48 Comments on “Don’t Panic”

1. Love the “Athena at Sunset” photo. What a great shot!

2. Ack!

   The webpage has changed! Change is BAD! Put it back, put it back!

   /idiotarian mode

   Though I will say that as an aesthetic matter I preferred the previous iteration. Your site, your choice.

3. As I said, I’m fiddling. What you see at the moment may or may not stay.

4. We hatessss it. /gollum

   Too much blue:(

5. I recognize so many WordPress themes these days it frightens me. I spent waaaay too much time theme hunting.

   My current theme I’m not sure if I’m ever letting go of. It’s fairly unique on the web because it came from a company that usually charges $100+ to use their themes, and this was one of the spare free ones (though you could pay $800 so that no one else can ever use it legally. Yeah).

   So I got it, wondered why I hadn’t seen it before except as a screenshot on old archives, and then realized why. The theme was broken in several places.

   Fortunately I can fix HTML and CSS, and added some happy adaptations to the New World of WordPress, and now I have a unique theme. Not the easiest theme in the world to tweak, though, but I have a Photoshop equivalent sitting around and have done it.

   This one is a fairly nice theme. Done by a club of WP designers who release free themes from time to time, but provide a subscription (fairly cheap) to use their premium themes. Small Potato, I think. They do some of the more sensible themes out there.

   Can’t recall if this one is part of their “Seven Sins” series or not. I’ve always kind of wanted Lust.

6. I was referring to the blue one with tabs on the side that has disappeared. I liked it… but there are a ton of other themes out there. :)

7. Yup. Like I said, I’m fiddling. Things may come and go today.

8. Looks good to me, colorwise, and I like the fact that the Administrivia and sundry are done as a separate tab on the side. Kinda makes you pay attention to it, rather than have it look like it’s a part of the main thread. If you’re asking for critiques, my only complaint would be the comment tab. Took me a second to realize where to go to view comments from the front page. Obviously, I figured it out, and it could be that I’m a bit slow on catching these things. If you’re not asking for critiques. . TEH PAGE LOOKS GR8!!1! U R MAD OF TEH AWESOM!

9. I will sit in the peanut gallery and cheer you on, John. :)

   I likes the theme changings.

10. OOPS. .see comment #6. .I took too long commenting. . .

11. The “Mac OS X” theme is pretty keen, actually. One of the few really smart themes out there (my theme is only a little bit smart) in that readers can re-order the little widgets in the side, and minimize some of them into little bars. (Unfortunately we can’t move widgets from one column to the other.) Helps me move the “important” stuff up.

    No other theme does that, that I know of.

12. White theme with the cloth background:

    Too familiar. Way too familiar. I bus the Entrecard sites a lot, and have seen this one across four different blogs.

    It’s not a bad theme. And heck, I may be the only one in your audience who cares. :)

13. I like the theme at 11:28 EST. I also much prefer the less busy/easier to read widgets–much better than the old boxes that all looked the same to me (and my poor vision).

14. Whatever the colours, etc., I like the three-column look.

    Right now the image is a farm scape (very nice) and the background is grey hashmarks. Overall, looks really nice, but no comment numbers?

15. It looks the same…

    Only different…

16. it’s cool. got my towel

17. what? I missed the fiddling… this is so disappointing!

18. Uh, in regards to the title of the post… those letters just aren’t friendly enough…

19. Don’t worry shiloh, there may be fiddling later, too.

20. No wonder I am seeing reality shift as I am staring out the window. I thought I was going mad!

21. I will not miss the green/brown and tree background.(Yet it is still here. WHY is it still here? Help Help I’m panicking!!!)

22. I like the brightness much better than the green/brown.

    But whatever you just did, it took away the numbers on the comments.

23. Now this is one that I like — the farmland with the cloudly sky.

24. OMG, the “Whatever” title MUST be in a larger font….Man, you are FREAKING ME OUT !

25. I will actually miss the old theme if it doesn’t come back. Especially the font (hint: my website – look).
    Anywhere I can see it?

