Hi, I'm currently learning to design templates for websites, so have been trying a variety of sites to get some experience before I start trying to sell my templates. Anyway, today I'm trying to make a wordpress template for a blog, and I've done the header and it looks awesome (in my opinion ), but I'm really stuck how to layout the rest of the page. I want to keep it clean and professional, so, what you got in mind? This is the header I've got so far. Rep will be given
Obviously wordpress, great header get a nice repeating silver background maybe some sidebar boxes with red borders
I plan to make it a wordpress theme. I can't code yet, so was planning to hire someone to do it for me. I've had a couple of ideas for the template but can't really make any stick....
Nope. At the moment I'm just looking for ideas to complete the template, and then I might get it coded, depending on how well it turns out. Sorry if this is the wrong section, thought because of the 'Web Design' it meant I could post this sort of thing Yeah, I am looking around at other wordpress themes but I'm still struggling. Had a quick brainwave before and started doing that, will post up in a bit. By the way, how much as space would you recommend, and do wordpress blogs have to have a search bar?
Not bad for a newbie, but can be done better with some skills and nice work. Check cssgalleries and CSSmania.com for some inspirations.
This is what I have so far. I'm not totally convinced by the background gradient, I think I need to make the lower colour a bit brighter, so that there's less of a gradient. What do you think?
Not bad mate. The gradient I feel gets too dark at the bottom. Also you need some sort of footer on the design to finish it off nicely.
Yeah, that's what I thought. Footer-wise, I haven't completed the design yet. I didn't know what to put, as I intended to have 3 columns with 'Categories', 'Archives' and 'Recent Comments', but was unsure how I should put them (should I put them in a list format, or make a box for them)? Rep given to you.
I dunno. I don't think it's so great. Please accept this as CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. Back when I used to teach university for a decade I use to grade folks on their constructive criticism, and "I think it's just great" was not a passing grade on that assigment. First of all, I originally asked you if you use WP as it seems to me that if you did, you'd have anticipated a lot more in your mockup of your UI. For example, you would have noticed that an "out of the box" WP has the following: A site title and tag line up in the banner. What you have is a big waste of real estate up in there, IMHO. Also, where you have "wp template" -- what would that be on a real blog? Doesn't make sense unless THAT were the title of the blog and then you should lose all of that stipped waste of space above the fold. Default right colum features: Search field Pages menu Category menu Archives menu Blog Roll "Meta" menu If you put "recent posts" where you have, how is the rest of the page going to fill out? Perhaps you could keep latest post where you have it and use CSS overflow to restrain that content box and then just dump everything BUT the most recent post below the both of them. However, realize that this would no longer just be a "skin" for WP as this would require some customizations to the application's code, and if you go there, you should really make it a plugin -- you prepared to go there? There are data that go with a post that you should represent, namely: The date the post was posted The author Category posted to Comments functionality I don't think the "ad space" on the right is going to work well, as you need room for navigation mentioned above. Perhaps you could move that ad space to fit inbetween posts. While there are LOTS of other things that could be incorporated here (such as RSS and social marking connects to Digg, StumpleUpon, etc.), I'll leave you with this for now: You also need to mockup how the internal pages will look in addition to the home page. I hope this gives you some meat to chew on as you push forward on your template. But just to come back around to my original question: Do you actually USE WP? Make sure you do so that you can play with the UI vis a vis your concepts for your mockup.
I've seen worse, but the above poster has given some really good info that could really help you out.
Sean, thanks for the awesome reply. + repped you In response to it, if I'm honest I didn't know half the stuff you've jst told me about wordpress themes lol, I do use wordpress but due to this being my first proper go at a design I hadn't thought about the practical side of things. Where it says wp template is where the title is going to go, and I hadn't put a slogan in because it didn't look good, didn't realise you have to have one. Same story for the search bar, really. I thought it was optional so left it out. Thanks again for all your advice. Will re-read later on when I'm properly awake (7:50am here) and try to mod a few things on teh design.
Sorry, didn't mean to suggest you HAVE to use the tag line or search field; just that they're "out of the box" stuff I'd think you'd want to accomodate in a template.