The $2,000 birthday present

June 25th, 2006 5 Comments

Steve’s birthday is coming up so I decided to get him something special. Well, make him something special. He’d been blogging at WordPress.com for a few months and recently registered StevenVorholt.com, so I decided he needed a hot, custom blog template to go along with his new domain.

It’s his birthday present. It didn’t actually cost him $2,000 – but I think it’s funny to say that since that’s how much I would have charged for a similar design if he was a client.

This is actually one of my favorite designs to date. I put a lot of thought and time into some of the details that most people won’t notice but give the design that unique feel that a custom blog template should have.

The header

The header is actually really simple but it was something that Steve was excited about. Steve’s girlfriend lives in Australia and so he wanted something that looked cool but also had some sort of meaning. I decided a picture of the famous Ayers Rock would satisfy both requirements.

The logo is simple but also shows that it’s a personal blog. The script writing is just a free font that looks a little bit like handwriting.

The Sidebar

The sidebar took a little while to come up with, but I finally decided on something that was much simpler than my initial plan.

Initially I wasn’t going to include the information on subscribing to Steve’s blog using RSS because most people that read his blog either don’t know what it is or know what it is but don’t care to subscribe. Then I came to my senses. Rather than let people plead ignorance I decided to include a quick link to the Wikipedia entry that explains what RSS is and hopefully they’ll at least consider subscribing to his blog.

I also added a little “Where am I?” box so that Steve’s family and friends would be able to keep track of where he’s going. Lately he’s become a bit of a world traveller.

The comments

Comments are always the most difficult thing for me to design because it’s the last thing I work on with a blog template. Because it’s the last thing I’m normally excited to push a template live and don’t put enough time into the presentation of the comments. That didn’t happen this time though! I told myself before I started that I would come up with something that really matched the rest of the site.

I went through four or five different comment layouts and finally settled on what you see at the site. It’s simple but I think it looks elegant and it’s easy to distinguish between comments.

I also spent quite a bit of time getting the comment form to look “just right” and I even spent time on a customized submit button. I was working on adding a live comment preview below the comment submission box but decided I didn’t care that much, plus Steve doesn’t get that many comments anyway (snicker).

So anyway…

Happy birthday, Steve.

And if anyone is wondering: Yes, of course I am interested in doing more work! If you have a project that you’d like me to work on, get in touch with me.