I’m experimenting with the K9 WordPress theme. It’s written by Safirul Alredha, or “Zeo” of K2 fame, and is based on the K2 WordPress theme. After a little investigation, I’ve found that K9 leaves out a bunch of K2’s functionality:
- K2 sidebar modules. Widgets on steroids — K9 uses plain widgets
- Custom CSS files. Nice to maintain style changes when K2 updates
- Asides. Short posts for the sidebar — not much need anymore with Twitter
- Archives page. Automatically generated archives page with tag-, category-, and time-based archiving
- Live search. AJAXy search capabilities — no fun if your page loads slowly
- Advanced navigation. AJAXy loading of previous pages
Although I’ve grown attached to the first couple, I don’t really care about the latter three or four.
K9 sticks with K2’s use of blue and adds a bunch of speed. Wow!
I’m concerned. With a theme like this, I’ll need to focus more on content than appearance.
I’ll experiment a little longer, at least long enough to get my >>--> in the header. Maybe…
For now, my initial opinion is K9’s no dog.
5 responses to “K9 WordPress Theme”
Cool. Fast is good. But I kinda need asides. I don’t really use any of the other fancy schmancy stuff in K2. Hmm. Maybe I’ll give it a try…
But you’re not even using asides! ;-)
Maybe you mean K2 sidebar modules? If so, I agree. Being able to control which widgets display on which pages is wonderful.
Fortunately, that feature will be added to WordPress version 2.6 and will be available to all themes. I’m waiting anxiously. It’s not yet in the latest svn version.
I am using asides, actually. My asides category is my “Microposts”, and I put them in the sidebar using SBM, and dropping the “Asides” item over there.
It gets my Twitter crap out of the way, letting my “real” big boy posts stay more prominent. But I still get to keep my own archive of my tweets, in case Twitter ever REALLY goes away, for good. Best of both worlds! :-)
D’oh! So you are. I like it.
Josh, I just discovered SidePosts Widget. It looks like a reasonable replacement for K2’s asides.
I haven’t tried it yet, but I will.