I’m going to extend my online presence on Technorati. As a procedural measure I’m supposed to have this short code (2CS29C43BNQS) on a blog post so that they can verify authenticity. I also made the decision to make the ‘blog’ part of the site strictly journalistic. So here we go with the very first blog post under the new web address, nstation.org on this Programmers’ Day.

nStation has a new theme from today onwards (July 16, 2008). This theme is a fresh design I came up with a couple of days back. It took me about a week to complete the design and another week to develop it to a WordPress Theme.

This theme is more modern looking than the previous two. There is adequate white space surrounding objects and consistency has been preserved across pages. I have also made every attempt to make it look good on all browsers. Different sections of the theme (header, main menu, content area, etc.) have different appeals to it so that they do not conflict with each other in appearance.

The most notable element on this design is the large desktop area on the top of the page. On my previous two themes I used an area similar to this to designate specialty. For example, for Halloween, I had jack-o-lanterns on this space. But the header blended with the rest of the design too well to the point where it was not noticeable. There was also a lot of work involved as a change in the header was in fact a change in the entire design. Now on this design, the header has been made an integral part of the design while without making it a part of the content.

With the introduction of this theme, I’m going to release the previous theme to the WordPress community. It will take some time though as it needs some modifications and patching before making it more public aware.

Note: This was done on off hours. Therefore a week’s work is about ten to fifteen hours.

When I started designing this theme, I didn’t have any expertise on WordPress. The principles of blogging were completely new to me. I looked into many other blogs to figure out the essentials of theming. Ironically most themes were structurally the same except they looked different in presentation. But is this commonly accepted structure really usable? This is what I discovered.

File Away

Some details presented on blogs are unwanted or rarely used. The archive for example has no significance to an average user. Since majority of users end up in a blog post by getting referred by a search engine, there is very little chance that someone visiting to read a certain blog post would drill down the archive to read other posts.

Attention to Detail

Only posts matter. Everything else is inferior. Even static pages have less significance unless information presented on static pages can draw more interest than posts. Having a mechanism to list and summarize the most recent posts can be beneficial.

No one dare to spare time on the archive. Give it less attention. Have a page that list all post titles that is groped monthly or yearly. This actually depends on how much you write; but reduces confusion and the hap-hazard nature of the archive.

Prevent making countless categories. Use a small number of categories to group different areas of interests. Make use of the new WordPress tags to brief your visitor about the post. By the way, that tag cloud makes no sense to many people. But it’s a good way of showing your intents. So use it judiciously, don’t throw it on the face.

Least but not last, avoid the top ten design mistakes when creating your blog. Remember, usability guidelines applicable to a regular websites are applicable to blogs too.

1 – current theme as at 20^th November, 2007