Site Up and Running!

So my Stonefest site is complete, all links tested and is now online (you can check it out here but ill also put a nice big clear link up later). But you know what that means? That means the Web des & prod unit is all compete. I am really impressed with my web site, i think i have completed my objected to appeal to a youger generation with a trendy, bold style, while maintaining easy functionality. I’m pretty sure i’ve already blogged this … but i really am happy with it. I am also really happy with my blog re-design (now that its over). Although it was a tedious process of building onto someone elses work, I am happy to be free to express what i like and my design style. This freedom feels nice after designing the website which had to be focused to a particular market. For example i can use bright splashes of colour around the place on a rather classy looking theme. My crafty design side is shownt through the ‘paper’ look of the dots and the sticky taped posts, and its nice to get a bit of expression across with my other interests coming in, such as my photography via Flickr. Normally i don’t get the chance to mash all the things i like together into one design. I think if i ever do another redesign i might just do it from scratch myself, as i think it is easier, you have more control due to a deeper understanding of the sites foundations, and the code stays nice and clean like in the web re-designs as it is all done nicely by hand. I would definately use tumblr again for a redesign due to its simplicity, its a personal choice and the way i blog i like the simple tumblr way.

I AM NICOLE … and i am never designing a blog again

So I’ve just finished my blog design and it looks a little something like this.

I sat down for some hours and coded it based on the coffee shop tumblr theme. For starters i’d like to point out that it isn’t easy coding on someone elses design, so needless to say after i had it looking like perfection i realised a few fatal flaws with this design. I realised that the side column for links and bio etc was missing and had been from the start and i had not realised. After much trial and error i could not manage to retrieve these divs (this - tears). Also the links posts did not actually link through the heading, but though a small link which says source on the bottom. Of course this did not bring the tears that came with the missing column, and after realising that i could not even place my own div to the right of the content (for reasons still unknown), i decided to change themes.

So my theme is now based on the blue theme. I chose this theme because i liked the clarity and the fised nature of the left column (NOTE: i also liked that this column actually appeared). I was a bit cut (youth slang for hurt just in case your not down with the modern lingo) about having to re-do not only my design, but the tedious work of re-coding on someone elses design. Although time consuming, i found it much easier to personalise this blog style to suit me, my needs and my personality. I’ve gone for classy, with a bit of an edge, which i think is a reflection of my personality and also looks good. I incorporated some widgets which are useful to me and reflect my interests, such as my flickr images, and also subscribed to an rss of my lastfm music favourites for each week. I have a blogroll of links which interest me and also links to my other ‘social network’ pages.

The main issue i had in creating this blog theme was having to recreate and also making it work cross browser…which if im honest, i still havnt completely fixed.

So what have we learnt … use your eyes. Check that your design is right before you start doing anything! Lesson learnt the hard way…

Cool Blog Themes

I’ve found some pretty amazing blog designs while i was doing researh for my own blog redesign assignment. Here are some links to them. I have a prevelance over theones which feature mostly pictures as you might notice, but they are all very nice in my oppinion.

http://flying-solo.tumblr.com/

http://kari-shma.tumblr.com/

http://www.woothemes.com/demo/?t=8

http://lightphotos.tumblr.com/

http://awakeasleep.tumblr.com/

Blog Re-Design

I have designed the look for my blog. My design is clean and simple, but shows my personality through colour scheme. I found it more difficult to design my blog as i am building on somebody elses work. This makes the code much messier and makes it harder to understand thehow the site is laid out.

I based by design around the coffee shop tumblr theme. I liked the simple layout, centered design, and big header image. Although after building the basic layout and esign for my blog i realised a few issues with the theme that i had selected. Firstly it has no search bar, it is not well designed for inserting links, and the blog titles arent linked to the individual blog pages.

I am not yet sure how to counter these issues.

Web Hosting

Now that my site is finished i have to upload it. I am hosting my website off the back of my dads website twostubbies.com.au. This allows me to have free web hosting and alos makes life much easier as i already know the folder layout and have uploaded on here before. I use cute ftp to upload and i think this is an excellent program because its really simple to use.