Webium

Webium/DESIGN

July 19 – Blogs compete for eyes, but only if they're truly competitive. Most blogs don't even come close.

A blogger is a one-man shop: Writer, reporter, editor, designer, advertiser, artist, promoter, and sometimes even an audience of one. The best bloggers are either good at everything, or learn from the best when they need it.

Today I'm recommending Blogcrowds, a site where designers share the best of their open-source blog templates, compatible with Blogger, Wordpress, and Gecko and Fly. Some of them are original, like this one, and others are modified templates from the sites mentioned.

Blogcrowds takes the best templates and makes them better. They also have an online forum where you can post questions and get help from the community.

Yesterday I redesigned my home site, www.paulklenk.us, using a beautiful template by Ian Main called Green Marinée. Ian created it in blue and orange variations as well, so I chose blue for my site, as my colors were already established and I liked them too well to change them.

With a bit of tweaking (see related article), I was able to make it look exactly the way I wanted. Now I'm on to redesigning my political site, LoudCitizen.org, using the classic Green Marinée in the three column format.

– Paul Klenk, Webium

Webium/PUBLISH

July 11 – The discovery of Google Page Creator was a highlight of my week. Google keeps offering more and more to Web users for free. Even in its beta form, this page builder is the best of its kind I’ve seen. Imagine how great it will be in its final version!

I was so impressed that I migrated my recently launched career website there, and gave it a glorious new design. Hope you like it. And I created a new business site for a consultant friend.

There’s an art to getting the most out of free webpages. Template sites offer less flexibility than those built “from scratch,” so creative work-arounds are needed to make them elegant and functional. What you’re reading is example of a free site made to function to its fullest potential.

If you like my career site, and know someone on a budget who could use a professional website, let me know. I’d love more clients, and I’m very affordable. And now that I’m a Google Checkout merchant, I can invoice them by email and they can pay online.

– Paul Klenk, Webium