Yes, this site looks like garbage. And I really don’t care.

I hear this from friends who visit my site:

“Your site looks bad”

“Dude you should really redesign your site”

“Why don’t you code your site in Python with Django?” (because I don’t have the time to do it)

I get it. This site looks a bit less optimal than it should. I’m using this site as a “portfolio” and I should be using it as a personal ranting portal. The issue is, the WordPress theme market is fragmented and is literally a shitshow.

Aside from the default WordPress themes, there’s two categories that themes fall under: Looks great but is a freemium theme, or looks okay but it’s mostly free.

There isn’t any great theme that is actually free, and if you want a great theme you have to cough up around $40-$60, which I will never, ever do.

I’ve been browsing around and I’ve come across four themes that would seem nice to have. Hestia, Mesmerize, 2017 from WP, and the classic 2013 from WP.

Hestia looks really nice, but it’s from Themeisle, meaning it’s a freemium theme. Mesmerize looks good, and it doesn’t come from a big company from the looks of things, but I can’t say that for sure.

2017 from WordPress looks nice…ish. I’m not a fan of the big header image, and I don’t know if you can entirely remove it or not. There’s a lot of unused space for blog posts as well.

And if all else fails, 2013 from WordPress will have to do, because it’s a timeless classic. I can instantly remember the days of “o355’s Kingdom” a few years ago when battling my friend for the best unblocked games website, and the fact that people couldn’t type out o355.us (people somehow can’t properly type out owenthe <dot> ninja), and insecure MAMP running on a Mac Mini. Oh the days.

So, that’s why my site looks not so good. I’ll be trying out some new themes and writing up more posts in the future.