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The circle of blogs

August 12, 2011 by Jen

Friday, 5 August 2011, Day 255/365.

I’ve changed templates on my blog. I’ve yet to pay for a theme and free themes quite often don’t get updated so there were some aspects to the old one that annoyed me.

Anyhoo, pop on through, have a look and leave me a comment. I like to reply to my commenters and have done so via email but that doesn’t carry on the thread of conversation on the blog so I’ll give a go to the replying on the blog instead – especially now that this theme allows threaded comments.

You can also subscribe to the blog via RSS or email (see the button on the right of the blog).

I still want to muck around with the footer but that’s not urgent.

Oh, and check out the new Project 365 page. I’m not completely happy with that but I’ve got a question on there that I’m hoping someone can help out with.

Pink

October 2, 2009 by Jen

Finally I can breathe. That extra work I was doing has now been finished. Well the website’s been published but there’s still a bit of tidying up to do.

This week’s been one of those hellish weeks. JJ excelled himself at being naughty at vacation care on Monday and I was lucky he was able to stay there for the rest of the week. I don’t know what I would have done if he couldn’t go there and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in the future during holidays. I’m at a real loss there, so much so I can’t even write more about it.

I had another deadline to meet during the week – details of which I won’t go into but it added extra stress onto what was already a stressful week.

I’m supposed to be doing some ukuele stuff this weekend but I had to bow out of it because I haven’t had the time to practise.

So now I’ve got a bit of extra time I’ve sat here this morning changing my blog theme to pink for the pink October breast cancer. There’s more about it at Pink for October. A couple of people I know have been diagnosed with breast cancer this year. Thankfully I think both are good for the moment but fingers crossed on that one.

And lastly, if you haven’t already, please pop over and enter my competition to win a Stargate DVD.

Makeover

August 6, 2009 by Jen

I’ve been wanting to change my theme for some time now. It takes a LONG time (for me anyhow) to find a theme that I like to start with and am confident enough to change. I’ve installed quite a few themes, had a bit of a play and just given up. Using the theme test drive plug-in is an absolute godsend.

I even mucked around with a theme framework but gave up on that because it was too hard. After all the playing around I did, I still wasn’t convinced that it was a long-term good thing to do for me. I probably just don’t understand how they work or there isn’t enough documentation to support them – the free ones anyway. And that’s quite understandable because I know from experience that documentation takes time and effort. (Upon looking at the above website I note that they’ve now got documentation for creating a child theme which wasn’t there earlier. Still, I didn’t want to create a child theme, but use someone elses.)

I did contemplate paying for a premium theme but I didn’t even find one of those I liked enough to shell money out for and the more expensive (to me anyway) themes like Thesis just isn’t warranted for a hobby blog like this.

Anyway, I finally settled on this Blogwerx theme. I’d found it a couple of months ago, played around with it and moved on, but after unsuccessfully mucking around with theme frameworks I went back to it. I’ve changed it a bit and I still have the three column layout with the content on the left and sidebars on the right. I like this layout because if something stuffs up with loading in the sidebars at least the content is available due to the order of the page loading.

I even used the widgets this time, and made a new widget area for my Reviews and Giveaways section because I can’t show BlogHer ads there due to their ads policy. I was very proud of myself.

Now that I’ve implemented this new theme hopefully I’ll be more motivated to get back into the content side of things. If my blog was seven years old (and not five) I could blame the seven-year-itch for wanting something new and exciting to happen and inspiration to hit me in creating some exciting content. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.

I’d like to know what your favourite WordPress themes are, or even if you care about them. In the meantime I’ll stick with this for a while.

Christmas cheer and a facelift

December 6, 2008 by Jen

If you’re looking at my actual blog rather than via a feed reader you’ll notice that my site has had a facelift. My weblog banner has been the same for a while now and it was time for a change.

Here’s the old one.

I decided to go with red/orange and green in keeping with Christmas type colours but I didn’t do traditional Christmas holly, decorations etc for two reasons. One is that I probably won’t get around to changing it after Christmas in a timely manner and, two, I’m not a huge fan of the ‘traditional’ Christmas decorations. In fact it makes me feel a bit alien (tying in nicely with my new banner). I used the brushes from Smashing Magazine’s website.

I also decided to change my ‘look’ in response to SueBlimeley’s spreading the Christmas cheer. I’m trying my hardest to get into the spirit! It seems every year I am dragged somewhat reluctantly into the whole thing. It’s kind of hard to escape so I can understand why it makes some people feel really awful.

Have you entered my giveaway to win a DVD? This is the first of three I’ll be giving away. Even if you don’t want it, it might make a good Christmas present for someone you know.

Fiddling with Photoshop

March 25, 2008 by Jen

One of my new favourite websites is PSDTUTS.com (PSDTUTS is short for Photoshop Tutorials – the PSD is the Photoshop file extension). It’s laid out really well for the novice by showing step-by-step instructions on how to do stuff in Photoshop from scratch, and with existing photos. I was having a play around with this tutorial and thought I’d adapt it for my own website banner.

You may have to refresh the page to see the new banner, or here’s a thumbnail.

Semantically driven banner

If you’ve clicked over to look at the tutorial you’ll note that mine is very very different from it. I took the principals of the tutorial and went quite off track – really off track. Instead of using a gradient I used a pattern which explains the texture, although there still is a gradient or two included. I also used some brushes because I love brushes. I already had some brushes I’d downloaded previously but I found some more at Obsidian Dawn. Did I say I love brushes?

I don’t begin to use half of the features in Photoshop but I want to make it my mission to learn to do so.

This was my old web banner.

(click to view larger image).

The flower and the glory, and an offer for you

July 27, 2007 by Jen at Semantically driven

I don’t have any particular schedule for when I change my blog banner but today is the day.

When looking back through all the old ones I can see that my graphic design skills aren’t that great, but I think there has been an improvement over the three years I’ve been doing this blog.

As usual I add my old one for posterity (click to view full image).

When I update my blog banner I choose a colour I like from it for my text link colours and change them also. I usually just change the link colour and the active link colour (the colour that you see when you hover over a link).

This is fine for the text in my actual blog but it also now involves changing link colours in a couple of widgets I have also. Luckily I’m somewhat familiar with HTML so this makes my job a lot easier.

The offer for you bit

Are you bored with your blog banner? Do you want a new one?

If you want, I’m willing to do you a new one and help you implement it if the thought of getting your hands dirty in your blog scares you silly. I’m only offering this for one person, so plead your case in my comments and I’ll pick my favourite out of the comments and then work with you to design a new banner.

You have one week from today, so last comments in by midnight Friday 17 August my time, that’s GMT +9.30 hours. (I’ve extended the deadline because I’ve had no takers yet even though people who’ve commented reckon it’s a great idea).

Disclaimer: I’m not a graphic designer, just a dabbler in Photoshop. If you want a professional graphically designed blog banner, then this offer isn’t for you.

Jaycee Bloggs here

April 23, 2007 by Jen at Semantically driven

I got bored with my old weblog banner so I’ve created a new one. I read or thought of the old ‘So and So Bloggs’ yesterday and thought I would use it just because of the ‘Bloggs’ bit. It could be interpreted in two ways. That is ‘Jaycee – Bloggs here, and Jaycee Bloggs – here (the ‘-‘ used as a pause in these instances).

It’s particularly pertinent for me because I blog here fairly anonymously and Bloggs is the epitome of a pseudonym.

As I usually do when I update my blog template, I include a picture of the old one for posterity (click to view full image).