I’m gradually getting more comfortable editing Word Press theme packages. After some vitally important assistance by Heather last year with customizing the header, I’ve become quite comfortable modifying the Fading Flowers theme over the last few weeks.

It’s simpler than many. With seven key files, it’s relatively easy to trace where something is located and to tweak it for custom use. For instance, I like the contrasting colors of the foreground and background, so I’ve largely left them alone; however, at least one commenter last year mentioned the shading in the comment drafting box made it difficult to use, I found a way to change that color (and the text) to a better contrasting color. Usability for readers is important to me. (So, if there are any usability problems — speak up (assuming the problem isn’t that the system won’t let you).

I like the Jakarta theme and had some success modding it; however, at least one reader commented that it took too long to load. No matter how much I like it, it’s not worth implementing when it has a significant detractor like load time for some of my readers. But actually, there’s a fix for the load problem in IE now, so maybe I’ll take another look at it sometime.

I’ve noticed a periodic problem in both Firefox and IE with the Fading Flowers and other themes (including my old standard, Polar, based on the default WordPress 1.5 theme) where the sidebar shifts all the way to the bottom requiring a long, long scroll to reach it. Right now, I’m experiencing the problem in IE 6.0.

Unfortunately, the person who created Fading Flowers seems to have disappeared or moved off the web, so I’m not sure what to do about the links at the bottom of the page which are no longer any good.

One last tidbit of dubious interest — the Akismet spam count rolled over 7,000 this week.