26. Patrick:

    Breathe slowly into a paper bag until your heart stops racing. Then empty your browser’s cache and reload the page. Magical fields beyond the ones you know await on the other side.

27. Categorization. Nice. You gonna go back and categorize the archives? Hehe. Didn’t think so. Could be useful for dealing with the repetitive nature of peoples questions. Reader, where do you get your ideas? Scalzi, search under category ideas.
    Just had a thought. Yesterday you were so busy you had us inventing words. Today you have so much time on your hands you are fiddling with themes.

28. Yep. No more numbers on the comments. But I do like the farm picture currently going on.

    Remind me of home (which is about 75 miles away, so DUH!)

29. That would be away from your position, not mine, which is 1000 miles +/-.

30. For the white farmland theme, the missing numbers are the result of this CSS:

    #main .commentlist li
    {
    list-style:none;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 1em;
    border-bottom:#ddd 1px solid;
    font-size:0.9em;
    }

    In particular “list-style: none;” remove this line (or comment it out like)

    /* list-style: none; */

    And numbers should appear.

31. I like the farm, nice and white– though a little more contrast on the text might be easier on my eyes.

    Still good theme from where I sit

32. I love how this speaks of “Humble midwestern science fiction writer.”

    Not even a little piece of bacon in it, either.

33. This theme looks pretty sweet. Combining this one with the picture of Athena at sunset would be a winning combination in my book.

34. I very much like the farmhouse/white theme. Crisp, clean, evokes a good sense of the Scalzi Family compound.

    Only nitpick: having the comment numbers on their own separate line makes the comments feel too spaced out. If it could be something like…

    35. # Devin L. Ganger on 27 Feb 2008 at 0:00 pm

    …it would be a small change that would help balance the nice use of whitespace.

35. It could be worse, John could be switching to a theme based on the state of the typical American home inhabited by a small child and cats.

36. Looks kinda plain in here at the moment.

    And, thanks for the leftover Creation Museum swag. Very enjoyable.

37. Do you think it’s wrong that I’m hoping for CAT EXTREME EYEBALL CLOSE-UP for the next banner?

    Especially if Zeus is good ‘n stoned in it?

38. White cloth farmhouse theme, numbers on a separate line.

    Possibly offending CSS:

    #main .commentlist li .cmtinfo
    {
    padding:5px;
    margin-bottom: 5px;
    position:relative;
    }

    It modifies stuff that looks like this:

    —–
    <li id=”comment-19786″ class=”alt”>
    <div class=”cmtinfo”>….
    </div>

    <p> …

    </li>
    —-

    The is, I think, what’s causing the break, in conjunction with the position: relative. Or perhaps only one or the other is causing this.

    I have ideas on how to fix it in the CSS, but I would want to try them out first. Unless you would like to experiment John…

    Try modifying that CSS so it looks like this:

    #main .commentlist li .cmtinfo
    {
    padding:5px;
    margin-bottom: 5px;
    position:relative;
    display: inline; /* new */
    }

    This makes the div not create a newline between itself and everything else above/below.

    If things still look funky, try getting rid of ‘position:relative;’ or commenting it out.

    Otherwise we need to operate on the PHP code the theme is using, and that is not a nice method. :)

39. I like what I’m seeing right now.

40. Thanks, Arachne.

41. YAY! Cloth background is blue!

    And YAY! Fix worked!

    And yah, anything for the Scalzi of Much Wisdom. :)

42. shoot. I thought this thread was about the Hitch Hikers Guide…

43. Wow, this post presented the lovely symmetry when I clicked on it of being entitled “Don’t Panic” and having 42 responses.

    And now I’ve gone and ruined it.

44. Damn you!

45. LMAO!

    (jerk)

46. Coincidentally, the 42nd post also mentions HHGTTG…eerie.

47. Oh, hey, the blue is a nice touch, and thanks for the speedy fix on the numbers! You totally rock.

48. Well, at least the seascape is better than the one with the garish clashing concentric arcs! It is harder to read than yesterday, probably due to smaller and dimmer font.