
Is It Wrong To Use A Svbtle Theme? - edent
http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/01/is-it-wrong-to-use-a-svbtle-theme/
======
Denzel
TL;DR - It's confusing, but not a big deal. Change it or don't.

I, like you, at one point didn't know about SVBTLE. I clicked through links on
HN and found some pages that looked strikingly similar and at a quick glance
thought, "wow, this person is posting a lot." (Note: singular)

Then I looked deeper and found out they were different authors; I went even
further and discovered some were a part of SVBTLE and others were simply using
the Wordpress theme.

It was slightly disorienting, but then I got over it. I learned to recognize
the real SVBTLE posts from the "fake" ones. Either way, I'm becoming a bit
tired of the design.

~~~
minimaxir
There are a few stylistic differences between the real and fake ones. (font,
for instance)

Also, the comments section breaks horribly with the formatting, as
demonstrated in the original post. Although real Svbtle blogs don't have a
comments section, which is disappointing...

------
jrockway
People actually _like_ the Svbtle theme, and they think that dcurtis is a
positive brand?

Huh.

~~~
w1ntermute
Yeah, I didn't even know who he was before the Svbtle debacle. Now I know that
he's some elitist who got pissy when his (not all that special) blog theme got
copied.

~~~
jrockway
He also got a designer at American Airlines fired when he ranted about their
design on his blog. (The designer sent him a polite reply about what he was
doing to improve the state of the design, but then AA fired him for no
apparent reason.)

~~~
w1ntermute
Wow, what a douchebag. There is no excuse for getting someone fired over
something as petty as this. When he got that guy fired, he could have also
been affecting that guy's wife and children, who are completely innocent and
depend on the guy's salary to live.

~~~
rys
He didn't set out to get the guy fired. There's no way you can justify calling
him a douchebag for criticising a website's design.

~~~
addandsubtract
He did say:

    
    
      Fire your entire design team, if you have one.
      Hire an outside design firm ... as quickly as possible.
      Your in-house team is obviously incapable of building a good experience.
      Get outside help. [1]
    

Then backpedaled [2] after he got a response outlining that he has no idea how
large companies operate.

[1] <http://www.dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines.html>

[2] <http://www.dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html>

------
RyanZAG
We're now having drama over stupid blog themes? Who cares what theme you use,
the only important thing is the content. Write it in a .txt and post it to
dropbox for all I care - I'll be just as intrigued to read it regardless of
style if the content is good.

~~~
jrajav
To be fair, he is not the one who manufactured the drama:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4373743>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4920905>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4373565>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4403236>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4881610>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3770722>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4881055>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3744237>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4610042>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4713517>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3744950>

~~~
edent
Thanks :-) As it happens, I was unaware of all the drama until I started
researching the blog post today. I'm not interested in being part of someone
else's drama. Hence the post.

~~~
limmeau
Actually, if you're switching themes anyway, could you choose one in which the
archive is more prominent? I couldn't find one, and usually the archive is
where I go to find out whether the blog is relevant to me.

~~~
edent
That's a good point. There are more than a few deficiencies of Svbtle -
especially for a long established blog.

Any themes you're particularly fond of?

~~~
limmeau
Particularly fond of, no. Actually, unless your topic is web design, I
appreciate it if you're being unoriginal about your blog's appearance.

Trying to remember a few blogs where the content has distracted me from the
appearance to the point where I couldn't remember what it looked like at all,
I came up with blog.regehr.org and www.bunniestudios.com. The former uses the
Barthelme theme, the latter looks like a default theme.

------
lmm
No-one should be able to claim ownership of minimalism. This pissed me off
with the apple rounded rectangle patent; it's pissing me off more here. If
Svbtle really wanted to establish a brand identity it would be easy - pick a
logo, place it prominently on their blogs - and displaying that logo while not
part of the group really would be wrong. But they don't own minimalism; no-one
does. Keep using the theme.

~~~
wmf
There are a lot of minimalist themes that aren't confusingly similar to
Svbtle.

------
loceng
I think there could be problems if we allow too simple of designs to be design
copyrighted. Imagine if the first newspaper column layouts were copyrighted
and enforced. There really are only so many grid structures that exist and
make sense. Our eyes and how we perceive things are relatively the same, and
so good design looks like good design.

And is there a difference between physical products and digital products? I
don't really know, though if you download content that usually isn't freely
available, then you might want to think twice to not accidentally be a
hypocrite.

------
emelski
No, it's not wrong. The whole idea that it might be reeks of elitism. Use
whatever theme you want, and let the "members only" Svbtle clique be judged
based on the quality of their content, rather than their association with some
self-professed blogging luminary.

