I decided to update the template for the blog today, despite still not being able to access the Twenty Seventeen theme. My practice in years past was to update to the new yearly default WordPress theme each year before the new year rolled over. This year the upgrade to Twenty Seventeen is dependent upon WordPress getting updated to version 4.7, which hasn’t been done yet for my site.

I selected a very beautiful and simple theme called Lovecraft by Andres Norén. It’s simple, clean, and easy to add modifications to if I so desire. I’ve kept it mostly stock, but I have made a couple small changes.

• I selected a random header banner which I will keep updated with photos I’m really proud of. When I post a really nice landscape photo here it may end up in the banner rotation, which also gives a bit of surprise when people visit.
• My flickr feed is now in the sidebar under my instagram link. I want to start putting more of my photos up there for people to view.
• Moved the categories and archives menu lower in the sidebar to better feature the image feeds.
• Removed Twitter feed from the side, and put it in the footer.
• There is now a calendar at the bottom of the entire page for jumping to specific dates.
• I added a widget to show other likes I’ve done on WordPress sites I follow.
• I lowered the amount of posts on a single page to 5. The calendar widget is a great tool for navigating to a specific date once you’ve selected a month from the drop down menu.

I might make a few more tweaks in coming days, but I wanted to get the major changes in place before some bigger changes coming in the near future.