Been swapping themes on this website, and note some good practices that I'd like to adopt for my default site.
- vertically aligned search box in the top menu: alternate / lincoln's revenge does it well
- clean layouts like a printed page: chameleon does this well
- blockquote techniques - the left bar at the indentation of the quote is good
- different type face for headline titles - say using Georgia to distinguish headline from body text
- lines to separate content blocks
- different block style for "sticky" blocks
- distinct menu headers like the type used by gworks