A very kind reader of mine just sent me a copy of Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s book, WordPress for Dummies from my Amazon Wish List. This may sound like an odd book to put for a designer to want, but I believe in learning everything possible about my profession, and learning from a recognized expert is the way to go. Even thought I’ve used and designed for WordPress for several years, there’s always something more for me to learn. I’ve just started reading it, but it looks even better than I thought it would be. I’m looking forward to finishing it.

The answer is probably yes, but I’ll come back to that in a moment.

There is a lot of confusion over what exactly an RSS feed is, and how it’s made available. An RSS feed is a simple XML file. As a blogger, you don’t need to know that. They come in one of several (7?) formats. You don’t need to know that either. The benefit of RSS feeds, is that they allow people to subscribe top your content. In other words, it lets people know that you have fresh content, and brings them back to your site. That’s the point you need to know.

Back to the original question. If people can’t find your RSS feed, is it still there? WordPress and other blogging platforms create and update RSS feeds automatically. Most blog themes have the feeds linked in the header in such a way as to notify browsers and feed readers of their presence. If you were to remove those links, intentionally or by accident, your site would appear to viewers as if it had no RSS feeds. The RSS feeds however, are still there. So if your RSS feeds aren’t visible to site visitors, check the header to see if they’re linked properly. It should look something like this:

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS 2.0″ href=”(your URL)/feed” />

There may be several of these, and the type and file name might vary, but that’s because most blogging platforms offer several kinds of feeds. If you’re looking at your theme files, you might see some PHP in there, so it would look like:

<link rel=”alternate” type=”text/xml” title=”RSS .92″ href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss_url’); ?>” />

For a good example of an unlinked feed, look at the comment feed in WordPress blogs. It is part of the basic WordPress template, but isn’t linked to the header. So in effect, it exists, but nobody can see it. You want a comment feed on your WordPress blog? Link it to the header, and it will appear to feed readers. There may be a little variation in your WordPress installation, but the feed should be at:

<link rel=“alternate” type=“text/xml” title=“Comments” href=“(your URL)/wp-commentsrss2.php” />

Add that to your header, with your correct URL of course, and it should work.

Why would you want to remove access to your feeds? FeedBurner would be one example. By removing access to the normal feeds, and installing a FeedBurner feed, you direct all subscription traffic to FeedBurner. This allows you to track subscription statistics more carefully.

Feeds, no feeds, lots of feeds, or just one? That’s a question I’ll leave for another day. Until then though, at least you’ll know why they’re visible on your site, or why they aren’t.

I noticed today that I wasn’t getting any comments. IN fact, I hadn’t received any for a couple of days. When I checked my site however, it wasn’t that I hadn’t received any, but that I hadn’t been notified of them. When I upgraded WordPress to version 2.3.1 recently, I stopped being notified of comments, pingbacks and trackbacks. My e-mail account was still working, and my auto site backup e-mail came in just fine, but those discussion related e-mails didn’t come in. Apparently, this is caused by a change in how WordPress handles these outgoing e-mails. The e-mail account it was trying to send them from was wordpress@(mydomain.com). I don’t have an account by that name, so my hosting service (Bluehost) was justifiably disallowing those e-mails. Adding that account at my hosting service, and the problem is solved.

I’d like to say thanks to Double Blind for showing me how to fix the problem.

I’m changing my WordPress Plugins around. It sholdn’t affect site use, but you never know. I’ve dropped the Challenge plugin for instance. While it was working well, it was a little annoying. Spam Karma is more than capable of filtering out what comment spam I get. Essentially I was using the Challenge as a diagnostic tool to help identify a PHP time-out error. It ruled out the problem I suspected, but I found the problem anyway, so that’s taken care of.

I’m trying out StumbleUpon. It’s essentially a search engine with a randomness factor in it. You tell it general categories of things you like, and on demand it shows you interesting content in those areas. For any of you already using it, I’ve added a Stumble it! button for your use. Use it!

