Written on February 6th, 2008 at 06:02 am by Darren Rowse

Win a Copy of Web Design for ROI

Blog Design 117 comments

One of the books that I’ve been enjoying lately is Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads. It might surprise regular readers who know that I’m a self confessed web design dummy to know that I’ve been reading (and enjoying) a book about this topic - but I was […]

Written on January 19th, 2008 at 12:01 am by Darren Rowse

10 Remarkable (and Free) Wordpress Themes

Blog Design 70 comments

The following post on great free WordPress Templates was written by Reese Spykerman from Design by Reese.
A search for free Wordpress themes yields thousands of results, some dull or cluttered, some utilitarian, and many inspiring and beautiful. Numerous other well-designed Wordpress themes are available to you, but these are 10 that stand out to me […]

Written on January 8th, 2008 at 02:01 pm by Darren Rowse

How I Redesigned My Blog [by Ben Yoskovitz]

Blog Design 45 comments

One blogger that I read regularly and have come to respect over the last few years is Benjamin Yoskovitz from Instigator Blog. Yesterday Ben and I were chatting on skype and he mentioned that today he was launching a new design on his blog. I liked what I saw of the new design and said […]

Written on January 6th, 2008 at 12:01 am by Darren Rowse

Who Designed Your Blog? [POLL RESULTS]

Blog Design 38 comments

Over the last couple of weeks I ran a poll here at ProBlogger which asked readers who designed their blogs.

1828 readers responded in total (thanks everyone).

DIY - The results showed that 57% of you either considerably tweaked a free template (35%) or designed your blog from scratch yourself (22%).

Free Templates - Another 32% of you […]

Written on January 1st, 2008 at 07:01 pm by Darren Rowse

Improve Your Blog with a Custom Made Theme

Blog Design 24 comments

Today John Chow answers my question about how he improved his blog in 2007.
This question is an easy one to answer because there was one thing I did to my blog in 2007 that impacted it more than anything else I have ever tired for John Chow dot Com.

I got a custom made […]

Written on December 17th, 2007 at 02:12 pm by Darren Rowse

Who Designed Your Blog?

Blog Design 133 comments

Time for a new Poll.
Who designed your blog?
I’m sure there will be other options to those that I included. If you don’t feel your situation is covered feel free to leave a comment below and tell us your answer.

Who Designed Your Blog?

I use a Free Default Template

I use a Free Template (not Default)

I Considerably Tweaked […]

Written on November 25th, 2007 at 10:11 pm by Darren Rowse

Web Graphics Training Course (Photoshop)

Blog Design 17 comments

Do you want to learn how to make great graphics for your blog?

Over at Digital Photography School I only promote a very small group of quality products to my readers. One of the most popular is a Photoshop training resource called Pro Photo Secrets by a fellow Aussie - Shane Goldberg.

Shane’s photoshop training (via hundreds […]

Written on November 25th, 2007 at 12:11 am by Darren Rowse

Be Brave - Break Your Blog

Blog Design 60 comments

The following post on ‘breaking your blog’ and setting up test blogs was submitted by Michael Martin from Pro Blog Design.
One of the best kept secrets in design is that we don’t always know what we’re doing. Understanding design theory and color and all the rest of it is one thing, but when you’re […]

Written on November 17th, 2007 at 06:11 am by Darren Rowse

Blog Design - When to Go for a Professional Template?

Blog Design 74 comments

Time for a little reader discussion. This one is inspired by a question from Frederico from Tutorialstream.com who is considering starting a new blog and asks:

I was wondering if you think that starting with a standard/free/low quality template and after some time (when I have some kind of readership) upgrading to a good one would […]