What Will Happen?
The Aggregate theme looks a little hairy straight off the shelf, or out of the box, to mix inappropriate metaphors. Since the id Software company released Doom as a download we’ve chipped away at shelves and boxes as containers for delivering software. Still, like the anacronistic use of the dial tone as a sound effect in movies today’s software downloads are often accompanied by an image of a box such as would have stocked shelves at CompUSA. I remember buying a copy of Windows at the now-gone CompUSA on 5th Avenue. I don’t remember which version of Windows but it impressed me that the store kept it under lock and key, like they do with acid reflux pills at Walgreen’s and Duane Reade stores. Years ago those type of stores put underwear under lock and key, requiring customers to basically ask for the permission of a store employee to make this potentially embarrassing purchase. Embarrassing if, for instance, a man wanted to purchase women’s underwear, or vice-versa. Condoms were formerly sanctioned in this manner as well.
Aggregate is described as a News theme. In that spirit here is a picture of a hyperlocal news-type incident I spotted last week, on New Years Day. A nearby taxi dispatcher took the liberty of occupying every available parking space on Skillman Avenue near the Honeywell Street Bridge. I saw a similar scene on Northern Boulevard, with long lines of yellow cabs parked curbside. The taxi company obviously had some reason to take advantage of the relaxed holiday parking rules, clearing out their garages.
Taxis Occupied Every Available Spot on Skillman Avenue. New Years Day, 2016.
I lightly edited the above photo with Photoshop the Pro Contrast filter from the Nik Collection. It’s increasingly rare that I post images without some kind of filtering treatment. This is a matter of predictably inane discussion between those who expect more expensive cameras take better pictures and those who know otherwise. It’s like saying an expensive word processing software will make you a better writer.
As this is the first posting to the Aggregate theme I am not sure what to expect upon hitting the “Publish” button. The first screen I saw looked pretty gnarly, with a lot of picket fence like lines and strangely intrusive alert windows. Let’s go.
OK, a bit of fiddling with Aggregate’s settings produces this as the first iteration. I set the top page slider to show 5 images. With only one post this has the effect of showing the same thumbnail 5 times:
Elegant Themes Aggregate. First Post.
Obviously this theme expects more content, so let’s keep typing.
It is nice to see that these themes actually create smaller thumbnail images, such as the one picked out here. I’ve seen so many lame themes that simply resize larger images using HTML size tags. That was bad HTML 20 years ago but somehow it’s been co-opted by the “responsive” buzzword crowd.
Further down the page the default appearance shows more of what we can expect from Aggregate’s more or less default settings. The top stories repeat further down the page. That’s a setting that might make more sense with more content. I’ll see. I’ll remove the “Meta” widget. I’ve never liked the fact that this is almost always displayed by default. Any “log in” link is a target for unwanted drone hack traffic, in my opinion. I’ll probably also remove the comments widget, as I don’t anticipate any such activity since I will turn comments off. That’s another default I don’t appreciate. Like the “log in” links a comment box is like a bulls-eye for unwanted server-crushing spam attacks.
Elegant Themes: Aggregate.
Like a lot of Elegant Themes the admin user, when logged in, is given a box from which s/he can choose font faces, colors, and background textures. I’ll go with the Argo font. If one wants to change the font size, as I do, one must add custom CSS in the ePanel settings.
Aggregate. Elegant Themes.
I find most web sites use text that is too small for me to read, and I routinely crank up page and text sizes using control+mousewheel. I’ve noticed that all the Time Inc. sites use generously jumbo sized fonts. Software makers do not make things easy for the less than 20/20 crowd either. Adobe products relegate their text menus to where I need magnifying glass.
Time to make more posts, more content, and stuff to fill out this theme.