I’ve been slowly making changes to my blog theme, you may have noticed, but probably not. Pretty minor stuff for the most part. Trying various things to streamline the blog design and make it function smoother. It’s actually working very well, but there is always room for improvement.

I’m still slowly changing my WordPress setup. I’m just trying to make things run a little smoother, and be a little lower maintenance. WordPress is pretty low maintenance to begin with, but with a few plugins, and a patience you can make things run even smoother. A good spam blocker like Spam Karma, automatic backups, and a few other things and it’s pretty hands off for the most part. If I could just quit designing new themes for it that is.

For future reference, all Open House posts will have comments and trackbacks turned off a week after they’re posted. I’ve had a rash of posts linking to older Open posts, which sort of defeats the purpose of the idea. I want the newest comments and links on the home page, not last December’s open post.

I’m doing some revising of the site to combat spam commenting. I’m continuing to use Spam Karma, it’s been working well. The problem seems to be that so much spam is hitting Spam Karma that it’s using up my entire PHP load and timing out the site.  In an effort to stop this I’ve installed a challenge question.  This should cut down on the spam that gets through to Spam Karma, and speed up the whole process. I’ve also installed WP-cache so that pages should load quicker.

I’ve turned back on comment subscribe as well. Hopefully the other changes will allow this to remain on as I’m fond of it.

Registered and logged in commenters will not receive the challenge, so if you find it annoying you’re welcome to register.

I’d appreciate it if a few of you would comment on this post, or any other,  and let me know if it’s working properly. My e-mail link is at the top of the sidebar if you can’t seem to get a comment through.

Another Monday, another Open House.

Subscribe to comments is turned off for the moment. Something is causing my site to bog down, and it seems to be comment related. It’s likely at least somewhat related to spam, I’ve been getting hammered for a couple of weeks. Nothing is getting through, but it’s taking bandwidth to filter it out. Working on the problem

Comments and trackbacks are open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

Designer review thy self! Someone asked me how I would review my own site yesterday, so I gave it some thought. I won’t do a full review, but I’ll hit some of the high points, and the low points.

Style:
Perfect! OK, not exactly.

Too much stuff for instance. While the content layout is fairly good, the header could use a little more open space.

The style is also somewhat inappropriate. It’s a Western WordPress theme on a design related site. Not exactly what readers are looking for, and not reassuring that I can talk knowledgeably on the subject. I should use something more modern, and design oriented. That said, I’m not going to change it. This is my place to play. I change themes when I want, and I use any theme that amuses me. This site was intended a s a stress reliever, and if I start worrying abut traffic and appropriate themes then it becomes more like… work. I design for other people for a living, this is for me.

On the plus side, I do think that as Cowboy WordPress themes go, this current one works. Especially since I’ve removed the wolf image from the header. (A whim I grew tired of) If I had more cowboy themed content in this blog, this would be an appropriate theme to use.

I also think my use of images tends to be reasonably good. You may argue that my choice of images is bad, I can’t argue with that. I would however stand up for how I use them. I like to use carefully optimized images, repeating images, and overlapping images to give the effect of a single large image. This keeps my load time reasonable, and allows me to use a fluid layout which I’ve always been fond of. I’m particularly pleased with how the tooled leather texture on the left edge turned out. Again, you may not like it, but I think the repeat worked well, and the textural aspect works well with the other images.

Structure:
One word for you. WordPress! I keep it on one of the more recent editions, and I use fairly solid themes. While my load time is occasionally a little high, it’s a pretty solid site for the most part.

Content:
A random mix of politics, humor and design. If I’d stay on any one of those topics, my site statistics would be much better. I should also write more consistently, more less, anything that’s consistent… but I probably won’t.

What would I change:
Somewhat of a moot point, since I can change anything I want.

