New design, new blog?!
October 21st, 2008Hi there everyone! I’m sorry I haven’t posted for almost 2 weeks, but a nice mixture of 2 days of laziness, some time needed to think about what I’m going to do with this blog and the new design was responsible for the delay, not me, I’m absolutely innocent I promise 
As you can see, the blog has a new design, which I don’t think is going to last forever, but I’m sure it’ll be used much longer than the previous one.
As I’ve mentioned in this post, no free wordpress theme can compete with the one you make for yourself. And it’s not because yours will be so awesome, but because it’s unique, and the feeling that you made it for yourself gives you the very special feeling that you really “own” the website.
I hope you guys like it too, I’m quite satisfied with it at the moment, although I still need to make some changes here and there, and maybe the colors came off a little strong, but I think it’s really not bad for first try.
Why?
The reason I created a new theme for the blog is that I wasn’t completely satisfied with the previous one, it bugged me every day, so I thought the best solution is to make the change early, so I can focus on writing after the design is OK.
I learned to love GIMP
All the images and graphics on the site are made or edited by GIMP. It’s a free photo- and image manipulation software, much like Photoshop except it doesn’t cost you 999$. I always wanted to learn how to use it for easy tasks, but over the past few days I’ve found that it’s much more powerful than I thought.
You can do literally anything you can do with Photoshop, you just need to learn how to use it. So I’m sure I’m going to use it intensively in the future as well with photo manipulation and stuff. It made for much bigger challenges than the calculator on the right for example
I learned to hate Internet Explorer
If you’ve ever designed a web template from scratch, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Sure, I’m a total beginner in this area, but it wasn’t the only reason why I had so much trouble with IE. After you get everything in place and are very happy that it looks fine in both Firefox and Chrome, then you check it out in IE, and you wonder why it loads some kind of Picasso gallery rather than your blog. It’s just a big mess. Then you make some changes to clean up your code to be good enough for Internet Explorer (although I can’t understand if it’s good for all other browsers, why isn’t it good for IE..), but then I find that most of the errors are not even my fault, in fact they’re well-known IE display bugs that’s been existing throughout 3-4 versions. It seems ridiculous there are so many online discussions dedicated to help you solve IE bugs. Why haven’t they solved them yet if they know about it since IE 5? I can’t understand.
But after hours of work and some compromising I could solve all the problems, fortunately. Though in IE the site is still not the same… Uhh, probably this is the main reason I won’t redesign the blog for a long-long time.
New stuff
As you can see I’ve made a lot of changes including some ad placement optimization, with the banner at the top, I’m also curious how adsense backgrounds will perform, and the little calculator of course, so now you can bookmark my blog easier
But the biggest change maybe is that I “converted” the blog into a full site, with a home page, and some other pages as well, like the Blog For a Living Center, where you’ll find my biggest series, some contests I’d like to hold and other crazy stuff I make up.
I also changed my mind a little bit about how I want to and how I should write, I won’t go into details, you’ll see it anyway in the coming posts, but you should expect longer in-depth posts in the future.
I’m also going to promote my blog in other ways to make it more fun and less boring for me, you’ll see what I’m talking about in the Honest Blogging series.
Hmm, I think that’s it. Now you know what to expect, so stay tuned and don’t miss the next posts.
I welcome any suggestions on how to make the design or the blog better, and I’m very curious what you think about it. And be honest, I won’t be aggrieved
Rarst said,
October 21, 2008 @ 8:03 am
It’s clean but plenty of stuff seems not in place yet so I guess it’s not finalized.
On your IE issues… I am not expert coder but I know that for simple (relatively) pages IE issues are not issues at all as long as you write clean XHTML code.
Check out validator results
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://blog-for-a-living.com
There is plenty of minor stuff broken but note that it can’t find doctype definition and starting tags are poorly coded (html and head tags twice). Most probably sends IE into quirks mode that is root of your troubles with it.
Michael Aulia said,
October 21, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
I love it! Still need a bit more touch here and there (like the font styles, etc - or maybe because I’m using Chrome? Hah! Add another browser for your misery! :D) but it’s looking great, buddy
And as you said, a free theme can never beat a personalized theme!
Blog for Beginners said,
October 22, 2008 @ 2:17 am
It amazes me that you have the skill to create it from scratch. The only thing that bugs me is the empty ads slot on your sidebar. It may be a good idea to fill in with some affiliate banners while awaiting for sponsors. Overall, it’s refreshing at first sight. Oh ya, I love the adsense background.
Good job, Jani.
Yan
Jani said,
October 22, 2008 @ 4:26 am
Thanks guys, I’m glad you like it.
Rarst, that validator site is just great, thanks for showing it, I haven’t heard about it, I see I have plenty of errors there, I’m going to clean them up one by one.
I’ve already fixed the parts that were out of the picture, thanks for mentioning, I was so dumb I tested only in one resolution, and it looked great in 1024×768
Hope it’s good now…
Mike, I don’t know exactly what’s wrong there, because my main browser I tested in was Chrome. But I’ve noticed that some other browsers in the university had also some problems displaying the fonts, although I tried to use ones that are quite common (Sans, Verdana,…)
Anyone has any idea what fonts to use?
Yan, thank you too, you’re right it looks a little odd with those empty slots, I’m going to fill that soon.
T.R. Mintz said,
October 22, 2008 @ 7:14 am
Your blog’s awesome.I restarted posting my top ten blog picks,you can check out my blog to see where you ranked.
Jani said,
October 23, 2008 @ 6:36 am
Wow, great, thanks T.R. Mintz! I’m really happy I scored in the top 10 on a list
Finally!
I’ll do my best to get an even better place next time!
Tom Thorne said,
October 24, 2008 @ 10:44 am
I like it!
Nihar said,
October 27, 2008 @ 4:42 pm
Jani the blog design looks great. have you made this on your own or you got it from online?
One more thing the google ad on the writing ppad and besides that all social bookmark buttons is great. is that made by you?
If yes then you are a creative person!
I would be happy, if you can make something similar to that for my blog
Jani said,
October 30, 2008 @ 1:54 am
Thanks guys!
Nihar, I’ve made it on my own, the buttons too, but since I’m not a designer they were a troublesome, I had to experiment a lot, but finally I got it in place with trial and error. But I can’t guarantee I’d do it ever again
Brad Blogging.com - Personal Blog Tips And Blog Help said,
October 31, 2008 @ 12:25 am
W3 really doesn’t help with the screwups of IE.. You need to make a separate stylesheet with different rules for that damn browser.
Wasted to many of my days conforming to it..
Oh well, the end result of your design was worth it. Great job!
Jani said,
October 31, 2008 @ 7:46 am
Thanks, good to hear you like it. And yeah, IE sucks, although I didn’t make a whole separate stylesheet, but the worst thing is people actually use IE, sadly, although not as much as Firefox, but it’s still in the second place, so I can’t ignore it.