I guess getting a new theme for The Windows Club was already a bit overdue. What triggered me to action, albeit a little late, was the need to make TWC load faster after Google’s clarion call to webmasters to wake up and make websites load faster. Well, speed matters now – at least its one of the 200+ parameters which influence your search rankings. And I felt that there was a need to reduce TWC loading time further.
Keeping this in mind I commissioned Nirbhay Mandelia, a young dynamic professional web developer and freelancer who recently completed post graduation in Computer Application from Pilani, India, to design a new theme. Although the looks may be similar to our other site The Geeks Club, the theme has been optimized and re-designed in HTML5, with Rich Snippets and in-built ad management support and made fully compatible with WordPress 3.2.X. Its core execution on server is now 2X faster than its earlier avatar on TheGeeksClub.
You may have noticed that the site now sports a clean, easy-on-the-eyes, minimalistic look with the accent being less on looks but more on improving the speed and functionality, thereby giving you a better user experience.
The content loads first so you need not wait for the bells and whistles or the background to load. You can start reading the content right away, with the widgets and ads loading as you read.
The sharing buttons appear in the beginning and at the end of the post to making sharing that much easier, should you like the post and wish to share it.
Disqus commenting system has been adopted and integrated into the theme. You can now Like, subscribe, comment and share too.
The home page includes a list of Authors, a link to submit tips or guest posts and a link to contact us. If your submitted guest post meets TWC requirements, you will of course be credited with a back-link to your blog/website or social profile. If you wish to write on a regular basis and join this team of Microsoft MVPs, Microsoft Student Partners and Windows enthusiasts, you are most welcome to contact us.
The theme is still a work-in-progress and a bit of polishing is pending. For instance the Related Posts have to be added at the end of the post and so on.
Meanwhile we would love to get your reactions. Like it? Or not!? Bouquets, brickbats, suggestions, observations, feedback, comments are most welcome and in fact – please – go ahead and have your say. It will help make things better at TWC. :)
