Scrolling on down through the reviews of the usual BS blogs I noticed Adcuz had been reviewed. If you want to read the review then go look. Many people in the comments simply said “I don’t like photoblogs”, or “it sucks”. Fair enough, we don’t all like the same thing, we all know that.

I want to pick up on one of the comments that was made about the blog:

I like photoblogs. What I don’t like are photoblogs filled with text unless its inspirational bullshit like a poem the photo inspired or a well crafted essay around said photo. I also hate more than one photo a page. That annoys me because it screams that one photo is not worth the page. So if you don’t think your photo is worth it… why should I?

This is a really good point. If you think your photography is worth displaying in its own blog then I highly recommend that you use a single post view. There are of course exceptionsDonncha for example. He writes about photography too and to have a single post view would ruin the effect of the photoblog theme. I am working on this though!, but for the most part, give your image room.

Having a single image on the main page allows you to display a decent size image. If the image is too small then you will lose detail. You need the impact that a large image will have to the casual passer by. You don’t see billboards with just content in one corner. They are big because they want impact. Do the same for your photos.

You may know that I am developing a photoblog theme for wordpress which does exactly that. I am aiming to have a couple of different versions with colour changes to suit most needs. I will release it when it’s finished.

If you have any recommendations for the themeYou can see the development here. Bear in mind it might not work properly. then please let me know! I will get a list of tasks/problems posted on a page in the devblog so you can see the progress.

It’s actually far simpler than I initially thought it would be. When one uploads the photo to the blog you just need to put a thumbnail version (automatically created by wp!) into the field that says “optional excerpt”. You can then call that in the sidebar by using the_excerpt. Works beautifully for a vertical sidebar. I’m going to have a small problem when trying to do the thumbnails horizontally under the main post as “the_excerpt” automatically inserts “p” tags around the entry. I have a fix for it but I am going to look at that for a different version of the theme. As you can see from the thumbnail on the left (click for a larger version) it displays the thumbnails absolutely spot on. I have used a “special” piece of code to exclude a particular category. In this case it’s category 1 (words) which will be displayed elsewhere.

Looks fantastic in Firefox and Opera. As per usual, IE sucks. Click the image for a larger version and you’ll see that:

1. The Previous Post link doesn’t line up within the horizontal borders like it does with FF.
2. The sidebar drops to below the main content.

I know these are fixable but it means using “hacks”. Something I absolutely hate having to do. Please, if you’re using Internet Explorer 6 or below and are able, upgrade to a decent browser. Of course, I could just ignore IE and code for FF. Then I would get the complaint that I am excluding those readers at work on IE. I have an answer to that: Close the browser and do some work! Thanks for visiting though ;)

If it ever comes up to scratch I will release the theme. If you want to watch the development have a peek at http://devblog.cornellfinch.com. Bear in mind that at any point during the development the blog might not function as you expect it to, or at all for that matter!