Summary:
Perfect! Well… it at least works for me. A good, structurally sound site with good layout and readability. Content is a little random as is the posting regularity. The themes are usually well functioning, but often inappropriate for the subject. Traffic could be improved by a series of known improvements which I’m likely never going to make.

Trackposted to Blog @ MoreWhat.com, DeMediacratic Nation, DragonLady’s World, Nuke’s news and views, Pirate’s Cove, Webloggin, Conservative Thoughts, and Pursuing Holiness, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Michelle Malkin’s blog has been redesigned by the nice people at The Blog Studio.

This month marks my third year in the blogosphere. To celebrate, I’m launching MM.com version 2.0. Thanks to the wizardry of Mark Jaquith and the design gurus at The Blog Studio, you’re looking at a radically re-tooled blog format with some cool new user features -Michelle Malkin

Well done! It’s a three column design, with a double sidebar on the right. While this is a style which I’m generally not fond of, this works. The two columns of content, primary and one sidebar, visually separate nicely from the traditional sidebar.

Whitespace is used well, as it was in their HotAir design. Also reflective of the HotAir design is their subtle use of color. The very simple color palette on both sites works well with the the large number of images they tend to use.

The coding looks good as I’d expect from The Blog Studio, though I’m seeing an odd use of Font tags here and there. I suspect the final design is being tweaked as I write this and those will likely go away soon. Time will tell.

Congratulations to Michelle Malkin on her new design.

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Blue Collar Muse, Committees of Correspondence, third world county, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, The Amboy Times, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

This new theme I have up has been working nicely for me. Just enough cowboy in this theme to make me feel at home. I tested it extensively in Internet Explorer and Firefox. It was tested in Opera too. No problems. One of the recent IE updates seems to have induced a margin collapse error in the left margin though. Not too difficult to fix. That is, not to difficult to fix once you realize what’s happening. Really annoying if you don’t initially realize what the problem is. It seemed to be a poorly nested element, and I searched for that for quite some time to no avail. Because that wasn’t what it was. Turns out I had two problems. The margin collapse that I eventually found, and a plugin that was garbling some code.

Anybody having trouble with the Comments QuickTags Plugin? I ended up turning it off here and on several other blogs I maintain. It was breaking the permalinked pages on all of them. Turn off the plugin and they snap right back.

The solution to the margin collapse error in case anybody is interested, is to add a border to the element outside the one with the collapsing margin. Not exactly intuitive. Go read Andy Budd’s No Margin for Error post for a really good explanation of this.

Trackposted to Blue Star Chronicles, Perri Nelson’s Website, Webloggin, The Amboy Times, The Random Yak, and On the Horizon, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

And now back to our regularly scheduled Design Review series. OK, not very regular, but I’m working on it. Today’s choice of subjects is Grouchy’s Liberaltopia. It’s a fairly new site, having been started earlier this year, but the design has a very mature and professional look.

Style:
Their style starts off with a bang. Anyone who can design a WordPress theme around a header image of the US Constitution and flag has my vote. A dark red gradient background anchors the page nicely.

Good use of color. While I normally cringe at making links blue (often looks unintentional), it works very well here as an accent to the red background and white page.

I’m particularly impressed with the layout, a very nice use of space. They have avoided the common blog design error of crowding and cluttering. Everything is nicely space, and highly readable.

Using a flag image in the blockquotes adds a nice touch. It balances nicely with the rest of the theme.

Overall good marks for style.

Structure:
This is a WordPress site, and as you might expect from me, I like the site structure. It’s not perfect however. There is some sloppy coding I don’t like. After a quick look I’d guess it’s a widget or two. Nothing wrong with using them, but I don’t always like the code they produce. More of a matter of personal preference than anything, I’d be shocked if this coding caused any problems, it’s pretty insignificant.

Content:
Content is well written by authors that have a sense of humor. They take their subjects seriously, but not themselves. All of these things are pluses in my book.

