Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

I am always looking for different tools out there for bloggers who have at least a minimal knowledge of putting together simple graphics. I stumbled upon Pixlr, which is a free online image editor.

Now, the site looks promising at a first glance and has an editor that you can use without having an account. The setup looks clean and has plenty of options, except for the fact that I could not use vector imaging to create.

(You can right click and open the image in a new window to see the full size of the image.)

This program even with just creating a simple image was a bit disappointing. When merging the layers of the background and text, and then saving as a JPEG at 100% quality, the image was a bit rough around the edges of the text.

Example:

For me, this is a big problem. Most of the people I know who have little knowledge of graphic design at least know how to put text on an image. If the text looks like this in the end result, the graphic editor is not worth using. Maybe in the future the editor may improve, but right now, even for basic text on graphics, this was a fail.

I did mess around with some of the brushes and effects, but it was nothing like using GIMP or Paint Shop Pro or even Photoshop. In fact, far from it. I think the best tool out of it was the free hand pencil. It has this shading feature that reminds me of studio art drawing.

Have you tried Pixlr? Are there other online graphic editors that you have tried?

I made a set of simple social network icons for my clients as a default method, but after some careful thought, I decided to release this set. Currently there are 30 icons available. I am sure I will be adding more, but this is only the beginning.

I will be colorizing this set into several colors for your use. I know I will have my own colorized set to match my own website and from past experience, I know others look for specific sets and colors to match their site too.

In making these, I wanted to be simplistic and use some of my pixelling skills, but all keep some of the integrity of the brands.

Icons available are:

• Blogger
• Yahoo! Buzz
• Delicious
• DeviantART
• Digg
• Email icon
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Foursquare
• Friendfeed
• Friendster
• Google
• Last.fm
• LinkedIn
• LiveJournal
• MySpace
• Meetup
• Plurk
• Posterous
• Reddit
• RSS feed icon
• Squidoo
• StumbleUpon
• Technorati
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• WordPress
• Yahoo!
• Youtube

Let me know any requests you all have. Please only request those that you actually do use.

More and more ezines are surfacing. Even individual bloggers are choosing to use the magazine type design for its ability to show multiple posts in a unique manner. Whether a slideshow, tabbed sidebar navigation, or designing posts in colummns, this style is definitely a new trend. There are a lot of free WordPress themes out there for download – some are premium and cost $40 to over $100, and some are free. Here are just a few I thought I would share that are worth the time to use. And just in case I need to re-emphasize – these ARE free to download, customize and use. However, please remember to leave credit for the designer.

Arras Theme
This layout features a slideshow for featured posts, and a tabbed sidebar.

Magazine Basic
This layout is simple, but also looks like a newspaper with its columned structure.

The Morning After
Another simple layout, that includes several sidebars and features like thumbnails for recent posts.

Hybrid News
This theme packs a punch with slideshow for featured posts, carefully navigation for parent and category links, tabbed navigation, and thumbnails for recent posts. Hybrid News is a child theme of the Hybrid theme framework.

Scarlett Theme
This sleek layout has a slideshow carousel for featured stories at the top, slideshow in the sidebar for recent themes as well as a dropdown menu for categories. An added bonis is a photo stream for flickr or whatever gallery you use.

Centric
The Centric theme is simple and allows users to post their most recent articles in certain categories to display on the main page, as well as a featured post. The theme also features thumbnails for recent posts, and a sidebar that runs on right right side.

Of course, there are a lot more magazine themes. You can either do a Google search for free WordPress magazine themes or go search for the term magazine in the WordPress theme directory.

What free WordPress magazine themes do you like and recommend?

Sometimes simple is the way to go, especially when you are a person not into all the frilly graphics that could bog down your site’s load time. Below I am listing 10 layouts that I found in the WordPress Theme Directory that are simple and sleek, worthy for those who are trying to find the perfect layout for their simple preferences.

The iNove theme is very sleek and contains a nicely designed navigation reminiscent of Mac. The layout has a very Web 2.0 feel too.

Carrington Blog theme is by Alex King has a great code. The layout is very clean, and set up with a great navigation that goes by hierarchy and works almost like a drop-down.

The simpleX theme is an extremely basic two-column layout with tabbed navigation. This layout has a lot of potential for those who like to work with a basic theme and adapt it with their own design. This layout also has a drop-down hierarchy like the Carringtion Blog.

