Ray says:

We had some people ask us about creating their own theme for their baby book, because they had design skills and wanted it to be personal. Our approach is if you want it, you can have it :) With that being said, it's not a quick and easy process to design a whole theme for a system like this. If you are a designer than you know what I'm talking about. So I've come up with a small (actually large) checklist of items that need to be thought about and added to the designs that you create for yourself. I also want to let you know that creating this design in HTML/CSS is not required to get your custom theme live. But it will drastically change how fast we can get it live. So if you have coding skills as well than that will help out A LOT!

What do you get for all of your hardwork? Well besides having your child have a theme that their parent, family member, or friend designed for them. We also want to make sure that everyone knows who designed the theme. We will let you name it, and we will link to your website or a site that you'd like us to link to to drive some traffic your way. You will also get a nice little (actually big) discount on your baby book. If you have any questions don't hesitate to email me directly at ray [at] mybabyourbaby.com.

DESIGNING YOUR OWN THEME & THE ELEMENTS YOU NEED

•  Alignment - Do you want the design centered, lef, or stretched as a block?
• MyBabyOurBaby.com branding - A simple "powered by MyBabyOurBaby.com and a logo"  will be fine
• My Home Link - This is the only way for a logged in member to get back to their MyHome page.  It can be a simple link, a tab, etc.
• Mini Baby Profile - That shows the baby's profile photo, their name, their location, age (or due date), height, weight, and a View My Profile link

The main stories area

• Title - Font (system fonts please since this is dynamic), Color (hex), and Size.
• Date and Time - Icons are fine or you can just do a simple text format (will need color, size, and font for this as well)
• Edit/Delete link - This will only be seen by members that have admin access or if they have write access and posted the story.  Can be a link, a button, or something you come up with.  Just needs to let people know that's where they go to edit or delete their story.
• Slideshow link - If a post has 3 or more photos then a link to view a slideshow will show up and play through all of the photos in the post.  Can be a link, icon, button, etc.
• Firsts & Growth Charts - We try to have Firsts, Growth Charts, and Stories all have a different look even if it's as simple as a different color.  That way you can visually see the difference when you're looking at all the stories in a book.    So you can change up the colors ex:  firsts are all blue and growth charts are pink in theme or you could go as far as adding icons like a 1st ribbon that is displayed.  Just for a couple of ideas.
• 2 Different Posting Styles - Gallery View or Split View.  When you're posting a story you have the option to group all of the photos together into thumbnails or see larger images and write a separate caption underneath each photo.  You will need to design the stories to work in both views.
• Blockquotes, Lists (ordered or unordered), and Links - If you'd like for these to look differently in your theme you'll have to let us know how you want that.  Block quotes tend to be indented and italic, Lists tend to have a dot or a number at the front of them, and links need a color for the normal link and a color for a link that you've already visited.  Also a rollover if you want the link to have one.

Comments

• First thing to keep in mind with our comments is that they're cool.  What I mean by that is that they are interactive.  When you click on "reply to this comment" the forms will slide down from underneath the comment and the page will have to grow a bit.  Your designs should work with this.
• Author  (who is writing the comment), Date and Time of  their comment, and a link to reply to the comment

Sidebar

• Need link or button for all pages (My Book, Firsts, Growth Chart, Contributors,  Make Stuff, and Support this book)
• Search Box and button
• RSS links (subscribe to stories, subscribe to comments)

Contributors Page

• Need to separate the Parents/Admin, Family, and then Friends into 3 different sections.  It can be as simple as different color sections but just want to separate them.  Would like it to show the profile thumbnail, their name, and their location.  You also have to leave room for a gift icon and the phrase "I bought a 1 month subscription" or "I bought a year subscription"
• Need a section on the bottom to promote Gifting that says "Give the gift of Memories".  Where family and friends can support your child's book.  Can use the same gift icon, but feel free to use what you'd like.