Appearance Reboot: Back to ‘Simple but Elegant’

After almost one year with my previous theme (whose last screenshot shown below), I get bored with the same theme, so I decided to try a new one that’s back to the basic and what a real “theme” should be: simple but elegant.

The Last Screenshot of Deuts.NET
The Last Screenshot of Deuts.NET

By the way, so far in this theme did I ever stick the longest in my whole WordPress life.

IntenseDebate Commenting System

The slow speed, especially at the backend, of my site could be partly attributable to a variety of plugins installed in the background that are directly or indirectly pertaining to and enhancing the commenting system. Now, there’s only one WordPress plugin to rule them all–IntenseDebate.

I couldn’t have just implemented this system with the previous theme because it (IntenseDebate) simply does not go well with dark-background themes.

With the new commenting system, you can easily comment using your profiles with these service providers:

Of course, you can always comment as a guest — just enter your name, email, and website (optional).

You won’t have to worry about security, logging in is not handled by Deuts.NET nor IntenseDebate. Instead, it’s directly handled by the service providers (as enumerated above) themselves.

In the Works

Maybe my site has grown in magnitude that keeping up with changes needed to be effected everytime I change themes can already be time-consuming. Anyway, the progress of the switch is documented at the dox.

Feedbacks

I have always been listening to feedbacks especially from friends and regular visitors. Please feel free to leave your comments below about this change, if any.

No Comments

Loy July 27, 2009 Reply

Did you design this theme yourself? It's nice and clean. Although I'm not against dark designs, I prefer websites with light backgrounds.

I've tried IntenseDebate and frankly, it sucks. I don't have absolute control over the comments when I use it. But that's just me. 🙂

deuts July 27, 2009 Reply

Well, as you can see in the footer, it's based on the NotesBlog theme. Regarding IntenseDebate, it actually offers features that you will naturally need more plugins for the built-in wordpress commenting system to simulate. As such, one plugin to rule them all. But then, I have to agree with you. It sucks. It's really yet in its early stage that I actually encountered alot of bugs.I've been speculating whether to use ID or Disqus. Definitely, IntenseDebate lags behind Disqus in terms of features and functionalities. I used Disqus in my other projects and satisfied with it. But then, ID is owned by the same company that owns wordpress, so I guess I have to give it a twirl for sometime. Thanks for the visit and the comment.

Loy July 27, 2009 Reply

IntenseDebate is owned by Automattic? Well I won't be surprised if its features will be integrated in future versions of WordPress, just like what happened to Gravatar. For power bloggers, IntenseDebate is ideal, but I prefer the default commenting functions of WordPress.

deuts July 27, 2009 Reply

Yup it's owned by Automattic. For me, replying by email feature comes in very handy, which I won't be surprised anyway if it'll come to the built-in commenting system of WordPress in the future.

But at least, with the automatic sync of the comments between intensedebate and my home database, I'm not losing any comment anyway. Thus, deactivating the plugin in the future won't be a problem.

deuts July 31, 2009 Reply

Ah you mean the old theme? I actually bought the template from somewhere. Then, I ported it to wordpress.

witsandnuts July 27, 2009 Reply

I'd like to explore intensedebate. =) I liked your current theme better.

deuts July 27, 2009 Reply

In addition to intensedebate, I suggest you also try disqus. On their current status/functions/features, Disqus is better. We're not sure yet what the future brings, though.

Thanks for the compliment.

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