Aside from your branding, your design (and in this case for Wordpress, theme) is the most important part of your blog.
Your brand, and I may cite John Chow, who successfully marketed himself as a “dot com mogul” alluding to wealth and prosperity, is the most important thing about your blog. That makes people come back. At one glance they recognise what you stand for, and if that resonates with you, you will most likely go.
And what is my brand? It is:
1. Good, clean, usable information design from a programmer/information architect/producer who has worked in the industry for over 8 years, rode the boom and the bust and stayed till I decided to quit my job to stay home and raise my son (and that’s another blog).
2. Straight-talking advice and reviews from real user testing in real life situations.
3. Some fun and entertainment (from a pro writer too - that’s my other specialty so I never starve) while we’re at it.
The second, your design. Because that is the first thing a first time visitor to your site sees. And that is what I am having trouble with today.
Because we are still in beta, and I’ll confess, I am still pondering the branding since this idea to go domainy was sparked during a very recent late night convo with my best friend Shen. As with the best travel plans, the most exciting way to embark on any adventure is to plunge right into it without much notice. Improvising is a real high and to be honest, it is safer than skydiving into a jungle on a moment’s notice. But I digress.
I am not a designer. I’ll state that much. I used to architect how content was to be laid out in a page and what sort of information, and how that information should be categorised and accessed and through how many paths. So all websites I designed myself are simple, clean, load quickly (for the lowest common denominator - and this is before mobile web took off), and contain very few, if any, images.
While choosing a theme, I seem to be veering toward the same, although I must say I enjoy the super high tech ones that have come my way. Still. If you like any I have chosen, feel free to say so. 
Meanwhile, the search continues.
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