What would I change:
I’d think about changing the login bar at the top. To my eye it’s not quite right. I’d say it either needs to be more prominent, or less. Removing it and putting those option into the sidebar would be another solution.

I’d make an effort to clean up the code somewhat, but that’s likely produced by widgets or code from external sources so that may not be an option.

I’d consider changing the use of the flag image in the blockquotes so that it doesn’t repeat in long quotes. I like it’s use, but I’d fading it out in long quotes rather than repeating. This is one of those things I might change my mind on as soon as I tried it, but I think it would visually work better.

I’m personally not a fan of animated site elements for the most part. I’d likely replace the rotating gear element that begins each post.

Summary:
A very good design, with decent execution. While I see things that I’d personally change, I don’t really see anything I’d consider an error.

The coding could improve, but that could be said for most blogs. I don’t see any coding issue that’s likely to cause a problem.

What would I not change? White space. The use of space is good, and I’d be very careful about changing that.

Like their friends/rivals the Rotties, they’ve got the beginnings of a good branding effort going here, and I’d make an effort to maintain that in future. I think the use of historical imagery, and the red, white, and blue color palette should continue on any future design updates.

I’m fond of this theme and give it good marks, and I think the owners and designer of it should be very pleased.

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, third world county, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, Dumb Ox Daily News, Pursuing Holiness, The Yankee Sailor, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I stumbled upon something interesting today. In the visual editing mode in WordPress, there’s another formatting toolbar that you can toggle off and on. It allows you to use headings, underline, remove formatting, and more.

Be Lambic or Green has the full details, and I don’t want to steal their thunder, so go and check it out. Don’t forget to come right back.

Trackposted to The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, A Blog For All, The Random Yak, Big Dog’s Weblog, stikNstein… has no mercy, basil’s blog, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and Conservative Thoughts, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I’ve been meaning to do a review of The Silent K since it’s author asked me too an eon ago. See Krista, I didn’t forget. Since this is both a request, and a personal blog, my criteria for this review are slightly different than me previous reviews. A personal blog should reflect the style of the author. As in the professional or political blog, technical components are important, but style is comes more to the forefront in the personal blog. Krista’s style is in a word… colorful.

Style:
Krista describes herself as, among other things a “hobbyist, photographer, knitter, craftster“, and an “appreciator of aesthetics and art“. Her artistic nature is openly apparent in her blog. It’s theme may change with the season, or more often, but it’s always colorful. Her current theme is nicely done in blues and greens with a nice header image. One of the trademarks of her many themes is the great use of color and imagery in the headers.

• Her use of color is skilled, she’s not afraid of bright colors, but they are always well balanced and thought out
• Uses personal photography often and well
• Layout and typography are very good, her site’s readability is always high – not an unimportant aspect of design
• Good sense of whimsy in her themes – designers shouldn’t take themselves too seriously

Structure:
The Silent K is a WordPress blog which says good things about it’s long term stability. Load time is a bit high at 49.77 seconds on DSL or 162.05 seconds on 56K modem. Huffington Post’s was about half that. This longer time is likely mostly the result of pulling her photos from Flicker.com rather than her own domain.

The coding of the site could use a little improvement, but there is nothing that would put the site or the RSS feeds in any jeopardy. Most of the code issues I see are the result of incorporating widgets and so forth into the sidebar. They can be temperamental, as they’re often coded in the “one size fits all, but nobody well” theory of design.

Content:
Krista writes about art, knitting and other crafts, a little about blogging, and a lot about life. Often humorous, she’s always entertaining.

What I would change:
Krista is an artist, and a graphic designer in the process of becoming. I’m hesitant to suggest much here, I’m more interested in seeing where she goes next. As I’ve written about before, and designer needs to know their tools. Krista needs to continue to learn, and continue to grow as an artist and designer.

