Hey there!
I remember seeing your posts here earlier when I was running around here more often. It’s good to see you’re still working with WordPress! ??
You asked for constructive criticism so let me see what I can share:
The Strengths:
I really like the ease of navigation on the site. The tabbed main navigation at the top of the layout is really easy on the eyes and brain. Very good.
I also really like the color palette you chose; the earthy spring-like vibrance of the background image really matches well with the more muted tans/lighter browns/khaki colors of your layout.
I also very much like the type of layout you chose for your site. It is easy to tell where content is and where navigation and navigational options are. Also, the layout has a very professional feel while still being ‘approachable’.
You also have a lot of quality content on the site. Your work, your own information, how to get in touch – basically, everything that is pertinent – is very accessible and the samples you provide of your work is nice and rich. I like your work; thank you for sharing it. ??
The Potential Problem Areas:
Your website does not validate. From what I can tell of the validation errors, the errors are mostly minor, but I would fix them if possible. You have a beautiful site; don’t let a few validation errors make the site ‘unclean’. Even if the errors are not big (for example, ampersands must be hard coded in using & and not the amp symbol), over time, small errors can accumulate and if someday you have a major coding error pop up, it will be hard to find it amongst the many little errors. Keep it clean and you keep yourself headache free when you need to troubleshoot in the future. ??
The main content is crowded together. You have a lot of quality content, but I feel that each bit of good content isn’t quite given enough space to really stand out. Everything seems to flow into one another – a slideshow feel almost – rather than a ‘look here first and move to the next item’ feel which I think would suit better. You want to capture people’s attention, but you don’t want to confuse them. The way all the content sort of runs into one another can be confusing and hard on the eyes and leave people wondering if they are still looking at portfolio information or are they looking at some other content.
The sidebar content could be streamlined a bit better. On my browser, the Category dropdown menu gets cut off on the right hand side, which prevents me from accessing the menu. In comparison with the Calendar widget and the Flickr widget which are both rather narrow for such a nice wide space, the streamlined quality of the sidebar gets interrupted by these size differences between the Categories, Tags, Calendar, and Flickr widgets.
Overall:
Your website is beautifully and elegantly put together and the UI aspect of it encourages viewers to explore and see what you have to offer. The content is rich and vibrant and the only negative aspect from having so much rich content is trying to organize it all in a way that doesn’t overwhelm.
Hopefully, my commentary makes sense; if not, please let me know and I will see if I can clarify further.
Thanks for sharing!
