Keetee

When I created Keetee back in January, I was relatively new to this almighty publishing platform called Wordpress. I put together a loose design plan in Photoshop inspired by the simplicity of Nerdist and Good Magazine, then went to work coding it up. The project took around two days—I recall having completed over a weekend—and the outcome looked something like this:

For two days of work, I wasn’t particularly displeased. I was impressed with the ease with which one can build a Wordpress theme, proud of myself for having done so with swiftness, and satisfied with the visual component of the design.

Queue the Querulousness

As time wore on, however, the flaws became increasingly apparent—I’d taken too many shortcuts, hadn’t done enough planning, left out details. I eventually became so unhappy with the site I didn’t want to update for fear new visitors would recognize these doofy indiscretions. Keetee just didn’t meet my standards for design, and my desire to use it gave way to evanescence.

With a steady few hundred hits a day, I kept it running so people could benefit from old articles. One of my readers, Yopladas, sent me an e-mail in May asking for updates. “Nah,” I responded, “Keetee is dead.” Indeed.

Rekindling Keetee

When summer began, I resolved to reform my disappointing brainchild. I cooked up a new design that retained some of the same visual elements in the spirit of realignment.

There are a number of things that are very dull about this version, but it was a starting point. I let it simmer for a few weeks, then kicked off a week-long sprint of planning, designing, and coding to bring the design up to par.

Here are a few things I think I did right:

1. Improved Spacing

It’s important to have a big-picture view when you’re styling dynamic content. The first time around I didn’t do enough planning, created a lot of delicately interdependent styling, and ended up using ghetto spacing workarounds because of it.

2. Details, Details, Details

I spent a lot of time on the little things. There are the literal little things like accents, icons, and decorative images, but I’ve also very carefully positioned the layout. Everything is on a grid, the main containers follow the rule of thirds, and a couple special areas pull proportions from the golden ratio. By mocking up all the details first, there was little experimentation to do when it came down to the code.

3. No Half-Assing

Having been new to Wordpress the first time around, there were naturally things I wasn’t sure how to do. There were several cases where I settled for the default look or setting rather than going the extra mile. This time I spared no expense, ensuring everything looks and works precisely as planned.

I Hope You Like It

I spent a full workweek on this new design, so believe me when I say it’s a labor of love! I hope you like my final product. Drop a comment and let me know what you think.