Orangescale Studio

In the last two weeks, I kept myself busy doing a redesign for Asia Blogging Network. The main goal is to have a better content management in site using WordPress as the publishing platform.

For your information, Asia Blogging Network (ABN) is a Indonesia-based blog network. In its network, there are more than 60 blogs. For the next phase, there will be more blogs (and of course) more permanent bloggers. If you want to know more about ABN, just go to ABN site.

In the new design, we create and fix some new elements. And here are some highlights:

• Producing a global update area. There are more than 60 blogs in the network. So, we created one master feed using Yahoo! Pipes. After having a master feed we display 80 last entries in front page, using Simplepie.
• There are basically two types of posts: blog entries and pages. WordPress works beautifully in handling pages and entries. Here, we want to give a better navigation and content structure. We love WordPress for it's conditional tags and custom query. For example, if you are in a page, you can see relevant/related pages that (we hope) useful for you. The same thing happened when you read an entry.
• Wider width, more contents. Previously, we use 800px-based resolution design. Now, it is wider. More content displayed in main page -- and also in other pages.
• Upgrading Simplepie. Simplepie is used for Asia Blogging Live! Page. It works great! Just like what we need.

Asia Blogging Network will continue its development. There will be more features and services for its audience. Just wait...