Travel wordpress blog site

[login to view URL] We are two Australian travel journalists with loads of experience. We want to create a blog that appeals to people like us We’ve been through the wordpress templates and there are elements of many that we like but none that is absolutely perfect. But I believe that is because we don’t know what is possible and how flexible they are. I have posted below links to other travel blogging sites we like and information about what we like about them, which will guide you. We are available on skype for conversations and would like to see a first draft by March 15 and have it up and running the week later. We would need instruction in how to work with wordpress once you've set it up. LOOK/IMAGERY/ICONOGRAPHY: The overall concept is a classy, sophisticated look that is a little bit retro. I have attached a wordpress blog that has been set up as a trial to show you how far we have got. What we like about that:  Main image of shoes and suitcase. It is a sourced image from bigstock  The tags: Home, Start Here etc What we don’t like about it.  It needs to be wider, there’s too much background showing and not enough copy and images.  The background, which we want to be a faded world map but would prefer it to be fainter than what is in the screen shot. Our number one preference is for it to be a faint blue, like the aerogram paper.  It was done on wordpress. Three of the best looking travel blogs we like are --  [login to view URL]  [login to view URL]  [login to view URL] What we like about them  [login to view URL] The width of notesfromtheroad/rom. We don’t want a lot of the background map showing.  [login to view URL] Our Title should be written on a leather-look luggage tag. Traveljunkiejulia is the reference for that. Use two different type faces – one for tourist and one for traveller. Images of us across the top alongside the tag. Traveljunkiejulia is the reference for that but would like you to be creative. Also look at this [login to view URL] for way they have used title and then images.  [login to view URL] We like the way the laboratory bottles are used for Twitter etc. We want to use stamp icons in a prominent area near the top of home page as the buttons for people to connect with our Twitter, Facebook, Stumble Upon, RSS, email, Google plus and possibly YouTube. We like the positioning of her bio and the size of it with an image and would like that plus we want the boxes that follow to be that size. And we want our bios to click through to Start here. The following boxes would be  Inspirations – this would change regularly and might be a quote, an image, a new blog posting or a favourite blog posting. It would have to have the capacity to have a picture in it. Underneath that  Search engine  Readers recommendations  Popular posts  Tags -- geographical…Sydney, USA, Serengeti…and thematic…spas, markets, walking Nuts and bolts at bottom of page: Keep this small and contained.  Contact us:  Advertise with us:  Media enquiries including blog stats, circulation, readership and press kit  Hire us for: travel writing, photography, blog content creation  Blog roll. We want our blog entries to have pictures and lots of copy This works [login to view URL] As does this [login to view URL] a blog entry. Smaller entries that are new and/or relate to the main blog post would go under that. We need it set up for search engine optimization, to guard against spam, and your advice on what else we need to get it out to our target audience.