maltpress

WordPress

I was thinking of writing my own content management system but sadly didn’t have the time. I’ve been playing with sites in WordPress for some time, though, and getting steadily better at formatting them, so the decision was pretty easy.

WordPress is fairly easy to install - if you can create MySQL databases and have FTP access to your server. I’ve got a local version installed on my PC, which is running Apache, so I can build and test themes before unleashing them.

sIFR

sIFR is a method of replacing headlines with non-standard fonts without needing to use images. It’s accessible and pretty looking, and means I can keep using my favourite font - Arial Rounded - while keeping the site content dynamic.

The design

I wanted to maintain a lot of elements from the old design - font, as mentioned above, and colours, although I’ve gone for a darker red to increase contrast and to make text easier to read. It also means that any images I use now stand out a bit more because non-template colours have an added zing to them.

I created the design in Photoshop before chopping it up into backgrounds. I’ve replaced some of the WordPress functionality - the calendar and side-bar widgets being the main one - partly because it’s easier to style like that and partly because they work more on a “pure” blog than on a brochure-type site.

So that’s how I built it - please let me know what you think of the design, and if you find any problems (which, in the first week or so, there are bound to be).