Today, in conjunction with The Cascadia Advocate’s twentieth anniversary, we’re debuting a new theme for the blog that provides a better reading experience.
Codenamed “Emmons”, after the Emmons Glacier on Mount Rainier (which in turn was named for Samuel Franklin Emmons, a prolific writer), this fifth version of The Cascadia Advocate brings a huge number of improvements. This post serves as a guide to what’s changed and why for any readers who are interested.
Emmons utilizes a fully-responsive design that adjusts to the width of the user’s screen. You can see this for yourself if you resize your browser window — you’ll see elements shrink or expand to fit the available space. Unlike past themes, Emmons is mobile-friendly, so if you’re reading on a phone or a tablet, you’ll see posts formatted for the size of your screen. You won’t need to pinch, zoom, and scroll to read, or load up an AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) version of a post to get a better reading experience.
Emmons brings a new nameplate — that’s publisher-speak for designed title as it appears on the front page or cover — which utilizes the WebP format. The nameplate also appears in front of a higher-resolution backdrop of the Cascade Range. Like the previous backdrop, the photo in use depicts the Cascades on a sunny July morning from the year 2012, not too far from the current midpoint in the blog’s history.
Owing to its age (it was developed during a bygone web era) The Cascadia Advocate’s previous theme did not display featured images by default. Emmons does. They’re always shown at the beginning of each article. Many of our posts go live with original photos or graphics of our creation, and Emmons allows them to be enjoyed as part of the default reading experience, rather than only on AMP pages or on external platforms.
The Cascadia Advocate has long made use of excerpts, or content summaries, which are a core feature of WordPress, the free, libre, and open source software (FLOSS) that this blog runs on. But they were not shown by default in our previous theme except on archive pages and search results pages. Now you’ll find them shown underneath article titles on single posts as well, providing context for posts that you open.
Until today, we have shown author bylines only at the bottom of posts. But it’s common practice in the publishing world to show author bylines above articles. We now follow that practice! Author bylines also remain in post footers, and below post footers, you’ll also find author biographical information, which is a first for The Cascadia Advocate. We feel this enhancement will be especially helpful to new readers who are coming across our research and advocacy for the first time.
We’ve increased the default font size of our articles so they’re easier to read, and switched from dark blue text to dark gray text as our default. The font family for body text and headings remains Tahoma, as it has been since The Cascadia Advocate’s inception, although a different font may be shown to readers on iOS and Android if Tahoma is not available. (For readers on GNU/Linux distributions like Ubuntu, you can install Tahoma on your system to see The Cascadia Advocate as it was meant to be seen!)
We’ve significantly improved the look and feel of our post discussion area, with accents and bolder borders to denote each comment. Gravatar is now enabled for our comment threads, so if you comment and use an email address that has a Gravatar account, your chosen avatar will appear next to your name, underneath your comment. Otherwise, you’ll be identified by an avatar with a random colorful design. And when you leave a comment or reply to another comment, you’ll see a reminder about our Commenting Guidelines with a link to where you can read them in their entirety.
Stories published on The Cascadia Advocate have always been presented in reverse chronological order, and that remains true with Emmons. But newly available is another way to explore recently published content that we think is worth reading: our Top Stories page. This page showcases what we’ve been writing about using a layout that is similar to what many newspapers and magazines use on their website.
Our heading background has always showcased the Middle Cascades. We’ve now added a footer that showcases the North Cascades. If you scroll to the bottom of the blog, you’ll see a panoramic view of some of our region’s finest peaks, including the appropriately named Glacier Peak, or Dakobed (known in the Sauk-Suiattle dialect of the Lushootseed language as “Tda-ko-buh-ba” or “Takobia”), taken from the legendary Heather — Maple Pass Loop, a challenging trail that is well worth hiking. The footer continues to show recent posts and recent comments from readers and recognition of Cascadia Advocate sponsors.
Emmons introduces a brand new primary navigation menu below the heading that provides quick and easy access to information about The Cascadia Advocate, including answers to frequently asked questions, NPI’s Code of Ethics, Commenting Guidelines, guest post submission information, and commercial advertising disclosures.
Version 4.0 of The Cascadia Advocate utilized two sidebars, on the right and the left. In keeping with its responsive design ethos, Emmons utilizes just one sidebar on most posts and pages, and none on the Top Stories page. All of the key elements from the previous sidebars remain intact in the simplified consolidated sidebar.
Emmons makes use of the Newspack theme created by Automattic for the benefit of news organizations, along with an extensive suite of customizations created and coded by the NPI staff, which give this new iteration of The Cascadia Advocate a unique look and feel. Newspack has been under active development for about half a decade and is well supported by a team I’m proud to have worked with.
Automattic’s long-term commitment to Newspack is important, because publishers need to be able to invest in software that isn’t going to become abandonware. As the web evolves in the next few years, Newspack is set to keep pace with regular updates, which means our staff won’t have to go back to the drawing board and pick a new theming platform. We’ll simply keep building on what we’ve unveiled today.
The discussion area is open if you have thoughts on the redesign or suggestions for future minor improvements. Having just finished work on Emmons, we have no plans for another big redesign, but there will be a Version 5.1 coming down the road, likely within the next year. We hope you enjoy The Cascadia Advocate’s new theme as much as we’ve enjoyed putting it together for you.
The Puget Sound region's second light rail line opened to riders on Saturday, April 27th,…
View a collection of photographs that give a sense of what the new Eastside stations…
Read NPI's recap of the East Link preview ride on April 25th, 2024, which gave…
52% of 1,012 Washington, Oregon, and Idaho voters surveyed by Civiqs earlier this month for…
Unsurprisingly, the Democratic Party's presumptive 2024 nominee will likely have the support of a majority…
The bill will provide tens of billions of dollars in security assistance to Ukraine, Israel,…