"Fjords" Wordpress Theme Review

Already I’m quite impressed with Fjords (whatever it means). And I even like it’s thin columns, especially since it allows for full use of the side-bar widget. Right now, however, I am still in the process of adapting the top (custom) header, to suit both this four-part split as well as this site. Hopefully I’ll find the perfect header soon.

Advantages… Using Side-bar widgets to the max!

One advantage of this theme is that it enables you to cram as many side-bar widgets as you need. Earlier, I found that with the single column format, the reader would have to scroll too long to find other stuff… hence it made no sense to use all that sidebars that you may have wanted. Not anymore… because of the friendly layout… everything that a reader may need is accessible without too much need for scrolling.

Good… and bad… Custom header splitter…

The custom header splitter was really cool. But when the header has people, as mine does, I found out that the splitter is not as helpful. It also does not seem to use the ‘full’ image… and crops out a lot of the right side of the image. I think the default landscape offers a good hint of what kind of image works with this theme… but I’m trying to make other customizations work.

Needs a little more configuration ability

Fjords would be perfect with a little more configurable ability… I would be able to use it better. Also, I would have liked if the text was in the middle and the and at least one side-bar was on the left (not all on the right).But all that is still being a little picky.

Too small column for photos…

This is not a ‘for photo-blog’ theme. The text size is nice (different) but doesn’t work too well with big photographs on the text. For isntance, see this link: http://nayk.wordpress.com/2007/02/23/breaking-news-bret-lee-out-of-world-cup/ the photo is cropped out. It practically forces you to rely on thumbnails.

Quotes…

For quotations, I’ve pasted a sample from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. (Notice that italics become red, for some strange reason. I’d prefer it if Bold became red. Anyway…).

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,

Another comment… from Jeff Ventura… and I think it’s quite relevant.

It seems to be more a proof-of-concept more than anything. It’s a horribly inefficient use of space, and while the top of the theme looks nice, as you scroll down and focus on just content, it’s awfully hard to read and 75% of the screen is empty.
I suppose it’s OK if you have a bent towards some asymmetrical layout Zen thing, but for most of us I think this is something we try, go “Well, that’s pretty neat” and then discard in favor of something that honors content a bit more.
Or, alternatively, I could be entirely full of it and this might be the best theme ever developed. Your call.

More of this review to follow as I continue work with this Fjords theme for a while.

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