Ivy Tan

This is the first Wordpress theme I created for my current blog. The illustration of the pendant was based on a necklace I bought in Montreal. This is the first layout I created with full compatibility with all modern browsers. Many SEO techniques including valid coding and customized permalinks were used to ensure a high placement on Google and Yahoo!

The SEO optimization was a success! All new entries are placed on the first page of Google and received a pagerank of 4 very soon after its launch. The design was featured on many CSS galleries, the most notable being Design Meltdown. See full list here.

I was playing around with unconventional ways of designing a web log and decided on a horizontal scroll, instead of the traditional vertical scroll. In terms of search engine listings and global accessibility, such a layout will fare very badly because bots and browsers aren’t able to surf the site well.

In terms of design, this site was quite a success! It was featured on various CSS galleries and popular design magazines; the most notable being Smashing Magazine and Design Meltdown.

The site was designed in 2006 in Adobe Photoshop. The HTML and CSS was hand-coded on Notepad. The site took around 20 hours to complete.