Software Engineering in Template Design

Initial tests on a prototype template revealed that software engineering techniques applied to website template production is indeed feasible and will likely improve quality and productivity.

According to BlogMechanic, support and documentation are key issues to be solved during this design iteration. And by addressing these issues, a positive impact is bound to be felt in the productivity metrics of the project.

In any case, BlogMechanic expects that by the end of the month, Allocentric Blogger, Benevolent Blogger and other free blogging templates designed for Blogger Brigade will all be using the same code base while giving every blogger the opportunity to be unique.

Work on Benevolent Blogger Begins

BlogMechanic begins working on Benevolent Blogger, a new generation of customizable blogger.com template designed for Blogger Brigade. It builds upon the knowledge gained from the earlier Allocentric Blogger template.

Although it sports a newspaper or magazine layout, Benevolent Blogger is meant to be customizable and uses the 960 grid system to achieve flexibility and maintainability. It will, however, be written in a new coding style to improve ease of customization and to facilitate the cloning of popular WordPress themes into the blogger.com platform.

Another area to be improved in this template design cycle is support and documentation. From hereon, template resources, downloads and documentation (PDF's) will now be available at Bloggerized Templates hosted by Google Sites.