Pro Blog Design

Let’s say you want to show thumbnails in your blog’s front page. A lot of blogs do that now and it’s a good way of making the page look more alive.

The only problem though is that using custom fields can be complicated and time-wasting. This post will show you how to make your theme generate thumbnails automatically, based on your post’s first image.

This trick is done by mixing some wordpress hacks and a php script. The PHP script is Darren Hoyt’s timthumb.php, the hack is WpRecipe’s how to get the first post image.

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Images enhance the visual impact of a blog and make it more likely a post will be read. One good photo can grab a reader’s attention and drive them to the article.

A post without any graphs, drawing, or photos can look daunting. Even if it’s well written, the wall of text might not appeal to anyone. A good image is often a must-have for a great post.

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Photoblogs have the very best looking content, no doubt about it. Why then can it be so hard to design a photoblog well? Surely the photos alone look good enough?

These 10 tips discuss the theme and design for the blog/gallery, and I’ll be following it up later with a post on how to organize and display the images well.

My 10 Tips for Styling Your Blog

• Use neutral colors. When photographing people, you never know what they will wear so you use a neutral background. The same applies to your design. You need a background color that works with all your photos (e.g. The black background here is perfect against the Northern Light photos of all colors.)

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