Lighting Essentials had run its course, name wise. It was not about lighting as much as it was about photography in general. Commercial photography specifically. And the name simply didn’t leave room for more options for posting.

There is a reason to the change up, and I thought you may be interested in why / how I made the changes.

First of all, the Theme I was running under previously was no longer supported, and it started to feel pretty old. Some of the things I wanted to do with the blog could not be done within that framework so a search for a replacement was launched.

I looked at nearly 200 themes, then narrowed it down to 4, and finally settled on this one, “Aggregate” from Elegant Themes. You can click the link on the right to see the themes they have to offer.

The reason I needed to make a switch was evident in both talking with photographers who visit the site, and a close look at the stats. I have a ton of info here, and very few people see it. The magazine layout of the previous theme made the top post very interesting, but nearly hid all the other posts from view. Lots of people told me they didn’t even know how much was on the site.

The “Aggregate” theme I finally chose was one that allows me to feature 8 recent posts, control the posts that are featured there, and also show the depth of the blog. I am literally going from nearly no visibility of archived items to the most totally visible archive sets I have seen on a theme.

Elegant Themes also provide a very strong set of additional layout tools they call “shortcodes”. These small tools allow for a great deal of customization of the page and how it presents material.

The new theme also allows me to do more short posts. Previously I had to wait till I had about 1000 words because of the way the theme presented only one top post. Now, if something catches my eye, or I want to write a short rant about something that I want to rant about, I can rant away at 3-400 words and not be worried that the page will look stupid. (I only have to worry about sounding stupid..)

The new title also allows me to do more reviews of gear, books, articles, sites and photographers. We will be posting on a far more rich calendar than we have previously. And, BTW, if you are running a WP site and don’t have the ‘Calendar’ plug in yet – oh wow, gotta get that!

You may find a glitch or two while perusing the site. Some of the images are just a little too big for this theme, and I am catching them as I go along. If you find something terribly bad, please let me know. Hit the contact button or send me an email at don@steelid.com. I will appreciate that a lot.

Let me know if you like it. I hope you do. The old one will not be coming back, but I am working on making this one even better.

Thanks – and tomorrow we have more treats in store.