Summary:
Web design is artistic talent mixed with technical knowledge and skills. It can be hard to balance those two divergent directions when you’re learning. The Silent K is a very nice blog by someone trying to do just that. I can’t see her design doing anything but improving as her technical skills grow to match her artistic vision. Good luck Krista.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, Is It Just Me?, The Random Yak, Adam’s Blog, basil’s blog, Shadowscope, Thought Alarm, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Phastidio.net, Conservative Cat, Sujet- Celebrities, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Faultline USA, third world county, Right Celebrity, The HILL Chronicles, Woman Honor Thyself, stikNstein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, Renaissance Blogger, and The Pink Flamingo, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I’m updating my WordPress theme. Nothing very awe inspiring, just very minor things. If you see any odd behavior on one of the pages though, it’s probably me. Try refreshing your screen, and if that doesn’t work, let me know.

I’ve updated four blogs, including this one, to WordPress 2.1 in the last 45 minutes. Upgrades are very smooth. I don’t use too many plugins, so that wasn’t much of an issue. All of my plugins had a version approved for this version already, though I did have to upgrade one plugin. I’d apparently fallen behind on plugin updates.

The concept of design neutrality, is simply to make no statement with your design. In practice, it can very difficult. Design Neutral isn’t the lack of design, but design making little or no statement. The more content your design has, be it graphic design for print or web, the more difficult it is to not make a statement. In some cases, pulling off a design neutral project takes much more work than creating a distinct style. WordPress’ default themes make as good an effort at design neutrality as I’ve seen lately. Simple, unobtrusive, but not boring. the only thing they really say is “I can’t decide on a theme”. There’s nothing wrong with that. While I’d personally choose a clear and distinct design every time, some subjects, and some writers benefit from using a default theme. It gives them a “safe” platform from which to speak. It minimizes the ability of readers to read anything into the writing that doesn’t belong. It helps the reader take the words at face value, if it is at all possible.

The confusion comes when someone removes all traces of design, and calls it neutral. It isn’t neutral. Simplistic… minimalistic maybe. Devoid of style possibly, but not neutral. Google.com is simplistic. It makes a distinct stylistic statement though, just a very minimalistic one. For a search engine which phenomenal traffic, and little original content, it works. For a blog, or personal website, it wouldn’t work.

What does work, is a simple color palette with a few well placed graphics. Midrange colors that are neither too bright, or too dark. A simple layout that is organized and efficient. Clear and legible content in common fonts. These things will give you neutrality. When looking at a design, the word subtle should come to mind.If you’re working on a design, keep this in mind: Removal of all references to style isn’t Design Neutral, it’s undesigned.

I was feeling pretty good this morning, so I thought I’d risk life and limb today and review the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler. According to Google Analytics, they have 6,380,170 hits as of this post.

Style:
Love it or hate it, the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has a distinct style. Strongly black and red, with content in white columns, it incorporates a fluid three column layout on the home page, with two columns on interior pages. While the content columns float free of a containing background in a manner that I criticized Argghhh! for in my last review, it works here. The solid background and fluid layout act as the container, giving it the grounded look I thought was needed at Argghhh!.

The use of color is well done, with a strong black background and red used liberally as an accent. (The only liberal aspect you’re likely to find on this site.) Gray blockquotes with red outlines nicely compliment this simple color scheme. The links are blue, which manages to be clearly visible without being overpowering.

Graphics are well done in a very unified theme.

Structure:
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler is a WordPress site with an entirely CSS layout. The site structure is well done and should be represented well in any modern browser. Load time is high with 48.94 seconds on DSL or 157.08 seconds on 56K modem. This is quite high by blog standards and should be improved upon. A lot of the load time is caused by the high number of images. There were 72 images on the homepage when I tested it.

The CSS is well thought out and complete, though it could use a little clean up work. It has a some non-standard coding that should be fixed or removed.

While the site structure is good, the WordPress theme could use some minor updates. A quick validation check of the home page shows no true errors, but 442 warnings. Most of them are insignificant, but should be easy to fix too. A site with this level of traffic should really have this fixed. Most of them seem to be minor bits of extraneous code which could be easily removed from the base PHP of the theme. There is also some misuse of the CSS element ID which should be fixed. The ID element is used to describe a unique element which can occur once on a page, but is being used multiple times here.

