Responsive Blog

Responsive Blog was written for publishing rather than for selling: long text, a clear reading column, and a front page that can carry a rotating feature without turning into a shop window. It ships two prepared colour schemes, white and dark, twelve block regions, a sidebar configurable to either side, and a jQuery Cycle slideshow whose timing and transition are set in the theme settings rather than in code.

Eight releases over twelve months, all on 7.x-1.x. Most of the changes were typographic — line length, heading scale, the vertical rhythm between a teaser and the next one. That is unglamorous work with a disproportionate effect: on a blog theme the spacing decisions are the product, and everything else is packaging.

It is also the most reused thing I published, though not in the way that phrase usually means. Impact Theme is Responsive Blog restyled with a dark background and blue accents, released as a separate project rather than as a third colour scheme inside this one. Two projects, two issue queues, two release cycles, one codebase — the maintenance bill for that decision is set out honestly on the Impact page.

The light and dark schemes already in this theme are the answer I should have applied there, and the same answer a white-label platform gives at a much larger scale: variation belongs in configuration, not in a fork.