June 2007
June 13, 2007
If you’re like me, then you obsess over getting things like images, blockquotes, and lists to display “just right” on your Web site. Through intelligent use of CSS, you can exercise absolute control over your layout, presenting the reader with articles so rich with style that Donatella Versace would be jealous.
Unfortunately, an ever-growing percentage of your readers are never going to see your code-wrangling handiwork, because they prefer to read articles through a feed reader like Google Reader or Bloglines. To make matters worse, you have almost no control over the way your posts will display across the various readers. You can’t use your in-site CSS styles, and – this is the biggest sin of all – images are often displayed inline with text.
The horror.
It’s true… ugly feeds can happen to good people. Check out what I mean in the figure below.
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June 2, 2007
Many of you probably already know this, but on March 5, I sold the Cutline Theme. It was a great ride, and I was truly sorry to see it go. In fact, when I transferred the domain over, I poured one out for my lost theme homey.
And then I got over it.
Thanks to my seemingly unending development work on Celebrity Hack so far this year, I’ve hardly had time to care that I no longer run an active, successful WordPress theme community. At the same time, though, I’ve learned quite a bit about new CSS techniques, better XHTML structure, and better in-site SEO, and it’s hard not to look at such things from the perspective of a theme developer.
Clearly, something had to give here, and thanks to the fact that the Copyblogger promised his old design out to his legions of fans, I had no choice but to develop a newer, better, more excruciatingly-detailed WordPress theme. Nothing like a friend promising out your work now, is there? 
So here it is, the Copyblogger Theme for WordPress—a completely new framework that you can customize!
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Early last month, I redesigned Copyblogger.com, which was previously the home of my most popular design to date. The old layout was simple, featuring copious amounts of whitespace coupled with understated details. Problem was, Brian started receiving advertising requests, and the old template simply wasn’t able to accommodate the necessary ad positions in addition to keeping the blog’s subscription options at the forefront.
Oh, and based on all the things I’d learned since the last Copyblogger update, I knew there was an opportunity to improve Brian’s in-site SEO, too.
Enter the new design, which I think features a highly-effective organization of key pieces of information. For instance:
- Primary navigation resides in the upper left, which is some of the most premium real estate on the page.
- Subscriptions fuel the site, and the subscription options are placed above the fold on the left along with custom icon embellishments that serve to draw the user’s attention to that area.
- Advertisers receive prominent placement on the right—this wasn’t going to be possible on the old design without sacrificing the subscription options.
Although I don’t think Brian really wanted to change his design, he certainly saw plenty of reasons why he ought to go ahead and do it. With 18,000+ subscribers, he had reached a point where the site had outgrown its current confines, and by making the switch to a newer, smarter layout, he has already expanded the site and positioned it for future growth.
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