Blogging Blog

A Cornucopia of Icons

Today's Guest Blogger is Anne, gentle host of Ample Sanity, one of the tastiest, crunchiest, resource-full weblogs on the Net. You can learn more about Anne at the end of this post.

Web icons are a wonderful way to add visual impact and personality to a blog. Here's a nice list of free web icons to spice up your design.

• 165 Vector Icons, 5 Colours | Liquidicity
• Bartelme Designs Microformats Icons
• Blog Icons by Sonia Anepeta
• Brand Spanking New Doctype Icons 2
• Brand Spanking New Greyscale Mini Icons
• Crystal Clear Icons
• DesignMagus Free Icons
• Drunkey Love Iconset
• ExplodingBoy Pixel Icons
• FamFamFam Icon Sets
• FamFamFam Mint Icons
• Feed Icons
• Ganato Psd Icons
• Giøn Icon Set
• GraphicPUSH 10 Free Blog Icons
• Kleines Weblog Iconset
• Markup Icons
• Mini Pixel Icons | N.Design
• OPML Icon Project
• RSS Icons | Nyssa Brown
• Sanscons
• Sweetie
• Tiny Little Icons
• Twotone Web Icons
• User Interface Icons
• UtomBox Web 2.0 Icons
• World Mini Flags

Remember, a link back to these generous folks is a nice way to say "thank you", even if it's not required. And have a spectacular day!

Anne: Purveyor of Imagination. Curator of Curiosities. Addicted to outstanding sites.

• Baby-boomer, humorist, (ex)actress
• Current Industry: Non-Prophet
• Ethnicity: Chiricahua Apache
• Socially: Irresponsible
• Cancer: In Remission
• Blog+Portal=Blortal

Blogging Punch! Blogging Pizazz!

Today's Guest Blogger is Anne, gentle host of Ample Sanity, one of the tastiest, crunchiest, resource-full weblogs on the Net. You can learn more about Anne at the end of this post.

You're such a style puppy, sitting there in your reactee, sporting a tribal tattoo or tramp stamp. But did you know stylin' tats work on blogs as well?

Tasty Tattoo is a free set of PNG files or Photoshop brushes for your blog/design projects. This trendy set has been expertly handcrafted by Jason Gaylor, the creative fellow behind Designfruit, and they're a snap to resize or colorize without loss of quality.

If tattoos aren't your thing, you'll find other equally tasty sets as well. Japanese Foliage is a beautiful set inspired by Japanese-styled prints, and Valentastic Valentine has romantic flourishes.

As always, please read Designfruit's terms of use page. All of these elements are a great way to easily add a bit of punch and pizazz to your design. Blogging is such a lovely comfort of strangers -- how wonderful to find caring, sharing folks who inspire us every day.

Anne: Purveyor of Imagination. Curator of Curiosities. Addicted to outstanding sites.

• Baby-boomer, humorist, (ex)actress
• Current Industry: Non-Prophet
• Ethnicity: Chiricahua Apache
• Socially: Irresponsible
• Cancer: In Remission
• Blog+Portal=Blortal

If your blog were a building. . .

...what kind of building would it be?

• An office, a factory, a shop?
• A house, an apartment, a farmhouse?
• A palace, a shack, a chicken coop?
• Perhaps a workshop, a crafting room, a studio?
• Or even a garden, a park, a forest?

There was a time when we thought of websites as places; places where we would spend some time, wandering about and exploring. As a proud elder blogger, I was around during that time, and my site designs reflect that.

Now we seem to think of websites more like billboards -- something we must grasp quickly as we drive by. A website must grab our attention immediately, above the fold, because we won't stay long.

As personal bloggers, or keepers of online diaries and journals, we can ignore some of this advice. We can make our online space our home space, with the comforts and entertainments we like to offer our guests (and ourselves.)

I think . . .

This Ugly Blog...

I wrote this for Watermark, then realized it's appropriate for this blog, too. I think most folks realize that this blog is not designed for probloggers (though they may find some helpful hints here) but for those of us who blog mostly for ourselves, our friends, and for fun. Thus: resources and buttons. And thus: a blog some find whimsical, and others find ugly.

On to the post:

I've spent the past few days redesigning Watermark (again), before I read Top 10 Ways to Uglify Your Blog. As it happens, I did some of what Christian would advise, but not all -- and not always for his reasons.

I love 80x15 blog buttons, and tag clouds. I think the buttons are fun, and I find tag clouds (not, as he states, organized radomly, but by frequency, and/ or alphabetically) easy to navigate. However, I don't have ads, and my photo is only on the About page. Feed buttons are nicely coordinated with everything else, and there is only one for each feed. I had already reached the conclusion that if you use a social bookmarking site, you don't need me to give you a button for it -- fond of buttons though I am.

I felt like a doing a good clear-out, and hoped to make the site quicker to load. Most of the buttons have been changed to text, and since I know some folks come here just to get buttons, I made a whole new site for them: Milieux. A new place for toys and play -- a truly ugly blog by Christian's standards.

Much of the sidebar content is now in expand/ collapse boxes. I found the script for this at flooble [BEWARE: many loud and obnoxious popups!] via someplace I've lost track of -- if you think it might be you, let me know and I'll add a link to this post. This script works in a TypePad typelist, even if you don't use advanced templates. At least, I think it works; I've tested it in Firefox, both Mac and Windows; Safari; and IE on Windows.

The sidebar certainly looks cleaner. The question is, does this speed loading, or have I just traded the time it takes to load images for the time it takes to load scripts? Do these boxes improve or inhibit usability?

Also, there is some problem with the Rings code; it breaks the template in IE, in or out of an expandable box -- so it's at the bottom of the sidebar until I can figure out what's wrong. Even though I'm a member of PowderPuff Geeks, I'm really not a geek; I just play one on the internet.

What do you think -- have I improved things, or made them worse?

[ADDED later: Oh, wait! My photo is up there on the banner. Forgot about that...]