So far my concerns are put on the back-end of the system being built. Of course this is not wrong, but I think it is unfair not to give attention to the front-end or user interface. The look and feel of a website plays a very important role to the success of the website. So, putting attention to it in the early stage of development life cycle is also a must.
I can still easily change my role from a developer to system analyst, business analyst, project manager, or documenter. However, changing role to web designer is a huge challenge. The required skill set is totally different. Handling graphics, layout, look and feel is different thing than handling text, content, formula, and logic.
Faced with this challenge, I will use different strategy. I can force myself into creating a standard look and feel for CommunityBlog, but I think the required time will still significant. I'm not sure that I will be able to complete it in the first phase. So, I will take an existing theme from Wordpress, and port it to CommunityBlog. Wordpress is a well-known blog engine. The layout of any blogging system should be similar, so that porting existing theme from Wordpress should be easier than creating a new one.
Minyx2 LITE theme from Spiga is my choice. It is simple and balanced. There is not much graphics in there but it is also not too terse. It is also free to be used and modified as long as we follow the license terms. Here is the look and feel of Minyx2 LITE theme:
As you can see from the figure, Minyx2 LITE theme is uniquely designed with only two panes: content pane and right sidebar pane. It does not follow classic three panes layout that usually found in a blog theme. The right pane is further divided into two areas. The top area contains only a single column, and the bottom area contains two columns. This presents a challenging task while designing the content placeholders in the master page.
At first I designed the master page with strictly three content place holders. The content and arrangements of each place holder is determined by the views, not by theme. This design will simplify theme creation by focusing on style of each partial view without bothered by how the partial views are placed. But the downside of this design is the loss of flexibility to place partial views anywhere on the page as dictated by theme layout. I realized this downside when porting Minyx2 LITE theme, and then later change the decision on how place holders are arranged within master page.
Instead of having strict three place holders in master page, now the master page can specifies place holders as many as partial views that will be served in a page. This gives theme designers flexibility to place partial view anywhere within a page.
As conclusion, creating a new theme is not an easy task. It is easier to port an existing theme from other blogging engine to CommunityBlog. So that's what I'm doing right now. I took Wordpress's Minyx2 LITE theme from Spiga as starting point. It is a good and balanced theme, and also simple one.
