Little Project

Over the last week or so I have been working on re-designing my Blog's Template. It is almost complete except for some missing artwork. If you want to help, click here! I tend to get my inspiration from other blogs and also things that I think would look good. I thought I would share experiences this time around.

Inspiration.

I tend to get a lot of ideas from other blogs. I have been keeping an eye out for the last few months. Last week, when I decided to re-design the template, I wrote a list of the features I like. I then culled it by removing the ones I did not think would work for me. Here is my wish list.

Main page to be made of Summaries with Thumbnail. Idea from World of Matticus and NostockUI.
Cleaner more segmented posts.
New Blogroll.
New Character Summary of some sort.
New Author Listing (even though they don’t post....)

Code or Copy?

The two options I had for a new template is Altering what I already have or Finding a template with the features I like. Since my coding skills are rather basic, I chose to use an existing template.

Base Template.

This was the hardest part of the process. The main feature I wanted for my new layout was the post summaries with thumbnail. The problem was the sites where I saw it where Wordpress sites so I could not start with the templates they used. After a lot of searching, I found QuiteRandom.

Transfers.

There are some features from my Current Blog that I quite liked or needed. My next step was to take those code snippets and put them in the new layout. This covers things like the Wowhead Item Tooltips, Feedburner code and Woopra plug-ins.

Customizing the Layout.

I wasn't really happy with the width of new layout so I changed the CSS Wrapper values so they suited what I wanted. I also wanted to introduce Author Pictures for each Post or Summary. My intention was to position them like they are on the old layout, but I could not for the life of me work out how to make it right justified. I settled on having it in the bottom left corner instead.

Picture Labels.

When I last changed my template, I worked out how to change the Label Text to Picture. For some reason though, I stalled and never finished it. Now I have gone back and finished it off, except for the actual artwork.

Blogroll?

I decided to go with a general link to Wowheadlines and to several other community sites.

When do we see the Changes?

As soon as the artwork is completed, I will publish the new Template.

Beaten to the Punch.

Looks like Andrew beat me to it, not that its a race....

Razorbax