Some Random Dude

Posts Tagged ‘wordpress’

Frank 0.9.2 Released

It’s been a long time coming, but the next version of Frank has been released. This is a significant update and is intended to set the stage for the foreseeable future releases. Perhaps the biggest change is the Frank project repo now only contains the main parent theme. Frank for Some Random Dude, its child theme, now exists at github.com/somerandomdude/frank-somerandomdude. This may cause some initial confusion, but it will make everyone’s lives better in the long-term. Read On…

Frank Under Fire—How a WordPress Theme Designed for Speed Performed Under High Traffic Conditions

I wrote an article for Smashing Magazine a few weeks ago showcasing Frank. As was expected, my site got bombed. Since Frank was designed from the ground up to be fast, I wanted to share the results of how Frank performed on a high volume traffic day. It’s important to know that my site is hosted on a medium-tier VPS with no CDN. Read On…

Some Random Dude is Now (More) Responsive

In the past two weeks, I was able to update this site (and more importantly, the open source theme behind it) to have a responsive layout. This was the last big hurdle for me to get a final-ish version of the theme out the door.

There are still small issues that need to be addressed, but this was the big one. The next goal is to get a project page up along with some simple starting guides, take a breath and see where the project goes from there. My current site is still imperfect, but I consider it to be a good reflection of how I view responsive web design. As I mentioned in an recently, responsive web design goes beyond a responsive layout. Our designs need to address limited bandwidth and processing power associated with mobile devices.

My hope is this theme will continue to improve so that it can provide a viable option for bloggers who provide a fast, reading-centric experience for their visitors. Due to my limited schedule however, I need to rely on the community to help me push this project forward. If you have enjoyed this site and/or you would like to use this theme, I encourage you to do so. I also encourage you to help make it better for everyone else. So please, fork this theme and get in touch with me if you are interesting in contributing.