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Check Out My New Look!

It has been said that bad artists copy, but great artists steal. I leave it to you to decide if I am a copier or a thief, but I am a bit proud of the latest incarnation of my theme here at A Politically Incorrect Entrepreneur.

A bit of background

When I started this blog, I knew that wanted a 3 column theme, because one of my long term goals is to monetize via sponsorships, and I will need the sidebar real estate. Additionally, I am committed to the do-follow movement, so I want room to recognize all my commenters.

Initially, I started with the ModernPaper theme, by Brian Gardner. I liked everything about this theme except the color scheme. I liked how the page presented itself, how detailed the code was commented, everything. Brian has perhaps the most customizable (for us common folk) designs in the business. I was planning to do some mods on it, but never seemed to find the time.

Then, Brian released his Copyblogger theme to the public, and oscandy came up with a 3 column version. I moved over to that, because I dug the colors. (I am a visual adult with ADD. What can I say?) Unfortunately, one has to be a CSS freak to tweak it at all. Chris is a design maniac, but for those of us on the low end of the CSS learning curve, the code all looks like Greek.

The answer should be obvious…

Do a modification of ModernPaper with CopyBlogger colors. And that is what I did.

Go ahead, play around with it (Go hover over the links in the sidebars, I am kinda proud of that!). For the first time since I started this blog, I am truly pleased with the way it looks.

Of course, minor mods will happen with the placement of things in the sidebars and such, but overall, I am quite pleased.

Enough about me, let’s talk about you: How much do you like my new theme? :-)
[tags] Brian Gardner, Chris Pearson, CopyBlogger, ModernPaper, 3 column themes, CSS, theme modification[/tags]

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 10:29 am and is filed under Blogging, the blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Check Out My New Look!”

  1. Looks good! I really like this type of 3 column layout. I hope your info architecture has been SEO’d.

    One note, the mouseover effect on the SOB.gif turns black and you can see a square outline around the oval button. This is using Firefox 2.0.0.4.

  2. Glad to hear you like our 3 column theme version

  3. I do like the new look. It’s neat, clean, definitely uncluttered and easily readable.

  4. Great job on the blog design tweak.

  5. A bad layout drives traffic away. I also think that a unique layout helps establish your brand. There are far too many blogs out there that use unmodified themes, and you see their dopplegangers everywhere,

    I started with the barest of themes I could find, then went elbows deep into the php and css to make it mine. I’m happy with the end results and hopefully the design is pleasing to the people who find the site. If nothing else, I learned how to get xhtml and css to validate :)

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