Webdesign Advice?

Posted by Akash under Internet on August 16th,2007. No Comments.

EDIT: I moved this blog to BLOG.FALLEN-EMINENCE.NET. Please change all your links by adding “blog.” to the beginning of the URL. Thanks! For now, this main domain redirects here, but that will change once I get a good portfolio set up.
My friend and I are starting a website that will open sometime this fall. I am basically going to do all the coding, so I have a few questions:

1. Avatars -We want our avatars to be displayed neatly, yet taking up little space. We also need to display three things: Artist, Date, and Image Credit. First of all, do we need to have a link to the image credit, or just put everything on a general credit page? Second, should we put the information to the side of the avatar, having two avatars being displayed in each row, or have it to the bottom of the avatar, displaying four? Or, should we just display the avatars, and have the information pop up on click? My friend and I think displaying on the bottom is the best idea, but what do you all think?
2. Wallpapers – We are offering wallpapers in three different sizes: 1024×768 [4:3], 1280×1024 [5:3], and 1280×800 [16:10]. Do those sizes and ratios seem good? It covers the common resolutions…
3. Wordpress – Firstly, there’s an issue unrelated to coding the actual site. I think the .htaccess for WordPress is messing with the .htaccess of other directories. Does anyone else get this problem? If so, how could I fix it? I may actually just move this blog to a subdomain and keep the main domain as my portfolio and network base. Anyways, should I use wordpress for this new graphic design site, or use my own system? I think it may be a hassle to use PHP databases with wordpress, but wordpress is more secure. Right now, I’m leaning towards not using wordpress. I’m actually thinking of switching out of wordpress for this blog…
4. Headers – My friend would like to use a font that she downloaded for headers, but most people won’t have the font. I am going to use scripts from this article to do that. The only problem is, the headers load slower than the text. Would you recommend doing this? We think that it’s not too much of a problem. But is it worth it?

Thanks for reading, and I would really appreciate your thoughts on these questions.