LWN Theming
Reading Time: 2 minutes | Published: 2020-06-19 | Last Edited: 2024-10-18
After a poll by @karan, I started thinking about where I get my news and decided to subscribe to LWN. Their content is really good, they’ve been running for a long time, and I want to support their work. However, I think the default theme is quite terrible. I spent about an hour last night messing with it and I think I improved it significantly; it’s based on the theme of this site.
Screenshot of my LWN theme
After subscribing, navigate to your account page then click the link under Customization. The following tables are the options and values I’ve set for my theme but note that I have not changed the Old (seen) comment background color as I haven’t had an opportunity to experience what that looks like yet. Once I do, I’ll update my theme and this post accordingly.
Display preferences ¶
| Option | Value |
|---|---|
| Page background colour | #292a2d |
| Left column background | #292a2d |
| Middle column background | #292a2d |
| Headline background | #3b3d42 |
| Form/byline background | #292a2d |
| Sidebar background | #292a2d |
| Text colour | #f5f4f7 |
| Link colour | #fe5186 |
| Visited link colour | #d0738f |
| Quoted text (in email) colour | #7ec699 |
| Old (seen) comment background colour | #cccccc |
| Navigation box on printable page | ✅ |
| Minimum width of main text column (em) | 40 |
| Maximum width of main text column (em) | 50 |
| Display old parent in unread comments screen | :large-green-square: (unchecked) |
New page engine preferences ¶
| Option | Value |
|---|---|
| Use the new page engine | ✅ |
| Left column color | #292a2d |
| Maximum width for handset presentation (em) | 48 |
| Fixed navigation menu on small screens | ✅ |
| Font family to use | :white_check_mark: sans-serif |
Quoted text preferences ¶
| Option | Value |
|---|---|
| Quoted text style | :white_check_mark: normal |
| Quoted text weight | :white_check_mark: bolder |
| Quoted text colour | #a9a9b3 |
| Quoted text background | #292a2d |
After applying the changes, this is what comments look like:
Screenshot of LWN comments
Conclusion ¶
I’m already happy with my LWN subscription and plan to remain subscribed for a long time. The recent post about Tools to improve English text looks especially interesting and something I’m already looking into for Arbor’s documentation (big blog post about the project coming soon™). If you have an extra $3.50/mo, I really encourage you to subscribe to LWN. News is important and high-quality news especially so. Blinding though the default theme may be, LWN is, bar none, the best news site I’ve ever seen and I want to ensure they stick around.
This was day 12 of #100DaysToOffload, an awesome idea (dead link to fedi post) from Kev Quirk. If you want to participate, just write something every day for 100 days and post a link on social media with the hashtag!
This is a self-hosted Commento server that integrates with Akismet for spam filtration. Comments that make it through are still subject to moderator (me) approval before they're displayed publicly.