Jason Cosper

Tag: weblogging

  • Why Is WordPress So Sexy?

    Psst… I fidgeted with the layout on Preshrunk.

    Actually, all I really did was find a really sexy WordPress template and tweaked it to my liking — but I’m pretty sure I’ll keep this design up for a while. At least until everyone and their brother starts using it on their own sites.

    When I showed the new layout to Matt, he remarked:

    Matt: WP templates out there are so good
    Matt: it seems stupid to custom design anything

    And you know what? I’m inclined to agree. I only spent half an hour switching up some colors in CSS and fixing a few grammatical errors in the post data at the bottom of the page before I considered it ready. To compare, when I launched the site using Blogger, I spent a few hours tweaking someone’s port of Kubrick to get it exactly the way I wanted it.

    Now I’m not trying to say that WordPress is easier to use — or even really any better — than Blogger is. Both of them have their shortcomings. But please don’t think that I’m knocking Blogger. I was a paid Blogger Pro user back in the day. And up until a several months ago, I thought I’d be using it forever. So needless to say, I have plenty of love and respect for them.

    What I think I’m getting at here tho is that the WordPress community has quite a few more passionate designers than the general Blogger community does under its belt. Sure, Google can afford to hire Zeldman, Cederholm and Shea — but they don’t even use Blogger to run their own sites. Can you even name one resource for Blogger templates other than the default ones that are provided for you? I know I can’t.

    The people who are releasing all of these beautiful WordPress templates on the other hand, actually manage to use the software on a pretty regular basis. They know how to hack their way around the extensive template available to get some pretty amazing results. Sure, the code may occasionally be a tad bit hellish to read thru when you need to do a quick tweak, but the designers are passionate about WordPress and really manages to show in their designs.

    Think about it… When was the last time you saw a Blogger design get ported over to WordPress? Yeah, I don’t seem to remember that happening either.

    Damn. I’m getting off on a rant here… Sorry about that. I could go on for a bit longer, but I’ll spare you all. Just go give the new Preshrunk a peek, okay? Cheers!

  • Unfocused Group

    So while I love the look and feel of Hemingway and it seems to be working okay on Preshrunk, I think I’m going to need to go elsewhere for my templating needs. It’s nothing personal, honest… The only breakdown is the fact that I really need to start throwing some ads up1 but every tweak I make to Hemingway ends up not looking as elegant as it should. I’ve toyed with the idea of going to a standard 3 column layout, but I’m also getting pulled in the direction of running a yogurt template2 with ads after every second or third post.

    Since I know that some of the regular Preshrunk readers happen to check in on this site too, I was hoping I could get some smaller scale feedback. So, what do you lot think I should do?

    Any feedback y’all can give me would be greatly appreciated. Cheers!

    P.S. “Don’t run ads” is not an acceptable answer. Most of the feedback I got from everyone seemed pretty receptive to the idea of a few tastefully done ads on the site, so that matter is closed.

    1. Not because I want to, per sae. I’m just trying to make working on the site a little more lucrative for my broke ass.
    2. Culture [posts] on top, fruit [navigation] on the bottom. You know, like those single column layouts that all the cool webloggers seem to be flocking towards3.
    3. Okay, maybe “yogurt template” is not that awesome of a term — but it seemed cool at the time… *shrug* Whatev.