Cotton-Pickin’ Days

Local Girl at An Island Life just emailed me with a cryptic message:

Hey, you’ve been nominated for a Share the Love Blog Award. Get all your friends to vote for you . . . you’ve got my vote! Good luck!

Christina Zola had already nominated Play Library in the Happiest Blog category, so that’s what I expected. Sadly, Play Library hadn’t been included (why?!) but Cotton-Pickin’ Days is nominated for Best Site Design!

Cotton-Pickin’ Days started out on the standard WordPress template, Kubrick, and it served me well for almost a year but didn’t have all that I was looking for. Trouble is, I have absolutely no design experience and can barely use Photoshop. (I’ve got grand plans to become Photoshop proficient and even made the banner for Laura at CFS Squared but these simple tasks take me hours.) I entertained the idea of hiring someone to design a template for me but I actually don’t have a lot of demands and paying someone $500+ to come up with a design I’d want to change on an yearly basis seemed a stretch.

So off I went to search through the hundreds of free designs available on WordPress Theme Viewer. It wasn’t easy to find one that fit the theme of cotton-pickin’ and was customizable enough that I could alter the parts I wanted. Luckily, I’ve learned a lot of about the backend of WordPress from working at b5media and I knew that if I had any trouble, I could always ask Christina, who knows all and is incredibly patient with my dumb questions.

I finally settled on Crayon World’s 3-column design, which mirrors b5media’s. I wanted to show off the contents of Genetics and Health, A Hearty Life, and Play Library in one column while having fun personal jibber jabber in another. As you can see from the original screenshot, I have changed it considerably to enhance the functions I find important. I’m glad that others appreciate it enough to nominate me for an award but I must thank Sadish Balasubramanian, creator of Crayon World, for giving me something wonderful to work with.

And now it all comes down to begging for votes. I’m listed in section 4 under Best Site Design - Cotton-Pickin’ Days. Click here to vote. It’s an honor to be nominated. (But even better to win! )