A new look for a new year. I’ve been working on a redesign for this blog for the past few months and over the weekend I finally found the time to put it all together. I hope you enjoy it! For those of you who are interested, I’ve put together a list of the resources that I used to redesign this blog.
Web Hosting: BlueHost
Once upon a time my blog was located here. Since then I’ve taken control over the hosting of my blog and I’ve been using BlueHost as my web host. I’ve been very happy with them, mostly because they are so WordPress-friendly. If you think you might want to try hosting your own blog through Bluehost and WordPress, Caroline Middlebrook has written an excellent e-book on the subject and it is completely free for you to download.
Blog Platform: WordPress
In a word, WordPress is awesome. It has changed the way I look at web production and content management systems. It is sooo easy to use. One of the reasons I wanted to update the blog was to take advantage of a new feature they have called Widgets. It makes it very easy to customize your sidebar and even add cool features like RSS feeds, and Tag clouds (see where it says Guten Tag? Pretty clever, huh?) I’m hoping to use this tag cloud to entice some of my newer readers to check out some of my older posts. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
WordPress Theme: Rockin Minimal
I love this theme because I am a minimalist at heart. It is so simple, and extremely easy to customize. It also comes in a 2-column version. You might recognize it from the days that I was still updating OrientedX3.com.
Graphics: iStockphoto.com
This is a great site for inexpensive stock photography. It’s roughly a $1 per photo and they have some pretty decent stuff. They also have illustrations which are a bit more expensive, but it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than hiring a designer. Want even cheaper stock photography? How about free? Try Stock.xchng. They have tons of free stock photos that you can use on your blog. Photoshop Elements was used to create the logo. I also used this great article, found on Digg, to get that Web 2.0 look.
Special Mention: SEO by AskShane.org
Shane is kind of the web go-to guy in the nurse blogger community. He is the one who initially convinced me to get my rear in gear and start hosting PixelRN on my own domain, and for that I am grateful. Did you know that Shane is actually a great go-to guy for all things concerning SEO? (And if you are scratching your head saying “What the heck is SEO?” I urge you to visit his website immediately!) SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s all about getting more traffic to your website. Quite simply, if you follow his advice, you will get more hits.
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I hope you will find these links to be useful. Even though I left the world of web design to become a nurse, it is still a passion of mine, and I hope I can impart a little of that passion to some of my fellow bloggers. As always, if you have any questions about any of these resources please leave a comment and I will try to address it.