CypherFS-DarkSide for CypherHackz.Net

I actually want to use this theme on 19th December 2007 because on that day, it will be the 2nd year CypherHackz.Net and I exist in the world of blogging. But because I am so excited, after I finished code this new theme, I then uploaded it and use it for my CypherHackz.Net.

This theme is called CypherFS-DarkSide . Why DarkSide? Because the main colour is dark but I still maintain using the orange colour because it is the trademark for my logo. Other than that, I have removed all unnecessary things such plugins, ads, external scripts and so on to reduce the page load time.

What are the differences between this theme and the previous one? Firstly, this theme has two sidebars on the right. I decided to use two sidebars because I want to put everything on the top. This can ensure that my visitors (you!) no needs to scroll way down if they want to see what the things I put on the sidebar are.

Second, I removed Google search engine on my site because, although I got money from the searching made by my visitors, but not many people tend to use this feature. In fact, I also will not use the search engine on a site if they use Google search engine. That’s why I use WordPress built-in search feature on my site.

Third, on my last CypherHackz.Net Review Me contest, neutronics said in his review that I need to move my site to Web 2.0 theme. He said that because he knows that I can design and code Web 2.0 website and for this new theme, I have put some Web 2.0 style. Like the one you see at the navigation link (home, about, etc…) at the header. Next is, I use my own custom made date display image (beside the article’s title) as a background to display the month and day for articles.

Although there are not many changes made from the previous theme but I still keep SEO in mind when code this theme. The content loads first before the sidebar. The title is optimized for better SEO. But there is still a problem to make this theme valid XHTML because some scripts that I use on this theme contains invalid characters. For an example, the Feedburner reader count image. The code that it uses is not XHTML standard. I hope that Feedburner team will change new .gif code to make it valid XHTML.

If you have comments, critics, suggestions or recommendations for this new theme, you can leave them by using the comment form below. I love comments from my visitors. 🙂