Credit Where Credit is Due
woodycakes woodycakes woodycakes
Every year, I'm always 'inspired' by certain websites and they definitely influence the way I redo the look of my livejournal. This year, I got bits and pieces from four different websites that I frequent way too often to come up with the new look for 2011.
My favorite part? The actual real topbar. In past years, I've been simulating it with the faux topbar that I change monthly as it's just one big image. I've literally been cheating a topbar navigation by just creating one big image. This year though, I can actually change individual posts on the topbar without having to upload a whole new image.
And I know I'm no fashion blog, but thanks to this year's 30 for 30, I really did get influenced fashion-wise, though it's not obvious by the way I dress. WhoWhatWear has a really nice clean look so they can focus on the fashion, and I felt like it was time to go back to a black and white look. I haven't done black and white since my Daily Intel layout, so this is a nice return.
Speaking of New York Magazine, I decided to use Vulture's version of the topbar as inspiration over the similar looking Socialitelife and Idolator ones just because I can't do a revolving topbar just yet. So static it is for me, but I'm totally happy with it. Also, if you check the right-most feature, I'll try to actually aggregate all of the content I have on a certain celebrity I fangirl over and update that post. The keyword being try.
As for my sidebar and header navigation? I realize in recent years, I've literally been putting links on them that are purely for my advantage and though that's A-ok, I'm trying my best to make the LJ-visiting experience awesome for everyone (who isn't me), so I've featured more content and tried to filter entries according to interest, just so you can skip all the real-life ramblings (if you aren't interested) and get what you came for. Socialitelife has a great header navigation categorization.
And lastly, the entries themselves come in a different font this year. I'm letting go of Verdana and switching over to Arial as it looks really good on Idolator. I'm also increasing recent entries to 10 per page just because my job taught me that it's always good to give as much as you can without overwhelming the user and with the least amount of effort to click the 'back' button.
I'm still retaining the photo sizes and entry width from the old Daily Intel days but that's just because I'm anal like that. Obviously this entry ran away from me, as always. If you read all that, wow. You are bored, but thanks.
So really, kudos to my 'inspirations' this year: WhoWhatWear for the typography; Vulture for the topbar and some sidebar; Idolator for the entries; and Socialitelife for the header navigation. As always thanks to cartonage for the CSS stylesheet tutorial & kentucka for the topbar help!