While this project wasn’t a completely custom theme; we did start off with the basic layout from the Simple Red Theme from Easy Wordpress that Cuzzy had been using. The biggest challenge in getting everything looking as it should were the widgets that Cuzzy uses for advertising. They took some tweaking, but they all fell into place like they should. The new theme is in between Evolutionary and Revolutionary when it comes down to it. Since the original theme had a lot of good quality stuff already built-in, we didn’t need to revolutionize the theme…however, the design elements added were HUGE improvements over the old version.

This is a quick breakdown of all of the new added features…

1. New and Improved Header Graphic
   • Larger Header to Incorporate Ad-Space
   • Built-In 728×90 Ad
   • Built-In 300×250 Ad (New Addition)
   • Custom Cuzoogle Logo (New Addition)
   • Streamlined Navigation
   • RSS Button Designed into Header
2. Improved Post Styling
   • Added Custom Date Badge (New Addition)
   • Changed Title Font to Helvetica Neue Bold Italic
   • Restyled Comments Section to Include Gravatars
3. Sidebar Improvements
   • Restyled Search Box
   • Restyled FeedBurner Widget
   • Made Split Columns Wider
   • Restyled Widget Text

There are a lot of really cool new features to the updated theme, but I think they add a lot of character to the site. The one thing that I might have done differently would be to make the header not as tall. However, I think it works and gives the site a unique element that you don’t see every day. I’m really proud of this new design…I think it’s going to generate a lot of buzz in the design community.

What do you think of the new Cuzoogle? I’d love to hear what you all think of it. If you’re interested in having GrandmasterB design something for you  let me know. If you want to see some of my other work check out the Design Services page.

~ GrandmasterB

The header of the new design can only be described as a very colorful combination of shapes and patterns that has been distressed to give it a rough feeling. It reminds me of wallpaper that you might find in your grandmother’s guest room, but much more tasteful. The distressed look is carried over into the different icons and buttons throughout the site. My most favorite example of this look is in the mouseover state for the navigation bar…a simple pencil scribbled circle around the text.

Of course being the inquisitive type that I am I had to dive further into the new design and how it was built. The entire theme is straight up coding mastery! The entire theme is built from only 23 images; which are all built into the style sheets. Using the web developer plugin for Firefox, I turned off the style sheets and the only images it shows are the ones displayed in the posts…it’s 100% XHTML/CSS no embedded images pretty impressive.

Matt has changed up and added some new features to the site as well. The photos in his image gallery are much larger now, some are around 840 pixels or larger. Matt classifies them as “Imagine it like going HD, you’ll definitely enjoy it more on broadband”. This is amazingly the first version of his site that is all Wordpress and WP2.5 to boot. Gravatars are more prominent in the comments section now and allow for the different iterations of gravatars: wavatars, monsterid and identicon.

There are many more features…too many for me to list here, but if you’re a website design junkie like myself I suggest you check out the new design for yourself.

~ GrandmasterB