The Previous Theme
The site previously used the official Merlot theme. Repository address: https://github.com/pages-themes/merlot.
On top of that I modified the CSS and adjusted the layout and styles, but there were always a few pain points I never solved.
- Not friendly to mobile devices; in particular the header banner and the h1~h4 fonts were too large.
- Articles could not be displayed by category;
- The display and aggregation of tags were very weak.
So after looking around, I settled on the current theme. Repository address: https://github.com/bit-ranger/blog.
The Current Theme
This theme has the following features:
- Friendly to mobile devices. The header itself is only one line tall, and on mobile devices the menu becomes a drawer.
- Articles can be filtered and displayed by category.
- There is a tag cloud, and articles can be filtered by tag.
- A timeline feature. It displays published articles along a timeline — you could call it a very pleasant surprise of a feature.
- The sidebar shows the article’s table of contents. Another very pleasant surprise of a feature.
Combining what I had from the previous theme, I made the following main changes on top of this theme:
- Replaced the built-in gitment with gittalk;
- Localised the interface into Chinese. Specifically:
- Changed the time format to a pure numeric form, with no English in it;
- Translated the menu bar items;
- “Blog” changed to “文章”;
- “Archive” changed to “时间线”;
- “Category” changed to “分类”;
- “Tag” changed to ”标签云“;
- Translated the text in article displays and category pages;
- “Read More” changed to “阅读全文”;
- “Comment” changed to “评论”
- Fixed the problem where, when a category name was in Chinese, selecting that category showed an empty article list;
- Removed the “Share” button from article displays.
In the new year, I wish everyone good health and peace of mind, smooth work, and success in your careers.