Published January 31, 2007 by

Up to my elbows

I am going to go mad shortly.

I have spent much of today up to my elbows in messy code, trying to widgetize perfectly nice but perfectly useless blog templates. It just makes sense. All WordPress templates should at least have the option there to run with widgets, they make life a whole lot easier. They shouldn’t be put up for download unless this is the case.

Clearly I have not succeeded, the actual code you have to add isn’t all that much, but then it screws with your design and however much tweaking goes on in the CSS it wont budge.

As for what I’m having a stab at redesigning… well the Advco8 site needs something new and it’s current template is also unwidgetized.

Why not just go for a standard template? Well I do my best to find one that I like but there always issues with font size, random images, headers, colours, positioning… so however close you get there is more that must be changed.

I should just properly teach myself how to make them from scratch.

Design General Widgets

Published January 20, 2007 by

Rotating Header

Thanks to Geoff for finding some clever php for me. I now have a rotating header image. So you’ll get a new one regularly. If there are any you particularly don’t like either:

a) Let me know
b) Refresh your page

If the php is slowing down load time considerably please also let me know.

John, for a rainy day when you are bored:dimensions are about 560px/150px, shoot it my way and if I like it I’ll add the text.

Blogging Design General

Published January 16, 2007 by

Theme

Well this is going to be it – the blog theme for the next while.

Header image may chop and change as the one up at the moment is there has ‘temporary’ stamped invisibly across it. There is also the option for three different, two different (or one continuous) header image.

Comments, suggestions?

You now should be properly able to use the search and categories properly, hooray!
Apologies again for the header not being a link, I’ll get on to that (or someone else can show me how) but you’ll notice the handy navigation block at the top left, that will follow you down the page – there’s a link to ‘home’ there.

Please comment on the following headers:

header1b.gif

header1c.gif

header1d.gif

header1e.gif

header1f.gif

Blogging Design General

Published January 15, 2007 by

Redesign

It’s that time again.

The current ‘face’ theme has journeyed through the latter part of 2006 and it is time for it to go. I have (and continue) to quite like the header and colours, yet the theme itself has some issues in archiving and searching..

I am tempted to attempt to run with a three column WordPress theme as my sidebar really just is too long. A new header image is in order and you can vote on whether I should change the colour scheme. Header fonts will as always stay the same as they did in the jump from Blogger to WordPress so all familiarity is not lost.

I will not be starting from scratch so if you happen to know of any widgetised/killer not-outrageously hard customisable free templates a link would be fantastic! The theme will of course end up adapted to how I feel works best for the site. Feedback would be welcome and patience as a few things show up messily in the next week or so.

Please suggest away!

The ideal template to customise (ie: minimal work for me) looks like this:

  • Simple font in basic colours (not too hard to change though)
  • Header image that is in one piece and has the actual title within the image area or invisible
  • Background colour/image in one piece not many
  • Left floating sidebar (Some themes it’s easy to change this around but others prove nightmarish)
  • Minimal link/logos
  • No page/navigation at the top
  • Somewhat wide border area on each side of the blog, it’s cleaner and easier to read
  • Widgetised

Blogging Design General

Published November 30, 2006 by

Evening before the Interview

alice in wonderlandOr should I say, the morning before the interview.
I’m just a little bit nervous about the whole deal, but I should be okay.

My main concern is that I don’t follow specific designers and prefer to just browse around at independent artists… I can’t go dropping names. Ah well.

Took a trip into Prahan with Analise today (also Bridge Road for shopping). So I now know where the uni is. It’s so small compared to Deakin! Quite a nice area, although not so green. You can’t have everything. Chapel Street food might be worth it, so I hear.

So in I go with my folio for an 11:15am’er and should be out in 15 minutes.

As it turns out my Deakin semester’s results don’t come out until the evening which may or may not be convenient.

See you on the other side! I am mostly hopeful. I did score an interview after all, on the basis of four little bits of work. We shall see.

Design General Uni