I’ve had a busy last few weeks working on a number of different blogs for people, all at various stages of completion, and took some time this afternoon to play around with a design which wasn’t for a client.
I’ve been thinking about blog designs and how often we think in terms of columns which aren’t linked together at all. I wanted to experiment with the concept of having a sidebar which did link in and separated out the extra information to the side.
Here’s an initial idea for a design which I’m calling cre8d 2.0 – not that I have plans to switch my blog design to it but rather in reference to the growing number of people requesting a design which is “web 2.0″.
If there’s sufficient interest, I’ll turn this into a free theme at some point.
PS Fabulous icons are by FamFamFam.com.
your thoughts
Jack Yan
Not bad. I would not mind seeing this in action as I think you are on to something, Rachel. Certainly the generic blog look (I am guilty of this) can be improved upon.
Dennis Bullock
Rachel – it looks good. The colors give a good feel for your personality and writing style. A+
Justin
It looks good, very web2.0ish. Is it possible to do that type of layout, with the most recient post being treated and displayed differently then the rest, in WordPress?
Stephan
i prefer cre8d 2.0 Rachel, that’s really nice
derek
i like it. the ‘blogging about’ section looks a little out of place. that may be because i was trying to imagine whether or not the ‘previous’ posts would continue down the middle of the page. nonetheless, i like the hues and the general layout idea.
oh btw… could you change the tabindex for your textarea, name, ect? it jumps from textarea to ‘add comment’. i overlooked that small detail once when i moved the main text area above the meta fields.
Pete
I really love it, you’ve done a brilliant job, and like Jack wouldn’t mind seeing it implemented?
I notice its wide resolution though, do you think its ok now to design blogs to naturally fit on 1024/1280 resolution, or are we still duty bound to cater for the 800 x 600 folks? I noticed a lot of the recent designs on the CSS showcases have been wider, and would love to know your views on this?
Rachel
Oops, thanks Derek, that was a big oversight of mine not to adjust the tabindex. Have fixed it up now.
Rachel
Pete – good question. I could do it as a fluid design or I could do something like I did on TalkCrunch – try resizing your window – it has a layout for 1024 wide and a layout for 800px wide.
Rachel
Justin, yes it’s not too hard to get the most recent post to display differently from the rest.
Here’s two ways you could do it (I prefer the second way):
* Loop through your posts twice, once to show the first post, and once to show the rest.
* Have a counter in your loop – and have a check to see if ($postnumber == 1) do something different for that post.
Pete
Wow! That’s impressive. Really well thought out to have two layouts like that…
redstar
Thanxz for the famfam tip!
Peter
I’ve been thinking about blog design issues as well recently, becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the information overload that most blogs seem to present – links links text links text text text links. Far too dense for my taste. Why not present the visitor with the post first, formost, and (perhaps?) only? I think this one is moving in the right direction.