A few days ago, Krista Stevens from the the Automattic team published a post showing what could be done with colour options to spice up various themes.
Krista is Editorial Team Lead at Automattic, editor at Contents Magazine, and former editor in chief of A List Apart.
[ I have followed A List Apart for years, and lamented the style change a couple of years ago, but it’s a great site – and I recommend anyone to take a look.]
One of the themes that was mentioned in Krista’s article was Writr, a theme I was using at the time (I have since switched to the Zoren theme.
I wasn’t completely happy with the Writr theme and I commented on Krista’s post as follows:
I just wish there was a way to take out or modify the #303030 horizontal dividing lines in Writr. They are not body background, but something else and they are – in my opinion – too wide and dark, and mess up an otherwise lovely theme…
I went just now to look at the reply to my comment, and my comment is still held for moderation.
Why?
So I took a look at the Writr demo and here’s what it looks like now. And below is my best Photoshopped attempt to show what it looked like ‘before’.
Maybe I got it wrong and the theme can be tweaked (without a CSS upgrade) to look like the ‘after’ version.
In which case, why not publish my comment and point out my error?
Maybe there was going to be a reply and I jumped the gun. In which case this post is not needed.
I’m going to post a link to this post on Krista’s post.
After
Before
Photograph Works 
The Writr theme never appealed to me, most of all because of the colour to the left. Strange that they don’t keep better track of comments there.
I’m using Twenty Fourteen right now. Found it too dark, with all the black around it, for me, but I still have a few months left of the Customize upgrade, and before that runs out I’ve probably found another one that I like.
I still think the premium ones are overly priced, and knowing myself liking change, I could never go for one of them. Tried Linen and turned it back.
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Have you heard anything more about this?
I must say, Twenty Fourteen has a weird way of displaying sticky posts! I like the font in this Zoren theme.
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Yes – take a look at the thread on the original post by Krista – I added a couple of comments in reply to Kathryn, although my last comment may not be published yet. I explained that I had Zoren running on a test site here on WP.com and that I had just downloaded the latest WP.com version and installed it on a self-hosted site and the black lines are no longer there in the latest version.
I shall never know whether someone saw my comment and changed the theme, or whether they changed the theme for some other reason. It matters not; I’m glad it is updated though.
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No, you’ll never know.
So, you can download a wp.COM version and install that on self-hosted?!
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Yes, that’s been possible for a while. I had Zoren on the site that I am now running Writr. I will switch back to Zoren soon.
To download a WP.com theme, look down the sidebar of the theme and you will see the download link.
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Yes! Wow, had no idea! Well … now I’m back with the .com and it will stay that way. I miss being able to do the Google Font thing, though 🙂
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I’m not at all keen on Wrtr but I’m viewing Zoren here and liking it. 🙂
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Yes, Zoren has some good things going for it. 🙂
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Staff have been quietly adding custom colors to more than the 8 free themes in the announcement I linked to in my post. I’m watching the support forums and when I know which other free themes they add them to I’ll update that post.
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