If you’ve been reading GotChance for a while, you’d know that I used to have Justified text alignment on the content of blog posts. I had always thought that it was cool to have the right and left margins set evenly. But I was wrong. I came to know that Justified alignment was difficult to scan, read than a normal left-aligned text.

Another problem with Justified alignment is the "rivers" as you see in the picture to your right. They are some continuous gaps that run down the paragraphs, which make them visually less appealing. Considering all these, I’ve switched over to Left-aligned text.

Coming back to the title of the post, which alignment should you choose for your website ? There is no point arguing over this one. Definitely, left-aligned text is much better than justified text. So, if, by chance, your blog theme has justified text, it is better to remove it. But, How ? I’ll tell you.

Text if often justified using CSS. If you look through your Stylesheet (.css file), you’ll find some like this:

Just remove that and the justification is gone. Text will assume the default alignment, that is the left-alignment.

In my last post, I presented 7 examples of how the same theme can be used on different blogs and still be kept unique, just by changing the colors scheme. I also said that, as a series post I’ll be posting about the necessary features in a theme to make it easily "color-variable", as I call it.

These are some very basic tips that you might want to keep in mind if you are creating a theme to be used on multiple blogs. Even if you are not a designer, you might want to make sure that your designer follows these, so that you can use the theme on multiple blogs.

Avoid Inline CSS

Inline CSS is not something invalid. But, avoiding it is a good practice in general web development. In our particular case we have to completely avoid inline CSS so that our stylesheet will be the only file we need to edit to vary its color scheme.

Avoid Excessive Use of Images

Its a good practice to avoid images, when you want to edit your color scheme. Because, it’ll save you from the need to edit your images to reflect your changed color scheme. Whenever there is a possibility to use CSS instead of images, do it.

Make The Images Simple

There are places where CSS can’t fill in. In such cases you’ll need images. When you are forced to use images, keep them simple. To make sure it’s color can be changed, open the image in Photoshop or your favorite image editor and change its HUE (Ctrl + U in Photoshop) to see if it looks good in other colors.

Pick Color Schemes Wisely

Not all colors schemes can be easily varied. If you are using a set of 10 colors in your design, sure it can look great. But, it is not that easy to change the color scheme. So, if you want to keep it simple, it is best to follow "Your Color + White" scheme. That way, there is not much to change.

These are really simple steps to follow if you follow them from right from the beginning of your design process. Make sure its not too late.

There is another post coming up in this series. In that post I’ll deal with how you can create virtually more than 1000 themes using a single design, just by varying the color scheme. And, doesn’t it take even better if I say that the color scheme can be chosen from the admin panel, instead of installing different themes. Stay Tuned.

Series Posts :

1. Using The Same “Unique” Theme On Related Blogs
2. Creating Easily Color-Variable Themes

Ever wanted to use the same theme across different blogs that you own ? This is often done by blog networks. There are some reasons why they do it :

1. To reduce the cost, by not having a designer design a separate theme for each blog.
2. Branding.. When people see the same theme (with some variations) on different blogs, they’ll know that there is some relation between them.

Not just blog network, even you can do the same. If you are interested in blogging on more than one topic, you can start different blogs. You can use a single theme, with color variations.

To get a better idea of what I am talking about, I’m posting here 7 Great examples of such practices :

Envato Network

This is my favorite network that uses the variations of the same theme. All of them look as if unique. But indeed they are variations of a single design.

• Net Tuts
• PSD Tuts
• Vector Tuts
• Audio Tuts

Apricot Media

The network itself has more than 5 blogs. But, only 2 of them use the same design.

• WP Hacks
• Celiac Disease

Daily Blog Tips

• Daily Bits
• Daily Writing Tips
• Daily Blog Tips

Gawker Media

A very big network. For example I’ve shown three here. A very good example.

• Gawker
• Life Hacker
• Gizmodo

TechCrunch

A very popular network with a very nice design.

• Tech Crunch
• Mobile Crunch
• Tech Crunch IT

b5media

One of the biggest blog networks with over 200 blogs. All use the same design with logo and color variations. Also, the “b5media stripe” on the top conveys the relation between each other.

• Play Gadgets
• Cell Phone 9
• Windoes Vista Weblog

EnGadget

Since the left side of the header is rather plain, I’ve shown the right side in this image. Another great example.

• EnGadget
• EnGadget HD
• EnGadget Mobile

Hope you enjoyed this. This will be a series post. In the next post I’ll deal with the necessary features of a theme to make easy and suitable for color variations. Stay tuned.

Series Posts :

1. Using The Same “Unique” Theme On Related Blogs
2. Creating Easily Color-Variable Themes

After two days, the new design for GotChance has gone live today. If you are reading GotChance via RSS, you might want to come over to the blog to check out the new design.

