Growing up is optional

If you visit this site rather than just the RSS you will have noticed a change in the theme that I am using. I’ve switched to a modified version of Connections, which won the recent WP Themes Competition.

I’ll be working on gradual improvements, otherwise it would never be released as I want it. The header image is what I see standing on the platform at Wellington Railway Station. It’s about 5 photos taken with my phone and then stitched together with Autostitch. I’ve added my del.icio.us links to the theme. I’ll slowly fix the colours to match the header over the next few days. Also, I’ll have a go at converting it to Strict XHTML, just for fun.

After yesterday’s yak about design, I thought it would be good to post some sites from which I get inspiration, or sites where there are different design elements that I really like. That way, once my rebuild is complete, you can see for yourself whether or not I have coppied the inspiration, or the outcome.

I will add to this list as I find other inspiration

• Manly Pink #1 (PhotoMatt)
• The Beauty and Business of CSS (Doug Bowman)
• A List Apart (HappyCog)
• mezzoblue (Dave Shea)
• CSS Zen Garden (Home Page, C Note by Brian Williams)
• Eris Free (particularly My Favorite Scarf)

UPDATE: The list is far from complete: I ran out of time before posting. I know most of these are ‘A-listers’ in the blog and/or web design world but I don’t want to be just another ‘me too’ copycat. These are in no particular order.

• Adam Poselli
• Andy Budd
• D. Keith Robinson
• Richard Rutter
• Andrei Herasimchuk
• The Man in Blue
• Zooiblog
• Veerle
• Jeff Croft

Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.

Pablo Picasso’s statement (often misquoted as “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”) is something that I have no problem with. I’m under no illusions about my design skill. I do copy. Being labelled as a ‘bad artist’ by Picasso is a valid criticism. Although I try to copy the inspiration, not the outcome as suggested by Cameron Moll.

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Unlike Isaac Newton, I’m still climbing up the giants. I’m nowhere near sitting on their shoulders.

So where does this leave me? I’ve never studied design, art or any creative subjects. Unfortunately I’m one of those ‘I know what I like when I see it’ kind of people, but I am trying to learn about good design.

I’ve already decided to stick to the 2 (or 3) column layout. It’s part of meeting expectations: blog users generally expect blogs to be laid-out a certain way. I have nothing innovative that requires me to change it.

Colours are something I’m not very good with. I’ll probably just pick something from the top 10 designers’ colours and base a palette on that. Or maybe one of my photos. Font selection is a mystery to me.

I’ll take my inspiration from the what I see around: online and off. Rough sketches will follow. Critique is appreciated.

These are the requirements/feature list of the previously mentioned rebuild I have so far, and some reasoning/notes

Comment Preview

There are a few ways to do this. i like the on-the-fly Javascript versions (e.g. //hicksdesign) and also the submitted form preview. The server method can help preven some of the comment spam, but the spammers will quickly figure this out

Search Hilite

A plugin that comes as standard with WordPress, that hilites search terms if the user was referred by a major search engine, or WP’s built in search

Remember Commenter

this is also an out-of-the-box WP feature. I like the way that it’s done at Binary Bonsai and Seriocomic

del.icio.us links

As I have already. I may get it converted to a WP plugin, or not.

Paged categories

The category pages get too long. I want to limit the number of posts per page. I haven’t found anybody that has done this already in WP, so it could be another plugin for me to do.

Live Search

Livesearch uses XMLHttpRequest to send search requests to the server and display result without having to load a new page. This one may not make it to the final version. I like the idea, but I haven’t thoroughly studied the downsides

Text Area Styling

I hate the default monospace font that textareas use

Comment validation

I believe that WP developers are working on this. It’s a nice to have, not a must have.

Some sort of Photo/Gallery interface

I want to build in a facility to easily upload and manage photos. Early thoughts are a plugin that works with flickr, but I may use Singapore

User Icons/Avatars

Like on Zooiblog

Noteworthy Comments

The ability to hilight noteworthy comments. Although I get so few that they are all noteworthy

Related posts

I’ll do some more research, but I think there is already a WP plugin that does this

Spam filtering

There are a few different paths I could go down

Let me know if there are any other features that you would like to see.

I’ve decided to rebuild my blog. I’ve also decided to document it as I go. Whenever I do a site rebuild from scratch I learn some cool stuff as I try to make it do stuff that I haven’t done before. Sometimes I’ll still be using a technique a year later. Other times I’ll look at my code and think ‘What the hell was i thinking?’

The process will take an unknown amount of time, but I’d like to have it done before I get back to work after Christmas. I’ve decided to stick with WordPress as my publishing tool. Normally I would recommend not choosing a specific piece of software until after the requirements are documented, but I just like WordPress. However, it will be modified, both with plugins and my own hacks. The project is going to follow this process:

1. Requirements / Specification
2. Information Architecture
3. Design
4. Build
5. Launch

I’ll post what I’m doing and how it proceeds as it happens. Any feedback is appreciated at any stage