The Flog

If you haven’t noticed, my latest obsession is redoing the blog, and pretty much all things Wordpress related. I’ve compiled a list of sites that I’ve found really valuable in my hunt for a new skin, and other resources to help me (attempt to) tweak them. Hope they come in handy to some of you bloggers!

Wordpress Theme Links

• Smashing Magazine has comprehensive lists of anything design related. Three great lists of Free Skins can be found here, here and here. A wonderful starting point.
• Fresheezy is another site with a Gallery of free Wordpress skins. Definitely worth a look.
• WPZoom has very good articles and compilations of Wordpress resources, free skins and otherwise.
• Uberblogger Skelliwag complied a list of six minimalist free skins. Handy if you’re into white space.
• Desperate Curiosity lists 100 favorite skins. A little older resource but still some nice designs.
• A list of skins at a Japanese(?) site called Designwalker rounds out my theme resources.

Wordpress Plugin Resources

• Mashable has a list of 30+ Plugins to get more blog readers, and 50 Great Widgets. Both great lists to add content to your sidebars and enhance your site.
• Quick Online Tips has a list of the 50 Best Powerblogging Widgets.

General Design Lists

• 99 Sites Designers Must Know About. Great list of resources for design elements/inspiration.
• 100+ Web 2.0 Generators. Exhaustive list of everything from favicon generators to rounded corner graphics.
• ForWebDesigners lists fonts, css, free photo resources, all on an attractive page, smartly sorted.

Useful Sites for Designing Your Site

• Dafont is my first stop for fonts.
• Colour Lovers is a great resource for background patterns and user-submitted color palettes.
• Or create your own color palette at Color Blender.

After you find a theme and install your Wordpress, use this helpful list “The Complete Wordpress Post-Install Checklist” to walk you through your first steps. Then start blogging! Or check out adii’s list of his Top 53 Blog Design of 2007 and be envious.

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Got back from a lovely weekend away, hope all of you had an equally relaxing and enjoyable few days! I had two massages and both times the people were like, “Wow, you have a lot of knots in your back!” Nice to know I was certifiably stressed. It was great to be away from the computer, I made it a “no screen” weekend, didn’t bring a computer or cell phone or camera. As long as it seemed like I was away, I didn’t miss much of all. Just goes to show how efficient my time online REALLY is

I got a bug up my butt to redo this site, I’ve been focused on it like a laser the past few weeks actually, but in my time away I realize that in order to do what I need to ACTUALLY do (ie getting a second season of The Guild plotted out, and getting another spec script written) I need to cut out extra things in my life, for the short term at least. Realistically, I realize I have no time to really learn how to Wordpress properly to do what I would like to do in my head, and no money to pay a fancy designer to do a custom site right now.

SO, I decided to use this one as an interim site until I find a nice Premium site to buy for cheap that I can tweak on my meager Wordpress knowledge. I’m pretty happy with the bones of this skin, there are a lot of bugs I’m working out and I appreciate your patience if things look wonky for a bit. The only real drawback of it is the narrow blog column, but I think I can live with it for now. Let me know what you think!

This week I have a HUGE stack of books to review, I’m looking forward to getting the Flog back on track!

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