Darren of Problogger just posted an entry of How to Create a Blog Theme from Scratch so I thought why not take this small opportunity in sharing my process.
To be honest upfront, I just migrated over to WordPress. But since I’ve been designing some blogs for friends and for a Motorola client before, I thought why not discuss some of the basics in creating a blog theme. Whether or not it uses MovableType, WordPress or any other publishing engine.
Website Lessons
Unitless CSS line-height Property
The CSS line-height property helps you control the leading of your content. In plain English, it controls the spacing between each new line of your content. That also means that it affects your Paragraph spaces so do take note of that if you’ve assigned an individual margin value to them.
I’ve been always ranting at Low Yat forums members in Arts & Designs who’d like feedback or comment of their newly inspired website design because they don’t take into consideration the line-height of their content. Most of them leave it at default and I’d go, “I think you need to increase your line-height to improve readability.”
But discovering about uniltess values in line-height is cool!
XHTML : The Semantics Strikes Back
Hello everyone! I’m Hawk, some of you may have seen me commenting on Danny’s posts before. What? What happened to Danny? Well… urm… he’s tied and gagged in the basement at the moment and I’m taking over his blog >:D. I will also be auctioning him off to the highest bidder. Anyone want a new web designer slave? :D
On a more serious note, we have a problem when people start advocating xHTML/CSS implementations but fail to understand the idea behind it. Read on to find out what people are doing wrong.
Maintain a Standard CSS Structure
Me and my buddy were discussing our Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) woes because of an evil menu that refused to center itself. After the tiresome tries we just moved on and started discussing about our existing CSS structure. We decided we had to standardize our structure so editing will be less tedious for the both of us.
I’m a designer who’s got no real logical thinking when it comes to programming. I do whatever works for me and even better when it solves the problem. My structure is normally arranged according to the row of a website.
Is The Boss or The Customers Right?
Thinking that the boss makes 10 of their customers isn’t rational. Accepting the fact that the boss is right because he’s the client, the one paying you to do your work or worst, one of the customers..you’re just plain selfish.
Too many small-medium website design firms today aren’t doing work for the clients customers but for the client or the boss themselves. Whatever the boss wants they give and whatever the boss thinks is right, they nod their heads like agreeing robots. What a bunch of employees.
When to Use Flash?
Do you feel weird asking yourself this question? Of course you would if you’ve met many clients demanding to have something done in Flash and it becomes worst when they’d like their whole website to be done in Flash.
Ironic as it might seem thinking I shouldn’t be complaining since Flash work does cost more than normal static HTML work, I think too many have abused Flash in many devilish and unfulfilling ways. Especially when the client doesn’t really need it and realize it.
Business Clients Gone Insane
You’re in a meeting and you’re discussing the changes needed made to the current project. Your breathing becomes heavy and your heart is pounding furiously like it just wants to pop out and hit your client with its arteries. It all comes to an end when your faces starts to develop pimples in just a couple of hours.
This building pressure between yourself and the clients always happen when some things are not under control. There might be several methods to control a situation like this from a decent polite manner to a no holding back and give your client a heart attack way. But first, when are the times clients would become considered insane?
Website Designers Grid System
I was rather curious to learn more from what I’ve been hearing the need to use grid systems when designing layouts. After a little Googling, I managed to find the post that I think started it all.
Mark Boulton from the UK was describing in a 5-part series; Five simple steps to designing grid systems. If you plan to read his article, just be prepared for quite a lot of absorption regarding grids as a graphic designers friend.
How To Choose a Website Designer
I actually wanted to post this earlier but due to the workload just after the Chinese New Year, I’ve been updating the blog slower. As you know, profit or revenue generated from this blog is used to maintain this space and its goal driven purpose to all Malaysians and anyone else who’d like to learn more about the website industry in Malaysia.
This post will be using a few things said by Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs-Journey because he touched really a lot of solid points in his podcast of finding a website designer in conjunction with his facelift of his blog. I’ll add some at the end of the post which I might see viable here.
How to Reply Hate Mail?
As much as hate mail generally symbolizes someone out there hating you, there are advantages and disadvantages of receiving hate mail. The great advantages or benefits you could say is that there’s someone who’s taken an interest to what you do. The other huge benefit that some hate mail give you is the excuse to break away from work awhile and have a relieving laugh.
The disadvantages of hate mail is knowing that someone really hates you. I don’t like people hating me, especially when there’s no real reason to it. The other thing about hate mail is that the writers don’t give you a chance to reply to them personally and because of that you’ll have to try and communicate with them by other means.
So is this hate mail an advantage or disadvantage?