2008 February | Vandelay Design Blog

How Frequently Should You Change Your Blog’s Theme?

Published February 13th, 2008 in Blogging - 24 Comments

Some of the biggest decisions bloggers face involve their blog theme. Should you change your theme? Should you pay for a premium theme or a custom theme? What should you look for in a new theme ?

With so many free themes readily available (especially for WordPress users) you could literally change you theme everyday if you wanted to. While the availability of themes is a major plus for WordPress users, it can also make some of these decisions more difficult.

20 Specialty WordPress Themes

Published February 11th, 2008 in WordPress - 112 Comments

One of the primary reasons that WordPress is the platform of choice for most bloggers is the incredible variety of themes that are available for its users. With thousands of existing free and premium themes to choose from (and plenty of designers willing to create custom themes), there is no need to settle for a one-size-fits-all solution.

There are a growing number of specialty WordPress themes available that have been designed for specific industries or for specific types of websites. These specialty themes in combination with the CMS capabilities of WordPress provide businesses, website owners, and bloggers new and improved opportunities to quickly and easily build and manage an effective website with substantially lower costs than just about any other option.

Common Reasons a Website is Unsuccessful

Published February 10th, 2008 in Marketing - 36 Comments

If you are planning or building a new website, you are obviously hoping for some type of success. Of course, success can mean any number of things, and each website’s success should be determined by the needs and desires of its owners and creators. Some websites exist strictly to provide information to visitors. Others aim to sell products. Some exist solely to provide information about the services of a business. As you can see, there is no one equation for success online, but there are a number of common causes for failure with a website. Here is a look at ten possible things that can keep you from achieving anything significant with a website.

Weekly Links – February 9th

Published February 9th, 2008 in Links - 10 Comments

Web Design & Development:

Beat Your Website Into Submission with .htaccess from Bits O’ NewMedia.

Presidential Candidate Web Design Review from Dustin Brewer.

Vertically Center Content with CSS from Vdot Media.

Color Schemes from Photographs

Published February 7th, 2008 in Tools - 7 Comments

Earlier this week I posted a gallery of colorful websites. Today I’d like to take a look at a few online tools that can help you to generate a color scheme for your website by taking the colors from a photograph. When designing a new website, color inspiration can come from just about anywhere. Photographs can often be an effective source of color inspiration, and if you find this to be the case for your designs, there are some tools that can help even more.

11 Ways to Gain Exposure as a Web Designer

Published February 6th, 2008 in Design - 44 Comments

As a web designer you may be faced with the challenge of getting your work and your abilities in front of others. If this is the case, here is a list of 11 different things you can do to get noticed.

1. Submit Your Designs to CSS Galleries

CSS galleries display high-quality designs, and you can submit yours to be considered for inclusion. The leading CSS Galleries (CSS Beauty, CSS Vault, CSS Drive, etc.) have huge audiences that will see your work if it is included. Additionally, there are a number of specialty galleries, such as Light on Dark, eduStyle, No Resolution, and The Horizontal Way.

25 Beautifully Colorful Websites

Published February 4th, 2008 in Galleries - 169 Comments

When designing a website, one of the most common challenges is to develop an effective color scheme. The 25 sites that are showcased here have, in my opinion, done a great job of incorporating color and creating an attractive appearance. Please feel free to mention which ones are your favorites in the comments.

Dadan

This site features a large background image of a tree and a cloudy sky. The green of the tree and the grass look great with the blue sky.

Announcing the Launch of Traffikd

Published February 3rd, 2008 in Blogging - 14 Comments

I’m happy to announce that today I launched a new blog that focuses on internet marketing and social media marketing, Traffikd. The reason behind the new blog is a desire to write more about some different topics that aren’t covered as frequently here. I don’t anticipate that it will in any way affect the content or frequency of posting here, as this blog remains my priority. There will probably be about 3 or 4 posts per week at Traffikd, so if the topic interests you, I would love to have you as a subscriber (you can click here for the feed).

Traffikd screen shot