I crave information.  So much, that sometimes it makes my head spin.  And I love expediency.  Over the last couple of years, as I’ve scoured the web for design ideas and instructions, I add plenty of new sites to my RSS reader.  A lot of times, the headlines are enough of an indication that I want to read something or not.  (I assume the same still holds true when reading a newspaper – you don’t read “cover to cover”, but articles that interest you.)  Ocassionally, I’ll find a commentary on some aspect of web design that merits some attention.

It’s interesting, because this article – Custom Web Design or Website Template, somewhat illustrates a concept I was trying to explain earlier this week to a “client”.  He was asking me why I was able to crank out a basic design/prototype for his club’s website so quickly, yet struggling with his own company page.  I’ve developed an “extension” of the article, I suppose, that explains my feelings on when to use a ready-made template/theme package vs. building from the ground up.Continue reading

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working pretty heavily in theme design, specifically for WordPress.  After taking the time over the Christmas trip home to learn CSS, I dove right in.  (It’s a testament to how long I’ve been playing around on the web, as CSS was still in its infancy when I started, and dynamically driven pages/sites and CMS’es were hardly around, but I digress.)

Running three different CMS softwares over the last year and change, I’ve come to some basic conclusions about the two most prevalent – Joomla and WordPress.  I can appreciate each one for the differences and likenesses they possess.

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