Implicit Evaluation with PHP: Jobs
I need help with the design of this site.
When it first started, I had little content, it was hosted on Blogger and had a cheesy tech theme.
Suring the summery of 2006, I moved it to Wordpress and with it came a new theme. It was decidely not geeky, in fact, rather cartoony. It features rounded corners (which I liked) and a usable multi-column layout. Tragically, the theme I based it on was lime green. Using hue-shifts, I made it blue but it was inconsistent, leading to choppy color blocks in block elements. It wasn’t professional enough.
For a few months, I toyed with designs I’d like. They all featured definitive characteristics: The actual content was flush with the browser. All site chrome was on the top, right and bottom to keep reading easy. Content was black-text on white in a serifed font. Chrome was revere video (not always white on black but some lighter-colored text on a darker background). All corners were rounded. I had hoped for a gentle gradient towards the top and right edge, falling behind the corners.
Unfortunently, I’m not much of a designer. While I can prototype what I want to see in Photoshop, implementing it is another story. My designs were ugly, filled with empty streaks caused by incorrect floating and compounded by Wordpress’s structure (which I’m no expert with).
And you’ll notice that the theme today is nothing like what I’ve described. Saying I’m unhappy with it is an understatement. It looks uncomfortable close to a top-site you’d find at a mistyped URL.
I want a more attractive site. I want RSS’s prominence pushed. A huge, glowing (OK, not in an animated-GIF type of way) feed icon would be welcome. I want categories pushed and pages subdued. I want every “browse” page to have a small excerpt (something this theme does make steps towards). Search should be nearly as prominent as the feed icon. I want the content to surpass the chrome in prominence. And I want it flexible enough to take more site features, perhaps forums or a code library.
I don’t want any of this badly enough to pay for. This site does not earn me a penny. It is conspicuously void of Google Adwords or any other advertising venture. If the costs of running the site surpass get to be too much, that might change, but its certainly not a for-profit venture. It is a community service and something which I hope lends me credibility as an advanced PHP developer.
Like I said, there’s no money involved. But if you would like to be associated with this site, use it for a bit of self promotion, whatever, I’d love to see what you can do for it.