------
minimaxir
I originally intended to develop my own variation on WP-Svbtle for my own
blog, then I saw TwentyTwelve released with Wordpress 3.5. With a white
background and a few other tweaks (such as moving the navigation bar below the
header image), it can look _very_ minimalistic and clean.

Here's my own blog customized with TwentyTwelve: <http://minimaxir.com/>

~~~
droelf
My personal opinion:

I'm really sorry, but your blog just doesn't look minimal and clean, and the
type you're using for max woolf's blog thingy (I assume it's courier) just
does not work at all (the apostrophe looks terrible, way too thick somehow).
Also the blue is much too strong IMO.

It's the small things most dev's don't see, that svbtle really really gets
right.

While I also dislike their elitism, I still appreciate the design work.

PS: The "Read More" button on the right is broken (if you click it, some
margin or padding is lost ... It's the small things that matter...)

~~~
minimaxir
The font was Source Code Pro (monospace). That header image was somewhat old,
so I just changed it now. :)

The high-contrast style of minimalism is what I prefer: I hate the low-
contrast style that many blogs seem to love. Although I might tweak with it
more.

The Read More bug appears to be from the original theme. urg.

------
ErrantX
At the time that the Svbtle "copycats" emerged my thoughts [1] were that it
identified the differences between designers/brand people and programmers.
Nate (who coded Obtvse) seems very much a programmer, whereas Dustin is a
hands down designer.

In this case, WP-svbtle is, to most people, just a decent design. Dustin was
hacked off by Nate's project because he was building a brand; and what seems a
simple design probably took him some time to think about (like when I produce
a 10-lines-of-code solution to a complex problem and a paper pushers says "so
why did that take so long to make??").

Some of the comments directed at Terence seem unfair - assuming the worst,
that he was aware of Svbtle and is cocking a finger at Dustin... Or passive
aggressiveness about how common the design is now.

1\. [http://www.errant.me.uk/blog/2012/03/copy-my-idea-not-my-
des...](http://www.errant.me.uk/blog/2012/03/copy-my-idea-not-my-design/)

------
jongold
Totally wrong.

Svbtle is a brand. It's a minimalist layout, but copying it intrinsically
suggests misleading your readers. You wouldn't make your new tech blog have
the same theme as TNW or TechCrunch, and you wouldn't theme your Telescope
install to look identical to HackerNews.

------
zaidf
Isn't Svbtle itself heavily inspired by another theme?

------
smallegan
After reading "I searched Alta Vista" I believe that his intent wasn't to rip
off Svbtle.

------
jeffehobbs
I don't think it's "wrong". I would say it's "suboptimal" for what you might
be trying to do. It's subliminally advancing another brand in service of
yours.

------
andrew93101
Use whatever theme you want. Content should be judged on its merits, not on
some blog "brand".

Most readers won't know svbtle, and of those that do, most won't think it adds
any gravitas to the post. If I find a link rated highly on HN, that rating is
the gravitas, not the blog's theme.

------
michaelmartin
I don't think this post really answers the question. It tackles it more from
the angle of "If you come across the theme without knowing about Svbtle, is it
okay to use the theme?"

That's fine of course. You can't be blamed for not knowing about what is still
a relatively small network.

The more important thing is what you do now. You now know that the theme was
made to copy exactly the design of a network which is attempting to create a
curated community, but it's very obviously a good design by itself.

It's your own choice whether or not you're happy with that. People will agree
and disagree with you either way, but isn't that the point of a personal blog?

------
sarhus
I don't think it's wrong. You can consider it just a "theme", but why don't
you make something more personal for your blog?

Even few changes would make it look different: move the left bar to the right.
Get rid of the rounded buttons, change the font.

Make something unique, you just need a day to fiddle with your css and make it
look yours.

------
prezjordan
Borrow from the design, but don't copy it. I guess it's tough to draw the line
somewhere, but copying front-end code crosses it. It's very easy to make
something clean and simple without looking like Svbtle.

Just my $.02

------
DanAndrews
I've come across a lot of posts in their network that are great, but I, like
you, and many commenters here are confused as to how it works and how to get
involved or follow what they are all up to.

------
mlacitation
Off-topic, but you searched AltaVista? Did you choose to use it specifically
or is it your daily driver?

~~~
jack7890
AltaVista is just a re-skinned version of Yahoo Search (which itself is driven
by MSFT, but has some modifications vs Bing). So this isn't as odd a choice as
it might first seem.

------
dylanhassinger
no, just uncreative

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mars
design is intellectual property and thus it's not ok to use it (or better
"pirate" it) without permission.

