I am completely happy with the look of this site - after a few days of tinkering I am now stopping. I’ve never liked looking at my site, and inevitably I stop blogging as a result. However, this time I’m happy, everything works and nothing is ugly. so this is how it will stay.

Full information on the tools I used to make it so - after the jump

To build mattrutherfordDOTcom I used:

• Cutline Theme for Wordpress - really nice theme in its original state, but I wanted more white space so removed all the lines and the photographic headers leaving only the structure in the place. I also added in an asides category and styled it slightly differently.
• Twitter for Wordpress - plug in that displays my twitter feed in the sidebar. Twitter is an amazingly useful site for keeping your presence updated…you can also link it to your facebook page, so that stays in sync.
• Last.Fm for Wordpress - plug in that displays your latest last.fm plays on your sidebar. Last.Fm is great for tracking the music you listen to across multiple platforms.
• FlickrRSS for Wordpress - again, a simple plugin that can display pictures from your stream, very customisable - I use it to display my latest picture, but it could be any number of pictures in a number of styles and shapes.

For recording stats:

• Get Clicky - really simple analytics package with a Wordpress Plugin that just works - very simple, and will do me until I can get access to AdCenter Analytics (Gatineau)

Tools:

• Macromedia Fireworks - to create the head graphics
• FileZilla - for FTP heavy lifting, lightweight - full featured FTP client
• RightLoad - for quick FTP work, really simple right click to upload a file to an FTP destination

Honorable Mentions:

Diet Coke, Radiohead - In Rainbows, King Creosote - KC Rules OK, my trusty old Dell Desktop (I’ll upgrade you soon), Moleskine Notebooks and the Christmas break.