Hi everyone!
The shortlist of themes currently installed on the OpenLab dev site for testing are:
- Michelle
- Miniva
- Neve
- Period
We ended up eliminating a number of themes based on accessibility issues, using the WAVE browser tool to check them for issues. We didn’t choose any that had multiple color contrast or other accessibility issues (e.g. lack of labels that announce to a screen reader what a particular element is on the site).
Testing instructions
You’ll be testing themes on openlabdev.org, just as you did with the new features. You can use the same procedure to access the dev site. And just a reminder that you need to sign in twice! Once is with the dev site credentials so you have access to the site. The second time will be with your own username and password.
- You can use the test course you created for testing the new features.
- Activate one of the themes on your course site (here’s a refresher from OpenLab Help, if you need it).
- As you’re reviewing the theme please think about the following:
- Can you you imagine using this for your work on the OpenLab? Can you imagine your students or colleagues using it? Since the OpenLab is a community platform it can be used by college students, faculty, and staff, including alumni.
- Can you think of any use cases for this theme? What kind of site do you imagine this theme would work well for?
- Repeat steps 1-3 to test a second theme.
Please post about your experience / feedback in the comments below.
I love that! Thanks for sharing George!
I tested out all four themes and played around with some customization. Iāve been married to Hemingway so long and since Iām kinda set in my waysāit’s easy, looks good, and works well for class sites and committee sites without much customizingāitās hard to imagine I would choose any of these themes over Hemingway.
Michelle
I like the fonts that this theme uses. I donāt like that I donāt seem to be able to choose a header image. I like having widgets in the sidebar and I couldnāt figure out how to get this theme to display them. I also played with different window widths. I didnāt like how at certain widths the site identity was cut off. And at other (not even very narrow) widths, the menu along the top of the site collapses into one of those hamburger menus. I wouldnāt choose this theme for any of my uses.
Miniva
I liked the look of this one, especially the drop-down menus. I didnāt realize that Iād selected an animated gif as the background image at first; that was fun and reminded me of the old MySpace days, but probably too distracting to be useful. The first header image I chose made the site identity text basically unreadable. Certainly, choosing another header image would fix this but I worry that not everyone who chooses this theme would catch that, so Iām not sure this would be a good theme for an entry-level OpenLab user.
Neve
I really like that this theme is so customizable. The different header format choices are cool and it was easy to change the header image size. Itās easy and fun to change fonts around (though most of the ones I tried looked kinda crummy). Again, I chose a header image where it was hard to read the site identity and menu text, but more customization seems possible than with Miniva. I donāt know that this theme would work for everyone right out of the box, but I could maybe imagine trying it out myself for a class or committee site. It was my favorite of the four.
Period
This one seems like a nice simple little theme compared to the others. I learned how to add a featured image to a post and I like how it looks. I didnāt find many options for customizing (for example, I couldnāt see how to add a header image). Iām not sure Iād use it myself but itād probably be an okay theme for someone new to the OpenLab.
The Michelle theme was one of the newer themes that I was interested in. I was disappointed that the presentation of the theme on the WordPress Themes Directory was quite different from the default settings I received when I activated it on my test site. It seems like it would require a lot of customization to get one’s course site to look as visually sophisticated as the example on the WordPress Themes page. Straight out of the box, the post pages stack each post in a box in two columns. When you click into a post or a page it centers the content into a single column. Not such a fan of the posts (pages) headers defaulting to Category: (Header title). I did, however, appreciate that you are able to enlarge embedded images by clicking on them.
While I don’t think that I would use this theme on an OER or library site, I do think that the formatting and presentation could be useful for classes where there is a lot of weekly discussion, like an introductory English composition course. I could also see it being used for department or resources hubs that are pushing out new information to their constituents frequently.
This theme feels like it is built with mobile devices in mind, but would also be useable across desktops and tablets.
Okay, it took me a bit to remember all the details about getting into my sandbox site (LOL), but once I figured it out, here’s my reactions:
Period
Um, generally a no for me. It’s very clunky and looks very basic (reminds me of Blackboard, TBH). I played a bit with it, and you can alter a some things, but it takes more time than Hemingway to look more “professional.” I imagine someone who’s well-versed in this kind of stuff could utilize it more than I could, but I imagine a lot of professors like me want something that looks good out of the box, if you will, so this would probably be a pass.
Michelle
I agree with Joshua (comment above) about Michelle. It seems that it is geared more for mobile devices than a computer screen. If a professor wants something basic (and perhaps is teaching an online course), this might be for them. I could see if you’re heavy on online discussions this could be useful, but if you want an OpenLab to be more the icing on the cake, I’d choose something else.
Neve
I decided to try a third theme because I was so negative about the two I tried! I like Neve the best of the three (although I changed my mind when I tried Miniva). It seems that I can play around with a lot of things easily, unlike the other themes I’ve tried. I think this site “encourages” a novice to try different things, which is a big plus. The options to change headings and so forth were clear.
I’d certainly consider using Neve for a class I was building for the first time *if* I had time to play around with it in advance, which, as an adjunct, isn’t a luxury I have, LOL. I admit, like another person has mentioned, I’m somewhat “married” to Hemingway. Is it the best? Maybe not, but it’s the most familiar and easiest to experiment with because of the familiarity.
Miniva
I decided to try this one because, hey, Miniva needs a moment in the sun! I actually enjoyed this even more than Neve, mainly for the way it looks. The drop-down menus are clear, the boxes made the separate posts more clear than the first two themes I tried, and the options to change and experiment, like Neve, encouraged the user to play more than the first two. I don’t know if I was a newbie if this would be ideal, but for those that are looking for a change after several semesters of the same old same old, this could definitely work.
Hi everyone,
You may have noticed that we installed two new themes from the ones you tested: Neve and Miniva.
Neve seemed to be well-liked, and we wanted to provide one theme with more advanced customization options. Between this and Michelle, Neve was much easier to customize. In addition, it passed a WAVE test with no accessibility errors, and it has good documentation. The starter sites arenāt possible to use on the OpenLab, but we thought it wasnāt too difficult to customize without using one.
Miniva also got positive feedback. It does require some customization, but is simpler than Neve, and can be used āout of the boxā as a very minimal theme with no header, no featured images, etc. As Kate mentioned, the header image requires particular characteristics so as not to make the site title and nav unreadable, but weāll include suggestions for choosing a good header image in our documentation. The theme also has its own documentation and passed a WAVE test, with no accessibility errors. Another plus is that itās built to work with the Breadcrumb NavXT plugin. This plugin, which currently only works with the OpenLab Twenty Sixteen and OpenLab Twenty Thirteen themes, allows you to add breadcrumb navigation to your site.
Thanks again for your evaluation and recommendations!