, the beautiful and simple Koji WordPress theme, which at around five years of age is still less than a quarter as old as [d/dn].

This time, I’ve decided to buck my long-term Scandinavian trend and install the free version of a more commercial theme, Blocksy. While I have no intention of paying for the premium version, Blocksy comes with some pretty neat features I’m keen to try out.

The most important of these, from my point of view, include: more flexible layouts for pages, projects (portfolios) and posts; multiple menus and sidebar options; and better integration of images (e.g. with automatic crediting of photographers in image captions).

A screenshot from [d/dn] on the date this post was published, showing the early stages of the new site design “build” using the Blocksy theme.

I guess I’ve also realised that I’m looking to increase the number and range of posts I publish in the coming months and years, and to do that effectively I’m going to need to let go of my desire for complete control over site design (which is a massive time suck).

And without going too deeply into it, I’m very keen to reorient the focus of this site: away from the never-ending gift that is Davey Dreamnation and his cohort, and towards something a little more centred on travel and travelling.

This is partly why the Blocksy theme (or to be more specific its Travel starter site) caught my eye. As you can hopefully see in the featured image for this post, it offers a more immersive experience, making better use of images and space.

I’m a long way from achieving anything like the look and feel of that starter site but let’s just say I have plans. Anyway, more on those once I post this entry and get through the backlog of other half-finished posts from the past few years.