Small Tweaks Made to Blog

I thought it was about time to tweak the blog a little bit. So I added some more information to the footer; it now contains a link to the RSS feed that is automatically generated by WordPress and a link to follow me on Twitter. I also added my email address to the footer to make it a little bit easier for people to contact me. To foil spammers I made the email address an image instead of text, but if your typing and spelling skills are up to par you should not have a problem.

Another thing I wanted to update is the pagination of the blog. After some research into WordPress plugins I replaced the standard (pretty horrible) pagination with the WP-PageNavi plugin by Lester Chan. After some CSS styling I ended up with the Digg-like pagination you can see at the bottom of most pages. I might spruce these up some more in the future.

I also updated the neglected “Book of the Moment” section in the sidebar with jQuery in Action by Bear Bibeault and Yehuda Katz. I have enjoyed this book a lot and it has reignited my passion for coding which had faded a lot. I recommend this book to any web designer that wants to take up coding… it’s really not that hard to get started.

Blog Included in Abduzeedo’s 50 Awesome Blog Designs List

Thanks to Paulo from Abduzeedo for adding my blog to their list of 50 Awesome Blog Designs – Part 1. I have been a frequent reader of the Brazilian design site (don’t worry it’s in English) so it is nice little surpise to be included.

My apologies to everybody for not posting in a long while. I will start blogging more again, I promise, and now that I have started using jQuery I might have something interesting to write about. If you are interested in receiving updates to this blog, please subscribe to my RSS feed.

Blog Included in Six Revisions’ Top 25 List

Jacob Gube from Six Revisions recently wrote an article called 25 Outstanding WordPress Designs that featured 25 handpicked WordPress blog designs. I was honored that my blog was picked and included in this great company; two of my personal favorites from this list are ISO50 (check out the beautiful prints) and coda.coza. If you are not familiar with Six Revisions you should really give it a read. It is one of a handful of web development/design sites that I frequently visit to find out about new techniques and to be inspired. Here are a couple of great articles to get you started: 30 Exceptional CSS Techniques and Examples and 9 Practical Ways to Enhance your Web Development Using the Firefox Web Developer Extension.

CSS Galleries Galore

At first thought it might seem like a strange concept to name galleries that showcase exceptional website designs after a computer style sheet language, but once you understand how CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) revolutionized website design it makes perfect sense. CSS has simplified the creation of great and consistent-looking websites by separating the content from the way it is presented. CSS galleries are awesome sources for inspiration when creating a new website or blog, and if you make it a habit to follow the featured websites in the CSS galleries you can easily spot new trends, and maybe even tell what the next big thing is.

Blog Featured on Smashing Magazine

I have been a big fan of Smashing Magazine ever since I discovered the website a year ago, for that reason I was really surprised to notice that my little blog was featured in one of their articles; and I have not even promoted my website. The article in question is titled Now More Than Ever: 50 More Excellent Blog Designs and it features, you guessed it, fifty awesome blog designs from all over the web. These blog designs were chosen because they clearly reflect the personalities of the designers. I am really honored to be included among all the great work; it gives me confidence to maybe even participate in Smashing Magazine’s monthly Desktop Wallpaper Calendar features.