— CiaoCatherine

New month, new look

I should take a moment to acknowledge the new layout of CiaoCatherine.  Smashing Magazine is a great resource for the serious designer or developer and the, shall I say, competently curious, like me.  They recently published their 2010 roundup of 100 “High Quality” WordPress themes, and there are some real gorgeous ones in there.  Both Lap of Luxury by Design Disease and Bueno by Woo Themes caught my eye, but Bueno won out in the end.  I’m not working with a visually strong, established masthead, and I really disliked that Lap of Luxury focused on the most recent post alone and didn’t leave room “above the fold” (oh, I will forever think of these things in newspaper terms) for other content.  When I think of blogs I stumbled across and now read regularly, very often it was because my eye wandered over to a sidebar with headlines that piqued my interest, and prompted me to click through or scroll through the archives.  There were quite a few layouts that made the list meant for photography blogs/portfolios that I adore.  Maybe one day, but for now this space remains primarily a repository for verbosity.  Still tinkering – pardon my dust while I play around with it.  A positive response so far – let me know what you think, and if you have any suggestions – open to ideas.