While most if not all of the questionable code I’m seeing is not in the posts themselves, I’m concerned that it may affect RSS feeds and possibly the long term stability of the site. Without correction, what should be minor changes to the CSS or PHP could have much more dramatic effects than intended. The theme’s PHP and CSS should be carefully checked and cleaned of offending and extraneous bits.

Content:
It is politically off the charts to the right and pulls no punches. The authors’ vocabulary of obscene and profane language is vast and well used. This site doesn’t tolerate idiots of any stripe. While its authors will openly mock and ridicule anyone they feel is less than honest or sincere about their beliefs and/or politics, they are reasonably tolerant of polite disagreement. That said, their commenters are not always so polite.

What would I change:
I’d update the PHP to remove extraneous code.

I’d lower the number of images and optimize their use in an effort to decrease load time. Some improvement should be possible with little or no effect on the overall style.

I’d make minor changes to the CSS to make it more closely meet modern standards.

I’d add High Desert Wanderer to the blogroll, because… it appears to be tragically missing.

Summary:
While the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has a very distinct style, minor changes should be made to images, CSS and PHP in order improve load time and to make it more closely meet modern web standards.

As I said before, the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has a distinct style. By intention or accident, a unique and very marketable brand has been created here. Great care should be taken to maintain this style while improvements are being made.

I’m not going to take the time for a full review of Tom DeLay.com, it’s just not worth my time, but I thought I’d point out a couple of problems.

Problem 1 – Boring!
The site has very little visual interest. The only graphic element in the design is a poorly done header image containing a picture of Tom DeLay. Yawn. If you don’t want to take the time to do something interesting, stick with a default template of some kind. Then at least we’ll know you don’t care.

Problem 2 – Comments
What I found objectionable about the comments is that there isn’t a single blogger’s URL showing anywhere. The only way to find out if the commenter is a blogger is to click on their name and go to a second page on the site which tells you if they left a URL. Annoying, and a little misleading. Showing a blogger’s URL is a simple way of putting the comments in the context of their other writing. By putting them one step away from the comments, you are removing this context.

In my experience, bloggers make up a significant percentage of commenters. Here though, I only managed to find two bloggers, William Teach and Becky, who left their URLs. It seems unlikely that all these are all people without blogs. Something odd is going on there. Either they’re being filtered (a note at the bottom of the comment page suggested this might be the case) or there is something odd about the way the site is functioning that is filtering out most of the URLs. Either way, the comments do not appear to be working as they should.

Problem 3 – Links
Far and away the biggest problem I see is the links in the content section of the blog. They’re hidden. Even in the small image I’ve placed above, the links should be at least partially visible. Sure you couldn’t read the text at that size, but the links should be bold, or italic, or colored. Anything to make them stand out from the regular text. They don’t stand out though. The text style of links is identical to the rest of the text unless you hover your mouse over a link. The image above contains three links in those first few paragraphs, but you’d have to hunt to find them.

The content links also have a flaw that’s a pet peeve of mine. Links are regular weight when there is no mouse over, but bold weight when hovered over. This causes the text to move whenever a link is “found”. Scroll your mouse down the page and each link passed over will make the text move. You might want to take Dramamine before you try that.

Summary:
This is a poorly designed site with little visual interest. The comment section is of questionable value, with commenter’s URLs placed one step away or missing. The link styles are horribly done. They are difficult to find inline and cause the text to shift in an annoying way when found. Everyone should strive to set an example. Unfortunately, TomDeLay.com is striving to be a bad example.

h/t to Raising Farrahzona » A Blog Roll I Will Never Be On for pointing out the site. I’d heard it existed, but hadn’t seen it yet.

