personman wrote:

[url=http://danny.brendoman.com]danny.brendoman.com[/url] - I borrowed heavily from [url=http://www.aqua-soft.org]Aqua-soft.org[/url] for this design. I added a random photo block, recent comments, a 'currently reading' sideblog and I wrapped the style around my menalto photo gallery, too. What do you think?

well gosh. I like it, heres the trouble and its purely a philosophical argument .. and before I say anything or you think im bashing, let me preface this by saying I applaud you for pointing out that you "borrowed heavily" from another site. You could have left that off, and didnt, so kudos to you for being honest.

Now ..I do like it, but, is it yours? Your imagination, your vision?

The CSS for instance, for the top horizonal menu.. is a verbatim copy. Im not sure thats borrowing.

Its a philosophical argument, like I said, I know lots of ppl dont mind being "copied" but can get pretty shitty when someone lifts their CSS. Im, with the help of STK, on this forum, redoing my own site and I have an inspiration, of course, Ive been doing a little bit of looking at it, then looking at mine, comparing, etc.. I want it to be "like it" but not 'zactly the same -- In the end Im safe though -- my inpirational site is all tables :) and my site wont be!!! yay!!

If you like your site, I like your site. Personally, I wouldnt copy it verbatim, but thats just me :)

PS: once thing I like more than anything, is the blogcabin name, catchy, and hopefully all yours :)

Very nice. It's simple and very clean.
You've inspired me to get back to my own one and get the gallery (at least) integrated nicely.

John

haha, and I see you got your favicon working, sweet-- its even a "B-logcabin", heh

I thought about this, too. In fact I asked if I could use the skin in the aqua-soft forum. No one could give me a tarball with all the files, but they said to download what I could. I got the stylesheet and images and then applied it to the Custom skin and reverse engineered it to look like I wanted. I wanted something clean looking, which custom wasn't and basicsoft was. I could point out several things that are different from aqua-soft, but they are mostly minor. 'Borrowed heavily' is an understatement, you're right about that.

is it yours? Your imagination, your vision?

No. I guess it's not. I wasn't really claiming that it was. If I was, then I wouln't have given credit. I saw this as being slightly more original than using one of the skins that come with the install, or one of the skins you can download. My php and css skills are ok when I'm tweaking code, but I don't have the skills to write a skin and stylesheet from scratch.

I understand that you are just making a philosophical point, and it's not a bad point. When I'm able to I'll probably redesign the site from scratch. In the meantime I'm pretty proud of how it came out, and I give all due credit to the designer of the skin. I asked permission, and if the original designer wanted me to take it down, then I would do it.

well, like i said, i do like it, and even more so that you were so honest. Its hard these days to be totally original -- you see a site and it sticks with ya. Good sites are going to, thats one of the things that make them good :)