Some of the features of this new design :

• Pretty much, I’ve retained the color scheme from the old design since I love blue very much. I’ve changed the color of the sidebar to a light brown.
• Simplified Header : The header now has no images other than the logo. This improves page load time.
• Rich Header : Instead of having a plain header with just the navigation links, I’ve included more in the header : 1) A photo of me :D 2) Popular Posts and 3) Subscribe Box
• Looots of icons : I’ve used a lot of icons in this design for many purposes. All the icons are from famfamfam’s Silk icon set.
• Sharing options after post : Now, there are direct social sharing options after the post. And also a subscribe box :)
• Rich Footer : Also, I’ve added more information to the footer too, as you can see.

And, as I said, I a learnt some new stuff in this process. I’ll share them in my next posts. Stay tuned…

After a long time, I’ve finally put up my home page at GotChance.com. The basic color scheme I took from my previous website NitrogenDesigns.com which I am closing down. In this post, I’ll list down the scripts and softwares that I used in the process of making of GotChance.com

Desktop Apps :

• PSPad Text Editor - all the coding work
• Adobe Photoshop - all the design work
• Mozilla Firefox - just testing (primary)
• Google Chrome - testing, but secondary
• Internet Explorer - testing, also secondary
• EasyPHP - to run the php scripts on my local pc
• TweakPNG - to fix the IE-PNG bug
• foobar2000 - just to ease my ears while I worked :P

Others :

• Prototype framework
• Lightbox gone wild
• SimplePie RSS Parser
• PHP, XHTML, CSS

If you wanna know how I did something, feel free to ask in comments. I’d be glad to make a write up.

This is the second post in my Comparison of Magazine Themes series. In this post, we’ll see about Block Magazine Theme and Revolution News Theme. I chose these two because they were so close in the layout and look.

Block Magazine

Block Magazine is a paid theme by Adii and is sold at UBD. magazine-style theme. After seeing themes like The Morning After and Revolution News themes, i have to say that there is nothing special in this theme. As in the Your Revolution theme, i don’t like the colors. Too flashy. I like the way the Recent Posts, Popular Posts and the Recent Comments are displayed. That saves good space. The “Welcome” block on the top right, sorta degrades the theme’s quality. I’m not going to go deep into discussing this theme. There is nothing special in this theme when compared to Adii’s nex Premium News theme. That is a really nice one.

Revolution News Theme

Revolution News theme is a paid magazine-style theme by the popular Wordpress themer Brian Gardner. This theme basically comes in three flavors : Magazine, News, Sports. But, all the three have a magazine-style layout. Each of them costs $100 with a single-domain license. I wouldn’t say the price is too high. But, it could have been better.
Coming on to the theme itself, the colors are very pleasant on the eyes. Very clean layout. I like all the three styles’ layout. The “Subscribe” button could have been made better. The category pages follow a layout similar to the homepage and looks nice. Nothing much to complain about in this theme and that too without using it.

Pros

• Good ad position
• Clean layout and colors
• Different styles available

Cons

• The price…
• The basic stylesheet (link style etc..) is kinda boring. Could have been more Web2.0-ish

This is the first post in my Comparison of Magazine Themes series. In this post, we’ll see about The Morning After and Your Revolution. I chose these two because they were so close in the layout and look.

The Morning After

The Morning After is a free magazine-like theme by Arun Kale. The theme was created based on a brief survey on the WordPress forums about what people would want to see in a unique magazine-style theme. To my knowledge, it is the first magazine-style theme to be released(see below). Not only the first, it is my favorite. I use this personally on one of my sites and i’m loving this. This theme has many features that are essential for a magazine. Especially, i really appreciate the use of Custom Fields. I love the way the posts are displayed on the homepage, and the recent posts section. The Morning After doesn’t fall behind on the post display page also. It is very nice too like a professional magazine. If i wanted to choose a magazine-style theme and didn’t have money to spend, i’d definitely choose The Morning After. To look at an excellent implementation of The Morning After, go to PopSofa.com

Pros

• Excellent Layout
• Very good use of Custom Fields
• Integration with Email Posts Plugin (a typical magazine feature)

Cons

• Colorless. By default it is fully in grayscale

Your Revolution

First of all i’d like to tell that i have no personal vengeance against Adii and this post is truly unbiased. The first thing that stuck me when i saw Your Revolution was its color. It was too bright and was a heavy strain on my eye. Of course, i complained that The Morning After was colorless. But, i didn’t want this much color either. Anything like the Revolution News Theme will be optimal. Coming back to Your Revolution, i’d tell that it gives less emphasis for the posts on the frontpage. That is, the first and the second column on the frontpage are equally wide. But, its is logical that the first column needs to be wider than the second.

Your Revolution gives excellent position for the 300 x 250 advertisement, which was absent in The Morning After. Your Revolution’s single post page look impressive too. Though Your Revolution’s category page is nice, i like The Morning After’s better. Also, Your Revolution has a poor header design which is a big drawback. To conclude, i’d say that Your Revolution isn’t worth your bucks when The Morning After is available for free.

Pros

• Good Positioning for Advertisement

Cons

• The color scheme
• Poor header design
• The “Can-do-better” type of layout

UPDATE : Sorry to have mentioned that The Morning After was the first Magazine-style theme. Its looks like Mimbo Magazine theme was released before The Morning After. Sorry for the mistake. Thanks for letting me know Darren.