There are almost as many reasons to quit blogging as there are to start, but I’ve noticed a trend. A significant number of people seem to quit blogging because of the time and effort that it takes. A perfectly valid reason. Blogging can be time consuming, and a lot of the time consuming parts aren’t very much fun. Consider how much time do you waste on spam comments and trackbacks for instance. How the annoying little details of links and quotes and making your post look like you want? What’s the solution? Here’s a short list of things that I use to make things go a little smoother.

• Hands free design – Choose a blog theme that is well thought out and low maintenance. You’re there to blog, not fix the site
• Install Spam Karma or some other quality spam protection. You shouldn’t have to fight with that junk.
• Firefox and Sage – Any good feed reader will work, but this is my choice. Allows for more reading in less time
• Performancing – A blogging tool that allows you to view a page, blog it, and get on with your life. I prefer the blog to draft option, which doesn’t post to the web, but saves as a draft that I can edit and post later.
• WordPress – Any good blogging software will do, but choosing one that doesn’t work for you makes things much more difficult than they have to be. Try a few, you’ll notice the difference.
• Dedicated e-mail account – Get an e-mail account just for your blog. Don’t give it out indiscriminately. When you don’t want to think about your blog, don’t check it.
• Blog about what you like. Having fun is the key to lasting as a blogger.

That should give you at least a start on streamline your blogging workflow. Sure it takes a few minutes to make some of those changes, but each one can save you time in the future. Then the time you devote to your blog can be spent… blogging.

Staying with the “starting from the top” theme, my second design review subject is Michelle Malkin’s Internet broadcast site, Hot Air. A powerhouse conservative blog which is currently averaging 67,917 hits per day.

Style:
The content packed layout was designed by The Blog Studio with a minimalist color scheme. It is a clean black and white design, with a moderate use of gray and some red highlights. Prominent advertising does not compete with content.

The overall style of the blog really quite good. The whimsical use of graphics and the Cox & Forkum logo in particular are well suited to the writing style of the blog.

The details of the site were not overlooked. The typography is well done, and a careful use of negative space makes the text flow nicely.

On a negative note, the blockquotes crowd their contained text on the top and bottom of each quote in the blog posts which I find a little annoying. They also crowd the left edge of the quotes in the comments, which I find more annoying. Both of those aspects are more a matter of personal taste than anything though. The CSS in general is actually fairly elegant.

Structure:
This WordPress powered site is a completely CSS layout as you’d expect. The structural framework appears very solid, and any modern browser would reliably represent it. Load time is high with 39.86 seconds on DSL or 127.88 seconds on 56K modem.This is a little more than twice as long as my site’s current theme which has a 17 second load time on DSL. This bandwidth drain is mostly caused by the high level of graphics. When I tested the load time, HotAir’s home page contained 66 images.

There is a little sloppy coding to clean up, but it seems to be almost exclusively related to advertising. This is an extremely minor point that would be very unlikely to affect anything. The blog posting code is very clean as are the resulting RSS feeds.

Content:
Content is a Conservative mix of politics and humor. It is graphically rich and updated frequently. In addition to the writing, three or four episodes of Vent, a Michelle Malkin vlog, are posted weekly.

Content is well presented in a clear and uncrowded layout. Very nice use of negative space with the blog posts.

What would I change:
The first thing I would try to change would be the load time. A difficult task that I’m not sure I would have much success with. This site is built around it’s use of graphics and the resulting load time would be difficult to improve upon. The load time definitely does not warrant changing the site style.

I’d make an attempt to clean up the advertisers code too, but this also could be futile. Small corrections are likely possible, but not all will be correctable. This is more annoying than anything. As a perfectionist at heart, I’d like things like this to be perfect, but it isn’t likely to happen any time soon.

Final summary:
This is a clever design, beautifully executed. It’s one of the best blog designs I’ve seen in terms of crafting the design to suit both the purpose and the authors. Well built, well organized, and just a touch of whimsy.