Smashing New Look!
In line with the looming Grand Opening Ceremony of Swinburne Sarawak’s sprawling new extended campus, it’s community blog, SwinTalk, has also unveiled a whole new look!
Not only do Swinburnites get to enjoy the new campus, now, even our online presence has a unique theme to boot! How’s that for aspiring for us to be the best online campus community out there?
The new SwinTalk theme proudly parades itself in the two major colours of the Swinburne Sarawak logo – black and yellow, which are also the colours used in our campus’ interior decorations ahead of the Grand Opening.
The theme aims to be vibrant and fun, an image Swinburne tries to paint itself in all the time.
Your help is needed!
No code is perfect. Granted, a Wordpress theme might not be the most complex stuff to code out there, but mistakes and errors do occur. I am after all, human. =)
That said, I’ll need you, the community, to help in identifying any bugs, errors or weird stuff you see. If you happen to come across something not working or something that might seem not right to you, please do not hestitate to tell me about it throught the comments!
I also regret to inform that the theme has not been tested on IE6. So those of you using IE6 out there might be experiencing broken layouts. I highly recommend the lot of you to upgrade to IE7 or other browser alternatives. Rest assured, the theme has been tested to run fine on the latest of all major browsers.
Suggestions!
The layout you’re looking at right now has been rather carefully thought out by those collaborating behind the theme. We’ve taken into consideration the placings of items, features of every nook and canny to make SwinTalk an enjoyable experience. But we are almost always bound to miss out a thing or two along way.
Because this is a community blog, it is my job to tune the theme to the needs of you, the community. As such, I’ll most certainly welcome any comments and suggestions on how the layout or design of the theme can be improved!
So keep the suggestions coming in! =)
This is ember, the resident SwinTalk graphics guy, checking in my first ever post on SwinTalk.
Hope you like the new look as much as I enjoyed designing it!
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13 people talked!
awesome design……the pages have a white empty space at the bottom (since there is no comment block).
Uh oh.
According to the policies that I have read before, it is forbidden to use the Swinburne crest. Especially in an unofficial manner.
The policy itself is not ‘official’ yet. We will try to get swinburne to agree to let us use the engraved logo at the bottom.. This is more like a swinburne ‘fan club’ and our objective is still positive and in the ‘favor’ of the university.
nice layout… but i could not find comments link to comment on this post until i click the post title.. and the fonts for the links on right side of the page can’t be seen clearly..
The white space problem is fixed.
@Hans L. – I did have my reservations when I decided to include the crest into the footer. But I thought it is the best graphic to represent our university in a symbolic manner.
And i’ll echo Saad’s explanation for that matter.
@hostpur – The comments link is in the form of a speech bubble with the comment count, right next to the post title. You could also access the comments form via the post title link!
I’m assuming that you are not able to see the sidebar links because it’s too dark? Or is it a ‘font’ problem as you’ve mentioned?
In any way, I had foreseen this problem in older CRT monitors with higher contrast. LCD monitors like those I have at my disposal while testing the design were fine in displaying the links.
Anyhow, I have restyled the links to a brighter color. Let me know if you still can’t see them clearly.
Well, looks more nifty now. Aside from that, no hiccups from me, IE6, Opera and FF3 user.
Cheers.
erm sorry, delete my previous post pls…
link for awesomeness: http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/6452/postitpd4.png
I do believe that it would be better to have our own mascot or parody logo instead of the original crest. Just sayin’.
ember u made the themes! theme designer! :O you got served >.< wadeva im mumbling xD ember rox the sox
nice layout!
@satriakid – Glad to know that! Thanks!
@MiKa SH Wee – Hah! I noticed that earlier too! =P
@Hans L. – The SwinTalk logo is already present at the footer.. Or is it not displaying for you?
The crest was intended to graphically imply our relationship with Swinburne. So that new visitors would learn what the ‘Swin’ in SwinTalk refers to..and that it’s not just an arbitrary name.
Awesome layout, ember!
Great job!
Why thank you Becky!