Revisiting McLuhan WordPress Theme

Update: Oh snap. I’ve started using GeneratePress again!

It was a bold decision, but I had to do this.

Lately, I’ve figured out even a premium theme like GeneratePress is overkill for me. My GP customizations get bloated at times, and I’ve realized most of the visitors of this website doesn’t give a shit or two about the styling. I write guides and tutorials. For me, any theme works OOB if the font rendering and navigation are precise.

Rediscovering McLuhan

I knew Anders Norén’s McLuhan ever since its inception on WordPress repository. At that time I wasn’t good at getting comfortable around the theme. I wanted to tweak and tone it down a bit to meet my needs.

Kudos to GeneratePress. GP helped me focus and learn more on front-end coding. I love how it forces you to push the limits. I liked the idea. But, as I’ve said before, I don’t need it now. I want to spend more effort on writing instead of wasting my time on tweaking and WP customization. I’ve decided to settle down.

Goodbye classic editor, my old friend.

Another milestone in my WP journey.

I’ve uninstalled the Classic Editor WordPress plugin. I’ve always preferred the classic editor over Gutenberg for a long (really long) time. But recently, I’ve learned to live with Gutenberg. It’s neat and it gets the job done. I’m happy with it.

What have you done with McLuhan?

A bit of pure CSS edits. And a few PHP edits. For example, I’ve:

Removed Google fonts completely.
Set to render system fonts (Avenir on Apple devices).
Removed the search option.
Converted front page to a minimal landing page.
Added the updated on filter to single posts.
Changed the position of category meta information.

The additional CSS for the time being

.entry-content li {
	margin-top: 5px;
}

.wp-video {
    margin-bottom: 20px;
}

.page-id-5931 .site-header {
	display: none;
}

.page-id-5931 .entry-title {
	display: none;
}

.page-id-5931 .site-footer {
	display: none;
}

.page-id-5931 {
	height: 50%;
	min-height: 50%;
	background: #121212;
	color: #ececec;
	padding-left: 0px;
}

.page-id-5931 a {
	border-bottom: 1px dotted #ececec;
}

@media (min-width:728px) {
	.page-id-5931 {
		margin-top: 7.33%;
	}
}

@media (max-width:728px) {
	.page-id-5931 {
		margin-top: 7.33%;
	}
}

blockquote p {
	font-weight: 400;
	hanging-punctuation: first;
}

h2 {
	font-size: 25px;
	letter-spacing: -0.35px;
}

h3 {
	font-size: 23px;
	letter-spacing: -0.25px;
}

h4 {
	font-size: 20px;
	letter-spacing: -0.25px;
}

.site-title {
	animation: myanimation 25s infinite;
	font-size: 130%;
	font-weight: 700;
	font-family: avenir, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif;
}

pre,
code {
	font-family: SFMono-Regular, Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace;
	font-size: 90%;
}

.meta.bottom p.tags a {
	margin-right: 5px;
}

#side-pointer,
.button-dark {
	padding-top: 10px;
	padding-left: 10px;
	padding-right: 15px;
	padding-bottom: 10px;
	font-size: 0.9rem;
	font-weight: 600;
	background: #ececec;
	letter-spacing: .1px;
	text-transform: uppercase;
	border-radius: 10px;
}

#side-pointer a {
	border-bottom: none;
}

.social-menu .social-search-wrapper {
	display: none;
}

.main-menu .toggle-mobile-search-wrapper {
	display: none;
}

.page-title {
	font-size: 17px;
}

strong {
	font-weight: 600;
}

body,
button,
input,
select,
textarea,
h1,
.h1,
h2,
.h2,
h3,
.h3,
h4,
.h4,
h5,
.h5,
h6,
.h6 {
	text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;
	font-family: avenir, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif;
}

.entry-title {
	font-weight: 700;
}

Some habits should change.

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