Notes on The Redesign

This blog is four years old. It has grown, much as I have, through right before the PMR all the way to after the SPM. It is young just as I am young. It has been my home, of sorts - the one place on the web that is truly me.

This blog was first called Ice and Coffee back when I had just set it up. It was green. I like green. Halfway through form 4 I decided that I did not want cookie-cutter templates that everyone else had, so I switched to Minima, thinking I could edit the simplest theme on offer in the Blogger repertoire. I slapped on a header, added badges and -voila!- personalised blog!

After the SPM I purposely made my blog ugly, trying to motivate myself to craft something up that looked good. It was polka dotted grey and white. I still shudder when I think of it. So this morning I got up, switched back to a clean version of Minima (beta template, by the way) and then did bold, brash changes. I had no clear vision. I just knew what I like, and what I didn't. I also knew it had to be green.

Alright, my notes on the redesign of this blog:

Minima was chosen because it is simple, clean, and easily editable. I modified the header CSS, added a painted image behind the blog title, and liked what I saw. So I left it as it was.

Keeping to just the CSS style sheet at the top of the template, I worked my way down to the background, setting it to repeat a green striped image I had found long ago. Then I modified the wrappers so my blog would be a little wider, making it easier on the eyes.

Step three. Fonts. I was aiming for maximum readability, so used what Blogger offered first, enlarging fonts across the entire blog until I found it reasonably good looking. Then I edited the way blockquotes were displayed, though I still have to change the padding and margins till it encases the text put in naturally.

I added Reinvigorate tracking code, and then an Easter Egg ... somewhere around this blog. It should be easy to find.

Lastly, I tackled the sidebar. Integrated Flickr with a few hints in the Rounded Blue theme (hit ctrl U at the demo page, if you're wondering what they did), and then a Cbox (which doesn't seem to work at the moment), archives, links and so on.

I admit it isn't completed. I'm aiming to add a Navbar to the top, as well as badges and the usual feed options (Feedburner just rocks) to the sidebar. But other than that I think it looks reasonably nice. Not bad for a 3 hour job! *Pats self on back*

What do you think of the redesign?

[Update]: I've added the Navbar and the Feedburner feeds. I'd rather you subscribe to that rather than the default atom feed for this blog. The location of the feed is here. The Navbar has me slightly perplexed - those rounded corners you see are not images, but nifty CSS. I'm still figuring out what makes it look like it does, but credit must be given to the source: the K2 blogger theme.

[Update2]: A full list of tools used in this redesign:

Flickr (for photos)
Notepad++ (for code editing)
Creative Commons (for protection)
Google Page Creator (for the easter egg and site graphics)
Cbox (for the chatterbox/tagboard)
Photoshop Ciplak Suite 2 (for minor image tweaks)
Reinvigorate (for site stats)
Eli's Fingers (for typing)