Recently in Blog Design Category
Following on the launch of the latest version of Movable Type I've setup a new site to track new plugin releases, tips, tricks and extensions to make the most of one of the more powerful blogging and content management solutions on the market at present.
If you are working with Movable Type templates then MT Tags is a must.
It's an incredible resource listing all possible tags that you can use in your Movable Type templates.
Devlounge has been running a very interesting series of articles on customising Wordpress:
While looking for some information on wordpress tags I came across this rather interesting extension for Dreamweaver:
With this extension a toolbar is added in Dreamweaver which you can use for inserting WordPress template tags into your theme files. If a tag has parameters, you’ll be asked to fill in a wizard.Pretty nifty!
Ken mentioned a new adsense optimised theme for Wordpress - Ads Minded
It looks pretty interesting:
* Wordpress 1.5 & 2.0+ compatible * XHTML compatible codes * W3C CSS compatible codes * 3 columns with an optional square advertisement (Shows on main page) on top of the sidebars * Search engine friendly and easy advertisement placement * Comes with a few useful plugins written by me and othersThe fact that it works with both WP 1.5 and 2.0 is a bonus for bloggers still running the 1.5 series
If you want to make your blog stand out from the rest, then giving it a unique and tasteful look and feel is a must.
I've already mentioned blog design in the past and a couple of months ago I was lucky enough to get my hands on an excellent book that is sure to give you plenty of ideas: Blog Design Solutions
If your blog gets a reasonable level of traffic, both from regular visitors and search engine referrals to your archives, then adsense optimisation may not be such a bad idea.
This blog, for example, uses a theme which is designed from the ground up to be search engine friendly and adsense optimised. Unfortunately the link is probably still dead and the theme is not overly compatible with the latest versions of wordpress.
However there are plenty of other Wordpress themes that can help you make the most out of your archives and posts.
One I recently discovered is the MW theme
This theme comes with "building blocks" for adsense users. All you have to do is add your adsense or other advertising code into a number of template files that will then display your adverts neatly on your blog. The theme also offers support for several other plugins and features, so it's quite a nice product overall.
Another theme which you may want to check out is Adsense Ready
While it may not be as complex as other themes it is aimed at serving contextual ads.
If you want to setup a simple and effective photoblog one software package that is worth looking at is Pixelpost.
It describes itself as being:
A small photoblog application that's a no-brainer to set up and use - this is truly for anyone wishing regularly to post their photos on the web like a blog.Although I haven't seen that many blogs using it the ones that I have look fantastic.
If you are looking for new themes and designs to help "spice up" your blog then you should subscribe to the Blogging Pro feed.
No matter which blogging software you decide to use you will probably get bored with the default template(s) quickly.
While there are plenty of template resources available many people prefer to develop their own template from scratch or use an existing template as a base.
If you are interested in templates in Wordpress then a few useful links might help:
- Rachel Cunliffe's blog provides many useful tips on blog design
- The wordpress documentation will help you understand which tags you can use
