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Why not give your blog a facelift? Have you noticed my new handy-dandy fancy headers? This is courtesy of a WordPress plugin called Facelift Image Replacement. Just download the plugin and install. If you like to add your own personal fonts, just place them in the fonts folder of the plugin.

There are thousands of free fonts available online. 1001 Free Fonts is just one of many. I am using a font called Will and Grace, after the font used in the popular sitcom of the same name. Here is one example showing h2 headers.

My Blog Needs A Facelift. Botox, Plastic Surgery?

It’s a pretty cool WordPress plugin. It’s SEO friendly as well. Give it a try. Give your blog a facelift.

When designing web pages, using the appropriate font for your design does wonder to the overall look, feel and layout of your page. Unfortunately, web designers are quite limited to the fonts they can use. Most web designers stick to the tried and true “web safe” fonts.

If you take all considerations including operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Unix, and browsers: IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc, then you are really stuck with just 3 of the safest fonts on the web. They are: Arial/Helvetica, Times New Roman/Times, and Courier New/Courier.

Other fonts that work across platforms are: Palatino, Garamond, Bookman, and Avant Garde.

Fonts that work in Windows and Mac OS, but not in Unix+X are: Verdana, Georgia, Comic Sans MS, Trebuchet MS, Arial Black, and Impact.

If you like to consider all OS platforms in your design, then the order of your fonts in CSS is important. I recommend this sequence.

Establish a Baseline

At the very least, you need to establish your baseline font. Choose whether you want “Serif or Sans-Serif” font. The CSS would look something similar to this:

html { font-family: Serif}
html { font-family: Sans-Serif }

Choose a Web Safe Font

Next, choose a “web safe” font. Your choice comes down to either taking Arial/Helvetica, Times New Roman/Times, and Courier New/Courier. Most people don’t use the monotype Courier font except when displaying code. So, you are essentially down to four fonts, Arial/Helvetica or Times New Roman/Times. Helvetica is very popular. Arial is not far behind. New Times Roman is better than Times. In our example, will now look like this:

html { font-family: Times New Roman, Serif }
html { font-family: Arial, Sans-Serif }

Choose a Cross-Platform Font

If you must, you can choose a “cross platform font.” Again, our choices are: Palatino Linotype, Garamond, Bookman, and Avant Garde. The first 3 are Serif fonts. Avant Garde is the only Sans-Serif font.

html { font-family: Palatino Linotype, Times New Roman, Serif }
html { font-family: Avant Garde, Arial, Sans-Serif }

Add Other Fonts

If you must, you can choose other fonts, although they do not work in Unix+ systems. They are: Verdana, Georgia, Comic Sans MS, Trebuchet MS, Arial Black and Impact.

html { font-family: Georgia, Palatino, Times New Roman, Serif }
html { font-family: Verdana, Avant Garde, Arial, Sans-Serif }

There you have it. A safe way to implement CSS Fonts across all OS platforms.

Introducing the 3-Column Black-Letterhead Theme with two right-handed sidebars. The theme is based on the original Black-Letterhead theme. To preview or download the theme, just click on the links below. Enjoy. If you have any questions, please send your questions to the Support Forum.

Preview | Download

One reason I really love Verdana is looks great on all browsers. And it’s a big enough reason. I think as a whole, most Sans-Serif fonts like Verdana, Helvetica and Arial, do look good because they tend to render them properly on most browsers, on most operating systems.

Georgia, Times New Roman, and most Serif fonts tend to look bad on some operating systems that do not have anti-aliasing. If they do, then it’s probably not a good idea to use them in small fonts. Georgia is used mostly as a headline because it looks great in large fonts.

Arial is probably the most used because it is easier to read. Times New Roman is standard in Windows. Comic Sans MS is informal, but some people comically like it.

Overall, I still think Verdana is best – for me anyways. I don’t know for you.

I haven’t changed themes in more than two years, which is very hard to believe. Several years ago, I change themes at least once a month. It’s just shows you how happy I was with the old theme to stick with it for more than two years.

I think it’s time for something new. This is just a simple theme that I quickly designed to spice things up a bit. I’m not sure what to call the theme at the moment, although it’s temporarily called “Theme” for lack of a better name.

It’s a one-column theme, with a dark blue background. I’m using a bunch of links to simulate a header. It’s kind of neat the way it turned out. I’m not sure yet how long I will stick with this one, but I love the simplicity and the speed.

Maybe, I will release it as an open-source theme.