Today In Development: Blog In The Spotlight. Today’s blog is Function Web Design. With articles focusing on, you guessed it, web design, Function specializes in Wordpress theme and plugin development. I particularly like Function because they definitely live by one of our core philosophies here at Outer Spice: Less is More. For instance, Function seems to post an article no more than a few times per month. As a result, each of their articles are well thought out and of very high quality. Their articles are relevant, insightful, and original. Today’s article really caught my eye since Socket version 1.1 was just released, featuring a revamped theme options page. The article is entitled Wordpress Theme Options Overload? A Judgement Call and it brings up an interesting topic, once again, in the “less is more” category.

While this is one of Function’s shorter, less in-depth articles, it is very important because it asks this question at a very important time. Right now, theme developers are adding more and more options to their theme options pages, and too often it is only for bragging rights as to who has the largest number of options, even if a lot of them are redundant or useless. Socket contains one theme options page separated into 4 categories, and a total of around 50 options – all of which are necessary. We do not attempt to do anything that an existing plugin can already do, in order to avoid reinventing the wheel. That is exactly what this article is talking about. Check it out – it can really be applied to anything you do as a developer or designer. Content is king, meaning that design and functionality should always yield the the meat of your site: content. Having too many theme options can not only muck up your content, but more importantly scare away your potential clients due to over-complexity and over-complication.

Here is Function’s “mission statement” of sorts:

Designing a website that works… We Pride ourselves on giving you Great design & Functionality, providing a website that will impress on first looks, and continue to impress as you explore it. We make it as easy as possible for you to look after once we’ve finished. So if you’re after a website or blog design to freshen up you’re site we’re more than happy to help.

This is my second edition of T.I.D.B.I.T.S., and you’re probably still asking yourself what they are and why I do them. Here’s the deal: I don’t read very much. I’m probably in the lower 25% of all readers (and consequently the upper 25% of all TV watchers). So you can rest assured that what I do actually spend my valuable time reading is pretty dang good. Using that same logic, the amount you read is somewhat proportional to the quality of things you’ll read, and that explains why you’re reading our blog. Now we come to the reason for T.I.D.B.I.T.S. Since we’re not real good writers ourselves, the least we can do is point you in the direction of good writing and great resources for your development. Today’s tidbit is one of my personal favorites.

Smashing Magazine is a tremendous web design & development blog based out of the UK. I’ve been reading it for over a year and it has absolutely been the reason for my success and continued skill progression as a web developer. You can find anything from Photoshop tutorials to developing custom Wordpress plug-ins. Smashing is very heavily Wordpress and open-source based, and consequently you’ll often see posts showcasing free Wordpress templates, fonts, and icon sets. The editors of Smashing have a keen eye for beautiful modern web design and spend their time scouring the web for superb websites to include in their showcases. There’s an average of about 2 posts per day – plenty of content but not enough to overwhelm you.

I bring this up now since they recently released a book and redesigned their website, creating a “Smashing Network” of other design blogs and featured posts from the cream of the crop around the web. I can’t tell you how many free icon sets, fonts, and themes I have acquired via Smashing – and most of them are licensed for free commercial use, which is MONEY for a web developer. I highly recommend this blog. If you are at all in the design or development industry, and somehow you have not heard of Smashing, check them out as soon as you can!