10 things I hate about your site

Who doesn’t know Lyndi, at Nice 2 All? You don’t? Well, check this out then!

By now it should be no secret that I’m an Entrecard member. While I’ve come across a lot of crap on Entrecard, I’ve also come across some really good blogs. This makes the crap bearable. One of the blogs I’ve discovered is an excellent “bloggers blog” that I have become quite taken with. Not only is the design wonderful, but the content is valid and substantial. Blog Design Blog understands not only the importance of credible and interesting content, but the importance of presenting that content:

A blog that looks like it was put together by someone’s nephew in their basement or uses a free template will give off the impression of being unprofessional, lack of credibility, and sketchy. You could have created the world’s most comprehensive blog on a subject, but your blog design can prevent people from even giving you a chance. And without readers, how are you suppose to make a successful blog?

In my unending pursuit of blog perfection, I stumbled across this juicy little piece of information: your WordPress archives don’t have to be ugly, meaningless blocks of text. Thanks to Pearsonified, your archives can look as pretty as mine (aka formatted and full of life).

Wicked WordPress Archives in One Easy Step!

From Pearsonified:

So, how do we change our boring archives into beautiful, unique pages with images that just beg to be scanned? The answer lies with the…

© Griszka Niewiadomski
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This week’s resource is a cool little Dreamweaver plug-in that quickly and easily lets you create the newest web craze: the accordion effect. I came across this plug-in while pulling my hair out trying to modify open source AJAX code for this clever effect. This new design style is being tested on my old workhorse, Web-Betty.com. A note of caution…this redesign is still underway and buggy in IE 6. NOT the accordion effect, but the refusal of IE 6 to play nicely with .png transparency! (Visit Web-Betty on IE 6 at your own risk.)

From Trio Solutions:

This is a handy tool if you don’t want all sections of your webpage to be visible at the same time, for example, if you have a long page. Gives your page a professional, elaborated look.

While the main purpose of this blog is to spout my opinion, I truly do want it to be a resource for people who endeavor to make their sites and blogs better—better design, better usability, better content, better whatever. To that end, I’m going to start featuring a resource, on a weekly basis (ok, hopefully on a weekly basis). There will be no rhyme or reason as to what I decide to feature on any given week. Whatever suits my fancy; whatever mood I’m in; whatever I’m working on. These will all be deciding factors. So, without further ado, this week’s resource is

From TechRepublic:

“Many novice Web developers use CSS positioning and layout directives without a sound understanding of how they really work. A brief introduction to the box model explains what it is and how you can use it to make better decisions about positioning your HTML elements on a Web page.“