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kristarella.blog

kristarella.blog

Happiness Engineer at Automattic, lover of knitting, crochet, sci-fi and more

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You are here: Home / About / Evolution of kristarella.blog

Evolution of kristarella.blog

Contents
  1. Blogger
    1. Blue and green boxes
    2. Terrace diary
    3. Blue and purple
  2. WordPress
    1. Blue
    2. Red heart
    3. Grey stripes
    4. Christmas ’06
    5. Kristarella Studios
    6. 2011
    7. 2013
    8. late 2014

The metamorphosis of my blog from birth until now.

Blogger

1st look

Blue and green boxes

Everyone starts with default, right?


2nd look

Terrace diary

After learning a bit of CSS I managed to make this one with a fixed background. I learnt a lot trying to make it, which made it easier to produce more. I felt this one was too busy and difficult to read so I made something different.


3rd look

Blue and purple

Not wanting to waste the cartoon that I made, I integrated it into something much less busy.


WordPress

4th look

Blue

Upon my move to WordPress I tweaked the look that I already had. Changing the shadow from blue to grey, making the black lines thinner and adding some 1px borders to sharpen it up. I had a bit of fun with the footer too, “This and that was brought to you by the letter A and the number 2.”


5th look

Red heart

I called it red although it’s a little more on the pink side. I felt the need for something warmer than blue. This one is simpler too, fewer images (e.g. for sidebar headings), just simple CSS, with a touch of hubby’s javascript to roll up the sidebar menus.


6th look

Grey stripes

As you can see I’m very creative with names /* end sarcasm */. I was inspired by designers’ sites that were grey with splashes of colour. People didn’t like the font in the header and sidebar, but I still do. It was grungy… I like grungy things.


6th and a half look

Christmas ’06

I added some Christmas lights to my existing template. I was feeling festive that Christmas. 😁


7th look

Angels January 2007

My most popular theme yet (from the comments I received). I liked this one a lot. The font in the sidebar was pretty, it was the first time I’d made a header image in Inkscape, the top menu buttons slid down when you hovered over them, it was all good fun.


8th look

Copyblogger June 2007

My variation on the Copyblogger theme by Chris Pearson. It overtook my angels theme in popularity and I love the simplicity of it.


8th look - pink

Pink for October 2007 — in support of Breast Cancer Awareness month


8th look - blue

Ocean blue November 2007


8th look - Christmas

Searching for the king Christmas 2007


10

kristarella.blog January 2008

I changed the name of the site because “This and that” was a bit of a lame name and didn’t really mean anything. kristarella doesn’t necessarily mean much either, other than it’s the name I’ve been using on the internet for the last few year.
I kept the Copyblogger ocean theme until May 2008.


my first theme from scratch

kristarella.blog mid 2008

I learnt so much through using the Copyblogger theme and helping others use it that I wanted to write my own theme from scratch. I thought a lot about semantic code and readability and tried to make something simple, but unique.


11 Thesis 1

kristarella.blog on Thesis

While I was doing honours in Molecular Biology during 2008 I also learnt all about the Thesis theme. After a few months of helping people with CSS and PHP on the Thesis forums I finally got around to porting my site design to Thesis.


12 Thesis 2

Kristarella Studios

When I launched Kristarella Studios at the start of 2009 I created a new site design to go with it. I wanted to strip all the excess material and got rid of sidebars all together, making it easier to focus on blog posts, photography and business.


2011

Around this time it looks like I got into the habit of changing my theme close to annually. This one was using some subtle textures, gradients, and highlights.
The image at the top of the sidebar showed the lastest image from my photoblog.


Overlap 2012

I think I called this one overlap for the different shades of colour where different elements meet.


2013

I wanted to go really minimal and gradually build on this theme. To be honest, I don’t remember how that went!


Genesis 2014

Sometime after the launch of Thesis v2 I started to use the Genesis theme framework for some client work, and I also started to use it on my own sites.

Oddly, this child theme behaved remarkably similar to Twenty Fifteen, the default WordPress theme that launched at the end of 2014: a fixed header, menu, and sidebar on the left, content scrolling on the right.


late 2014

Trying out the full-screen header and panels thing.


Modern Studio Pro 2015

I changed to a child theme from the StudioPress store in 2015 and stuck with it for nearly 5 years 😮, including a domain change to kristarella.blog.


Revolution Pro 2020

I was feeling the new year, new theme vibe. I didn’t want to change too much, but wanted to be able to take better advantage of the Gutenberg editor in WordPress, launched last year. This is another Genesis child theme from StudioPress with some tweaks of my own.

Another fun day at the zoo! I was excited to see h Another fun day at the zoo! I was excited to see how great the Vivid displays look during day since I didn't try to see them at night. Mark wasn't quite ready for photos with the gorilla sculptures. He stared at the mummy gorilla for some time and then decided he didn't like it and started to cry 😢 a cuddle with human mummy fixed that 😂
#marksymonds
This cheeky monkey is ten months old today!He h This cheeky monkey is ten months old today!He has 3 teeth out, and that tongue is often out feeling what is going on with those too! He is super close to crawling. He can shuffle himself around and did a couple of alternate knee motions yesterday before slipping onto his tummy again. He doesn't like lying down and sits up at every opportunity. He is rubbish at sleeping (worse than ever), but usually makes up for it with how happy he is during the day.#marksymonds
Final day is stack day for #LEGODisneyHabitats wit Final day is stack day for #LEGODisneyHabitats with @brickfambuilds and @trickybricks!I only made 4 habitats this time, so for a balanced stack I threw in my Magic Kingdom castle and Mickey from last year.I made a couple of small improvements on some of the habitats too: a clock and key for Alice, an extra wall row for Luke and Leia (somehow I made that one too short 🤦🏻‍♀️) and the finishing top rail for Ariel and Eric, which I think goes nicely next to the rabbit hole.#lego #afol #legohabitat #legohabitats #legohabitatstack #legodisney #legodisneyhabitatstack
"She don't got a lot to say, but there's something "She don't got a lot to say, but there's something about her..."Ariel and Eric in #LEGODisneyHabitats with @brickfambuilds and @trickybricksI think this might be the closest that my vision of a habitat has turned out in the actual bricks. Happy 👌🏻#lego #legohabitat #legohabitats #afol #thelittlemermaid
Introduced mum to LEGO set building today with the Introduced mum to LEGO set building today with the bonsai! We decided to combine the green and pink foliage.
Also, I was a bit excited to get a teal brick separator 😆 I've only had orange ones so far.#lego #afol #legobotanicalcollection
"Aren't you a little short for a storm trooper?" - "Aren't you a little short for a storm trooper?" -LeiaThis took a little doing to make the door alcove. I'm pretty happy with the result. With more pieces it could be even better.Day 4 of #LEGODisneyHabitats with @brickfambuilds and @trickybricks, and #letsbuildtheforce with @brickhuntress#lego #afol #legostarwars #legostarwarsmoc #legohabitat #legohabitats #starwars #letsbuildseries
"I know who I was when I got up this morning, but "I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then" -AliceDown the rabbit hole for day 3 of #LEGODisneyHabitats with @brickfambuilds and @trickybricks#lego #afol #aliceinwonderland #legohabitat #legohabitats
There's a snake in my boots!Hope this is scrapin There's a snake in my boots!Hope this is scraping in for day 2 of #LEGODisneyHabitats with @brickfambuilds and @trickybricks#lego #afol #legohabitat #legohabitats #toystory
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