I have drawn up a basic design in Photoshop for a new theme for the site. Once again i have taken creative measures in naming this theme – “simple”.

My hope is to make this the ‘default’ theme for the website; it is clean, simple and uses all the familiar elements for a WordPress blog. I will also reserve space under the header to display “alternative theme” screenshots for front-end users to browse and choose a theme which best suits them.

The Photoshop mock design is largely used for me to see the individual elements of each section of the header, main-index, sidebar and footer in order to quickly turn into a code.

When i first got my hands on WordPress and began developing my own theme i neglected this stage of the process – and in hindsight can now see how imperative a design, even a basic one, can be in streamlining the entire coding process. Using a grid base to layout the design has also drastically reduced the time needed for additional spacing tweaks which plagued my prior design (which i have since deleted in disgust…), with a uniformed layout the need to add individual padding and margins will not be necessary.

Some elements will need to be considered during the mark-up stage of development but the vast majority of this design is now ready to code.

Categories: Photoshop • Wordpress

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