I have created a new theme for my blog, I feel that this theme is more modern and has a lighter feel to it. I based the theme on an open source / free web template named Multiflex. It is available from www.1234.info this theme is based on Multiflex version 5.4. It took a lot more time to convert the web template into a dasBlog theme than I had figured on – partly because i also changed the page width of Multiflex which meant that I had to redo all the border images and partly due to Multiflex being gray only and I had to go through all the CSS to restyle the entire template! I am pretty pleased with the end result at the moment, although I am sure there are a couple of glitches that will need to be ironed out. One thing that irritated me with dasBlog and theme modifications is that it doesn’t seem to be possible to change how certain parts are rendered for example post comments and related links. A lot of the content gets put in tables and modern design doesn’t use tables but advanced CSS for positioning and flow control.
I can whole-heartedly recommend Multiflex to anyone who wants to create web pages but, like me, is not super gifted in the arts department! The template is well documented, there is a content toolkit for building your page structure and the CSS was easy to understand and modify. I found it at www.openwebdesign.org there is also a Color Contest there which I will check in on in the future to see how my color scheme compares to others. I used a flash-based tool from www.colorsontheweb.com to create a pleasant color scheme, it was a great help since I am not that good at picking out matching colors.
One major addition in this theme for my site is the Google search box in the top right-hand corner. Originally I tried to just add the Google search code in my old theme but since the Google code contains a <form> element it conflicts with the predefined form in dasBlog/ASP.Net. I solved it by placing the Google form in a separate html file and just including that file as an iframe.
