Blogs can be an inspiration to try many new things: not least, modern coding and table-free design. This site is intended to help you deal with these and other challenges facing today's commercial webmasters.
The third article in this series gets to grips with all the remaining styles on the main page (which in fact will cover most of the site). By the end of this article we have something which is actually beginning to look like a blog.
The second article working towards a babelog-style WordPress theme. This one gets the theme’s columns organized and sets the font styles, sizes and colors. It deals with the way in which browsers impose a lot of formatting we may not want (and that they don’t handle consistently) and shows how to bring them all to heel.
The first in a series of articles working through creating a babelog-style WordPress theme from scratch. It starts with a basic set of templates and a near empty stylesheet and this first article covers choosing a setting the background color and header image.
The best way to understand WordPress themes is to create one. And that’s exactly what we shall be doing over the next few articles: building from scratch a babelog-style theme. We shall be going in easy steps which require only a minimal knowledge of HTML and CSS, so anyone should be able to follow. So you can follow along, I have provided a zip with all the files you will need for this project.
The “Deep Purple” theme is an attempt to move away a little from traditional blog layout while retaining its functionality. It is also a flexible design which automatically adjusts to the visitors’ screen resolutions, but restrained between 770 pixels and 900 pixels so that it never squashes or stretches to the point of being spoiled.
“Black Red” is an atmospheric theme ideal for several kinds of sites, especially for those with a fetish flavor. It is a fixed-width design available in 3-column and 2-column versions. Although a text-based header is recommended for search-engine appeal, it is simple to use a graphic header instead.
We are all aware that site usability matters, but often we do not realize how many factors there are to consider and what it may cost if we ignore them. Study after study shows that surfers quickly become “trained” by the layouts they encounter most often, which means that if you offer something different, visitors to your site will not be at ease. That is not what you want, when you are trying to sell them something.
“Olives” is a FREE WordPress theme, a 3-column, fluid design which will shrink and expand according to screen resolution. It is coded in validated, strict XHTML and has been tested in Explorer and Firefox. Suitable for many purposes, the header image (and indeed all the styling) is easily changed.
Ultimate Tag Warrior is an extremely useful plugin for enhancing site usability, search engine appeal and a must for inclusion in directories such as Technorati. UTW offers a host of usage and format options which can be initially intimidating but it is actually simple to install and configure. Although checking out what the options can do may be a little time consuming, the good news is that you are not likely to break your site in the process.
