my custom blog design

I’ve been asked this a few times already from other photographers (and other bloggers) as to how I created/what am I using for/my blog design. I figured I’d post the info here to help you all out!

I am using WordPress. WordPress is an open source application (meaning, it’s free to use and modify) and has the ability to have various THEMES (layouts/designs).

My theme is a custom theme, designed and created by Yours Truly. Unless you are willing to toss obscene amounts of money at me, I’m not available for hire 🙂 -although I do need (ok, I don’t really need it, but I *want*) a new backup camera!

The top navigation functionality is referenced here. Sheri was a huge help in the navigation integration. I still have some tweaks to make and for those that are familiar with WordPress, you KNOW how difficult it can be making decisions for plugins and extending WordPress – there are just so many amazing features to choose from.

I started with the Manjii Theme, which is stripped down of any extra bells and whistles and then piece by piece added in things I thought I needed. Thank you Broken Kode for the Manjii Theme – which was my basis, I will now call “Shoot-Scoop Theme” – Author, Laura Bruen…hey it’s been well worked over and changed to be called my own at this point 😉

While it does seem to be a bit buggy with WordPress 2.2 (it is not supported for WP 2+ I believe) – so if you’re going to use this as your start, just be sure you know what you’re doing – wouldn’t want you to end up frustrated and have to redo your blog. There just may be a better basic theme to start with that’s more compatible, I just didn’t find on that was stripped to my liking.

Hope this helps! If you like my blog, please make sure you say “hello” by posting a comment from time to time. I really appreciate hearing from my visitors!