Working on New Theme Based on YUI Grids

Now that I've gotten this Wordpress installation straightened out and errors removed, I'm looking at doing a new theme/redesign (yes, starting again). I didn't really like my last attempt and would really like something I can stare at for a while before needing it re-done.

I also would like to finally make my theme standards-compliant. At various times, I've looked at many of the starting points that are out there for CSS-based layouts. Unfortunately, they all pretty much consist of variations on 1, 2 and 3 column layouts.

That causes a problem because what I'm looking to do is much more of a magazine-style grid, especially for a new front page. I want areas for featured posts, recent posts, subscription information, etc. And, when I just shove them into left or right columns like I'm doing now, I'm not really happy with the result. The kinds of grids that the linked article uses are way more complicated than the samples to do with CSS.

While I'm perfectly capable of getting it to work eventually, I'm not interested in spending 5 times as long to build the thing with pure CSS as it would take to hack it together the impure way.

I was lamenting this overall situation to someone a few days ago and they suggested I take a look at the YUI grid CSS setup. I messed with their grid builder a bit and read through the documentation and I definitely think that YUI grids are a really slick way to build those more complicated layouts using CSS. The elements are nestable (one of my biggest pet peeves with most CSS layouts), stackable and otherwise provide most of the necessary controls to build the more complicated grids.

I'm thinking if I can get a grid working that I like, then apply color and design to that grid, I can make future changes to just that color and design bit, to freshen things up instead of starting from scratch the next time. Having it all laied on out on a bare grid would probably work better for working with a designer as well. Lots of the problems the last time I did that came from layouts that just wouldn't work with all of the elements on this site.

It'll still have to wait until next week or later due to how much crap is going on this week, but for the first time in a long time, I'm confident that what I want to see done with this site can be done *easily* with CSS.