[Updated July 27: Today I reverted to the Genesis Framework and the eleven40 Pro child theme. Concise reasoning in today’s post about the change.]

Today I re-booted this website. It has a new look and feel, quite a bit different to what went before it. And the domain on which the blog has run since 2006 is also now home to the separate business website I’ve had for some years.

So everything you want to know about me is housed under one roof instead of fragmented in a few places – all now at NevilleHobson.com.

The whole site uses the Decode theme for WordPress. It’s the most attractive and simplest theme to set up that I’ve come across since starting to look for “the right look” earlier this year. It’s a free theme, too – thank you, Scott Smith – described as “A minimal, modern theme, designed to be mobile first and fully responsive.”

Decode replaces the Genesis framework and the eleven40 child theme. Genesis is an outstanding platform upon which to build a dynamic WordPress-based presence on the web. And I’ve been pleased with the eleven40 theme since I set it up on the blog last year.

But I decided that I wanted a far simpler setup. Something that had the right minimalist look, that was inexpensive to acquire, didn’t need deep knowledge of coding, HTML5 or anything mildly technical, and worked very well indeed no matter the device on which it is was displayed.

The ultimate choice is undoubtedly a bit subjective – I’d be hard pressed to tell you what is it about Decode that I prefer compared to, say, Minimum Pro which I also have – and I may well discover something I wish Decode had that other minimalist themes do.

But Decode works for me. What I want is something that focuses on the content of a post or a page – especially the words – without the distraction and overhead of all the furniture, so to speak: widgets, sidebars, icons, ads, etc.

I’ve decided not to continue with any of that, at least for now. Instead what you see is simplicity, lots of white space, and readable text especially on a mobile device.

So here is version 5.0 of NevilleHobson.com. I hope you find it useful and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it (especially if you find anything that doesn’t work).

Thanks.