Dec 2 2006

The Singing Bird Blog – Custom WordPress Design

The Singing Bird Blog – Custom WordPress Design
Client: The Singing Bird Blog Details: Implementation, Graphic Design Technology: WordPress, CSS, XHTML

(Click image to enlarge)

wordpress blog designwordpress blog designer lisa sabin wilson e.webscapeswordpress.com import to wordpress blog, wordpress designer, blog design, blog designs, css, graphic design

Linda at The Singing Bird Blog contacted me for a new design for her blog. She had a blog at WordPress.com and thought it was time that she have her own hosted version. She was looking for a bird – not just any bird, but a black bird. You would think the bird would be singing – but Linda wanted random LETTERS… coming out of its mouth, instead of music notes.

Her color scheme of choice: Brown, Tan, Blue and Black – nice earthy tones. She chose to host her new blog with us at Blogs About Hosting – she picked out the package she needed, registered her domain with us and then let me have at it!

I set up her account and installed WordPress for her. Then, I needed to import her posts from her current WordPress.com blog into her new WordPress blog hosted on our servers. WordPress.com has a nice export feature that allows users to export their posts, comments and categories. I used Aaron’s plugin to accomplish this – - but found it to be a tad bit buggy when it came to importing the categories. When I imported the data using his plugin, it created a category for every post in the blog. 65 posts equaled 65 categories – - each category named as a number. So, under the category listings, we had 1, 2, 3, etc.. and so on. I modified the plugin just a bit – - with a minor tweak and was able to import the posts without categorizing them – - so they all landed in the ever popular “Uncategorized” category. Then we just recategorized them.

Later, I’m going to have Chris take a look at that plugin and see if he can’t tweak it a bit more to get the category import to work the way it needs to – - it’s a great plugin, though – big thanks to Aaron for providing it!

After all that was complete – I set up Linda’s new design by E.Webscapes on her blog and she loves it! Her blog is a very interesting read – particularly if you are interested in topics of adoption and related resources.

Lisa Sabin-Wilson is a creative designer and founder of E.Webscapes. She is the author of WordPress For Dummies and BuddyPress For Dummies, and is a regular speaker at national conferences on the topics of WordPress, blogging and design. Blog | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

E.Webscapes BUZZ!: Join today & receive 2 WEEKS FREE WordPress tips from author Lisa Sabin-Wilson - delivered to you daily. Buzz members also receive FIRST notice of discounts, specials and book release announcements!

Related Posts

Send this post to Twitter!
Share this on Facebook Stumble This Article Design Float Delicious DesignBump Delicious

9 Responses to “The Singing Bird Blog – Custom WordPress Design”

  1. TEN Best » Blog Archive » Late breaking news

    02. Dec, 2006

    [...] The Singing Bird Blog – Custom WordPress <b>Design</b> [...]

  2. Net Best 20 » Late breaking news

    02. Dec, 2006

    [...] The Singing Bird Blog – Custom WordPress <b>Design</b> [...]

  3. Twenty Best Sites » Late breaking news

    03. Dec, 2006

    [...] The Singing Bird Blog – Custom WordPress <b>Design</b> [...]

  4. Aaron Brazell

    04. Dec, 2006

    For the record, the bugs are in WordPress importer which I did not build. :)

  5. Lisa Sabin-Wilson

    04. Dec, 2006

    Actually, I figured that when I attempted to do an RSS import from another WP.com blog into a hosted WP – - same issue occurred with the category building… so the bugs aren’t yours after all, I stand corrected. Thanks again for providing the plugin.

    Cheers :)

  6. Graphic Design Dude

    09. Jan, 2007

    Very nice design, effective and clean. Did you use Illustrator to achieve it?

  7. Lisa Sabin-Wilson

    09. Jan, 2007

    Hey Dude :) Thanks – - and no, the bird vector image was obtained from iStock and we used Photoshop to manipulate the vector image for the design work.

    Cheers!

  8. Kastle

    21. Mar, 2008

    I like the design… but did you see if another site is using this exact same image from iStock? Yup! twitter.com, one of the most popular networking sites online. Knew that bird looked familiar….

  9. Lisa Sabin-Wilson

    21. Mar, 2008

    @Kastle – I know, isn’t that crazy? That’s what happens when people choose to use stock imagery from resources like iStock – there is no guarentee that someone else isn’t using the same image out there somewhere :)

    Thanks for stopping by!

Leave a Reply