OK, I’m torn…
As you can see, I’ve ditched the blog design concept. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the foresight to see past the frontpage. Turns out, this is a problem. For the time being, I’m going with this theme. Obviously, I’s pretty simple and isn’t even close to what I want with a frontpage:
- 1-2 story excerpts
- a section with my digg feed
- at least 4 of my latest flickr photos
- links to my favorite sites
- a “previously” section displaying the date and title of my latest entries
- a cool picture of me
Yes, the design I had going had all that stuff, but it became so incredibly difficult to build it from scratch. First of all, I’m not nearly familiar enough with all the wordpress functions to effectively display the information like I want. Secondly, the pages that displayed single entries were very difficult to style. I suppose that’s a testament to my creative limitations, but all I can say is that it just wasn’t coming together in my mind. Lastly, the comments section in for each entry was a disaster! I can’t tell you how frustrated I got at this part! Let’s just say I used up my fair share of naughty words today 
So, I ultimately decided to heavily modify a design, rather than build one from scratch. Perhaps I’ll undertake the task of building my own custom theme once I’m more familiar with the nuts and bolts of wordpress. Until then, I think I’ll get much more out of customizing a theme, rather than building one myself.
That said, I’m back at square one as far as design goes. I still stand by my homepage requirements, and have yet to come up with a nice web2.0 looking site that meets this requirement. I have a couple of ideas, but they’re no where near ready to start coding. If anybody out there has any good wordpress theme resources (with screenshots), or any good CSS design galleries that have good 2-3 column designs, please email me with the links. I’m very frustrated and would appreciate the help 
Stay posted..
Nathan
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Nathan, how about a blogroll? I know you made that post with the 5 blogs you read, but what about the other blogs or sites you visit.
Perhaps a link to the other internet services you use, etc.?
It would be great to see what you read in relation to your posts.
(If it is not too much trouble of course).
Well, I’ve heard that blogrolls aren’t a good idea, but I do have google reader so maybe I could make that public. I’ll let you know (more than likely through an announcement on the blog).
That’s interesting, where did you hear blogrolls were not a good idea?
probably here, but I also remember hearing once that google actually punishes the blogs in blogrolls instead of rewarding them. I could be wrong though so be sure to research it before eliminating blogrolls. I could have just dreamed it all up.
I read that too, as with much google stuff, it tends to be quite speculative.
At least I won’t feel guilty about removing my link to you!
Well, just removing the bogroll isn’t good. I’m considering the suggestion that Cory gave about writing posts with “link love” or having a blogroll category so you can explain why you love the site so much. I tried to get google reader to publish a list of all the blogs I read, but evidently they dont do it like bloglines does. Oh well, this way I can pingback all my favs.
You could do something similar.
I have just noticed the advertising on your site, will we be seeing this more and more?
No, that advertising is at the very bottom of only the main page. I joined an ad network a while back and haven’t gotten around to taking it off and canceling the program.
I may, probably in the distant future provided the site continues to grow, place some ads to help pay for the maintenance of this site. No time soon though.
Actually I noticed it on the search results page.
hmmm, oh well. I removed the code, so those ads shouldn’t be showing up anymore.