Wow, I got kinda serious here. Normally I’d just sit down and crank out some XHTML and CSS, but I decided to make an outline mockup in Photoshop for Kestrel. This image took about ten minutes to do; actually writing a basic CSS scaffold for this layout would have taken five minutes.

Kestrel will be a single-column layout with the data in distinct rows instead. Here’s an outline of the actual CSS classes used.

• header.php
  • #pageContainer: container for the entire page content, centered on the page.
    • #headContainer: container for the header image.
    • #navContainer: navigation menu.
• index.php/page.php
  • #entryContainer: container for the entry section of the page. Individual posts within it will be of the .entryContent class.
  • #metaContainer1: on the front page it will contain a list of older entries; for individual entries the metadata, trackback link, tags and stuff goes here.
  • #metaContainer2: individual entries have comments/trackbacks here. The front page gets the del.icio.us feed and some other junk, possibly in two columns.
• footer.php
  • #footerContainer: the standard copyright boilerplate.

Layoutwise Kestrel won’t be entering uncharted territories. That’s not the goal, I just want to make a nice theme.

Creating the actual design is the quick and easy part — it’s nothing complex, so I did the scaffold in five minutes. All it really needs is the artwork. (And the usual IE5 workarounds, but I’ll save those for later.)

The major part of the work will be tossing the Wordpress tags into the mix. I also have a bunch of plugins that I’d like to support, and I’m also planning to borrow parts of the K2 control panel in the WP admin interface. I like being able to release “sub-themes” for Kestrel in the shape of a small CSS file and some images, just like Vader for K2.

I’m as of yet undecided on Widget support. Since Kestrel will be single-column only, there’s not really any place for a traditional sidebar. I have some ideas for shoehorning it into the “other junk” section on the front page, but it’s on the low priority list.