The Titan theme has a lot of clean lines and whitespace to balance out a site. Even attention to the image boards leave this layout as something anyone might want to use.

The StudioPress theme is a simple three-column layout that has a tabbed navigation. The rounded corners throughout the layout making this layout very charming.

The Tropicala theme is a very lightweight blog that contains a parent and a subparent navigation. The lines are crisp and you can either keep or interchange the main graphic for your own.

The Red Time theme has a few interesting elements like a place to either put an introductory paragraph or put a featured topic and even has the courtesy of including a cute Twitter bird so people can click to follow you.

The Stardust theme boasts that it is handcoded for accessibility. Its simple gradient graphics make it very clean and sleek.

Librio theme definitely does remind me a bit of the Mac OS X Leopard.

TweetMeBlue theme is made by the same creator of Red Times. It contains a clean navigation and even makes room for those wanting to use the WP-PageNavi plugin. This layout offers a small place at the top of the site for featuring posts.

Are there other layouts you think that should be on this list that you think are simple and sleek…and of course… free?

Yes, that is right… five more desktop wallpapers available for download.

All wallpapers come in JPEG format and 3 different resolutions: 800×600, 1024×768, and 1280×1024. The previous wallpapers were greatly welcomed. I even got tips in my paypal from them so I must have done something right.

Anyway… feel free to use them. If you want to use the images for layouts, you can. I even can provide the PNG format of each of them for clarity, but you will have to use the contact form to request the one you need.

I recently submitted Blondish.net to a site that allows people to rate websites based on their design. The site is called Design Snack. I think it is a nifty idea. It is not like a normal review site where you have to leave a detailed review. You just rate and if you want, you can leave a comment. However, I still like to do reviews. My only thoughts are that people could just drop in a give a low rate to be nasty. You can view my site’s profile there a Design Snack, and please, if you do go look, please leave an honest rating. In the same regard, if you do join and submit your site, please tell me about it. I would love to return the favor.

For the past few years, I have been using Gravatar, which is a “globally recognized avatar.” A gravatar is something to give your blog comments a small, but nifty image. It is an attribute that WordPress and other blog content management have designed plugins to to display them within blogs both free-hosted, self-hosted, or even free-hosted comments like Haloscan.

Personally, for me, when I go through my site comments, the gravatars are the first thing I notice. That does not mean that I do not read the others, it is just that my eye is drawn to them, especially if they are well designed. This also does not just apply to my site, but when I visit and comment at other sites. Sometimes I will see an amazing avatar and will want to go see that person’s site.

Not long ago, gravatar was not accessible for new accounts. Members at that time could see their gravatar display whenever they commented, but they could not update. Since its move to Automattic, Gravatar has been accessible, so for those who might still be thinking the site does not work… well, it does now and has been for the past year.

For those who do use gravatar, how do you like it? Are you apt to visit people who have an interesting avatar (gravatar)?

I have not done much about updating the Wallpapers section, so I finally got in gear an created a two different ones. They are called Mustang and Lily. Both of the vectors were also suggestions from a few of you readers to make as some liked my other theme for the site and others liked the lily from the vector tutorial I recently revealed. These wallpapers come in three resolution sizes: 800×600, 1024×768, and 1280×1024. You can download them from the Wallpapers section, and yes, THEY ARE FREE.

I will have more wallpapers in the near future, but I also have a long list of things to put on the site. I will even take requests but I will only do celebrity wallpapers using my vectoring. I do not put celebrity photos up anymore here since it seems to be a big no-no because of copyright issues. If you noticed, I also am trying to keep track of how many downloads. It has been a great way to see what you all find useful from my site. As a side update and example: PHPads has been downloaded over 714 times in the past month and PHPurl has been downloaded over 145 times in the past 2 weeks.

Please remember that The Listing is open and replaced 2 different webdirectories. In less than a week, over 50 sites have joined. Also, I hope to see some of you all at Blogtopsite, especially those who were there in the past.

Big shout out to Amanda of Autism and The World Around Me for plugging The Listing. Any help is always appreciated. The site has some very informative links on autism and is in general, a personal blog. Anyone who can relate or knows someone with autism should find this site enjoyable and intriguing. Also, if you are curious to learn more, she can help you find out more information. She has two boys in which both are in school and doing well. Amanda seems friendly so I recommend you to click over sometime to visit.