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Finally, i got around to designing and coding a decent template for serverdome, as the last two designs were actually very, very bad looking. (I had several people commenting on the “mustard colored” blog). The template is far from over, as the plan is to release it as a free wordpress theme when i am done polishing and customizing it for public consumption. This version has some glaring oversights, (and probably some problems i haven’t noticed yet) like the lack of a functional footer and support for some plugins.

The curved corners are done through the use of the wonderful Nifty Corners Cube that you can use to get rounded corners on any html element using just javascript.

A big improvement over the last design is the customized look of the MyBlogLog widget. I always hated the default look of the widget and wanted to customize it but couldn’t bring myself to go through the mess that is the MBL code. This article on styling the MyBlogLog widget was a huge help in figuring out where every little piece of css goes.

All in all, I’m fairly happy with the look and feel of the new template compared to the old designs. I was considering using a free template and not have to worry about designing and coding a template from scratch but i prefer to do things by myself and knew i wouldn’t be happy until i had my own custom design.

Want to know when the downloadable version of the template will be available? Why not subscribe to the fabulous RSS feed ?

This is a free icon for your RSS feed. Included in the download are two jpg files with white and black background, and the original Photoshop psd to customize if you want to. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Free rss icon download for blogs

Pixel real estate on blogs has become a hot commodity. If you’re going to sell ad space on your site directly to advertisers or through a link broker service, knowing how important each part of your site is to advertisers means that you can negotiate better prices and better deals.

Bellow is a basic website blueprint with the most important areas highlighted, and the options you can have for each website area.

Why give so much weight to RSS subscribers?

RSS has emerged as an amazing technology to keep readers updated without having to check your site for updates. Subscribers are generaly less than viewers but RSS ads have the advantage of being highly targeted to their niche. Both TLA and Google (feedburner) are putting a lot of weight in RSS.

How did i research this?

A combination of different tools as well as experience with ad placement. Text Link Ads has an automated calculator you can use to get some rough numbers on how much link ads on your blog will fetch based on position. Shoemoney has an ad placement blueprint with prices. Even Google has their say on the best spot for ad placement is.

If you haven’t heard yet, Smashing Magazine, the blog that, uh, smashes web stuff into your screen has redesigned. The thing i noticed the second the page loaded was their navigation. They moved the menu on the very top of the page, even over the Smashing logo. The new design puts the focus on the current news and the popular posts sidebar which sports over 50 of the most popular posts (i stopped counting at 50). This is a great way to reduce bounce rate by providing a long list of past content and smashing magazine has a huge amount of great information in older posts.

The color scheme and style of the site remains pretty much the same, so it’s not going to surprise many of the old readers. For a blog, it’s a really big decision to move the navigation and topics on the very top of the page.

Northxeast.com also has an unusual design for the main page. The only news that appear on the main page are posts titles, and not a word from the article’s content. NorthxEast can do that because they already have a reputation for solid writing and informative articles and their visitors are sure to click on links if they like the title.

The Northxeast titles are some of the best entry titles i’ve seen on a blog, if you need some title inspiration for your entries, definitely take a look at the posts they publish.

What’s great about Sunday blogging is that you can excuse yourself from doing any real blog posting by pasting links to other blogs and cleverly disguising it as content. I don’t know who though of that but what a great idea!

Through bloggerbuster, we get iconlet, a search engine for free icons.

The Continuing History of Amazon’s Tab Navigation by lukew.com.

Two great links from webappers.com. Website Grader, a free Search Engine Optimization tool to analyze your site and report where it’s lacking in SEO, and ilovetypography.com, font and typography blog.

Tags and categories in wordpress 2.3.

The ‘Coca-Cola’ Art Gallery is a collection of images that has been designed by leading artists and designers.

Get inspired for your next logo design from these logo showcases and blogs.

Logopond.com

The mother of logo showcases. Thousands of the best logos in the world.

Logolounge.com

Website and book series with thousands of logos. Features designer interviews and editorials.

Logosauce

Another logo showcase

Flickr Group: Design that logo
Flickr group with over 1500 logo designs

Brand New
This isn’t a showcase but a blog on corporate identity and logo redesigns from the folks at underconsideration.com. One of my all time favorite reads.

Adobe recently unveiled their latest software packages, with new versions for Photoshop, Illustrator and everything in between. The Creative Suite Master Collection contains pretty much everything you will ever need to create the design of your dreams, digitize it, turn it into a movie and handle post production. Though as much as we’d all like to jump into Adobe’s latest offerings, there is one little catch. The cost of the Master Collection is a measly 2.500 US. For a designer just starting this is quite a steep price. In comparison, Photoshop CS3 as a standalone package costs $650 US.

Here’s todays tip: You don’t need the latest Photoshop version to make great designs. Adobe Photoshop CS, still in a sealed box currently sells for less than $150 on Ebay. You’ll be missing the new features in Photoshop CS3, but if you’re a struggling designer or just out of college you won’t be missing the extra $500 that buying the new version from Adobe costs. There is practically no piece of software in the web design & development world right now that cannot be reliably replaced by an older version of itself.

So if you’re looking to start your software collection take a look at what’s on Ebay first.

Flickr is not just for photography, some of the best illustrators, artists and designers showcase their workin photosets and flickr groups. In no particular order, here are some of the most creative, inspirational sets and galleries i have noticed.

1. Azul dc’s photos - Flickr page

Azul dc’s colorful character illustrations.

2. orgutcayli’s photos - Flickr page

Illustrations & design direction for print & ads, from art director Orgut Cayli.

3. s0ulsurfing’s photos - Flickr page

s0ulsurfing’s Artwork Set. Amazing use of color & photography.

4. kaneda99’s photos - Flickr page

Amazing illustrations at kaneda’s Illustrations set

5. Tubes.’s photos - Flickr page

Retro style illustrations by Tubes.

6. Matuko Amini’s photos Flickr page

Incredible gallery of digital paintings from Matuko Amini

7. extraverage™’s photos - Flickr page

From stickers to posters and much more. Awesome work.

8. cutangus’ photos - Flickr page

Cutagus’ 3d gallery of futuristic vehicles.

9. Nod Young’s photos - Flickr page

Nod Young’s design work, from fliers to web design, to logo work.

10. darcitananda’s photos - Flickr page

Gallery of a mehndi drawings, patterns painted on the hands of brides in South Asia.

Digg this post.

Looking through some of the snazzy Web 2.0 APIs that are available right now, i settled into the Flickr API. I wanted to get my hands dirty for a while now, and the Flickr API is both well documented enough and has a wealth of data available for someone just starting with APIs. I’ve been toying with the phpFlickr wrapper, which lets you communicate with the API in a more user friendly way and handles the results fairly well, even made a simple page that pulls a user’s latest photos for display.

It’s not very exciting right now but i’m brainstorming ideas on getting a Flickr based app going as an exercise for both web APIs & PHP. My first idea was a simple way to integrate your Flickr photos in your homepage, along with groups you own or are part of. It’s a decent project but there’s already a number of solutions available and i wouldn’t be adding anything new to what is out there.

Flickr Color Selectr is a great tool when you have a base color and need some inspiration, it pools Creative Commons photos from Flickr based on an RGB value.