I’m blogging about WordPress

Hi Jane ??

I think your blog is too loud and too crowded.The colors are overpowering and there is so much content vying for one’s attention you don’t know what to read first.

I think the whole thing just needs to be slimmed down and de-cluttered.Try more soothing colors and fewer images.

A List Apart is a great blog that is easy on the eyes and enjoyable to read partially because it is so soothing to the senses.

You should try the same strategy.

The busy/colorful and loud look is trendy today among youth oriented sites, and social networks like MySpace. It kind of has the look of a bustling Asian city.

Interestingly, that makes it look not as much like a typical WordPress… and that can be a good thing. Perhaps you’re aiming for a different audience, bringing in some Switchers from Blogger.

To me this appears as actually a fairly readable version of that style. I just don’t see why you’d need to give yourself a month, since you can back-date and forward-date posts, you could fill it up tonight if you have time ??

Yeah! Singapore! Hong Kong! Tokyo! Cool, that kind of busy’s not a problem, looks like the younger crowd will probably fit right in….

Only thing you might want to think about would be adding in some white space padding (negative space as such) in your posts. Right now that grey on white is squinched and pretty hard to read (okay, my eyes are old, that might be part of the problem….)

You go girl!

Vkaryl: *SNAP, SNAP* Testify sista’!

It is very busy (I say this as a 23 year old with ADD!), but I don’t find it destracting. The colours are loud, but they keep the content divided, when I’m reading a post, I know where it starts and where it ends and it’s easy to move through it all. I like it!

Cheers,
Michael.

*snicker* Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I can’t still “get it” sometimes….

[My 13 year old granddaughter says I’m way more clued in than her mother (my daughter, 39 almost) is….]

I have to agree with Bhoney, too distracting for me. But then again, it looks like this is on purpose, is that right? I see a lot of sites on the net with similar design and colour choices but most of these are “fun”, “juvenile” and “trendy”, sites, which may be what you have in mind?

The biggest problem for me is that it’s far too over-crowded. My advice would be to increase your whitespace by at least 50%.

P.S. Your subject matter is very interesting though. Just keep your opinions, observations and experiences fresh.

thanks much for reviews, i know it’s too busy, hard to and read and template has nothing with technology.

Give me a few days, I hope I came back with a new design and more post. Still it’s not a good idea to launch it right now because of many lacks.

Thanks again – will be back.

Linespacing would help wonders! ??

a lot of folks are gonna cringe at this – but why not expand the size of the container, allowing for more whitespace. shrinking column1 size down 5%-10% would be helpful, too. Personally, my preference is to have more landmass for my canvas and less water.

Kaye

Nothing wrong with that idea: my guess is most of her users will have plenty of screen real-estate (or alternatively, not much at all if they’re accessing mobile! which is of course a whole OTHER set of circs!)

Hmm… Theme’s ok. I get your whole “let’s keep it busy” idea. Personally, I like sites like that. But that’s a bit like “new classical” music (Phillip glass, Geroge Crumb, Robert Helps). In “new classical”, there’s good “ugly” (George Crumb, “Black Angels”) and there’s bad ugly (first year music composition students). Your site is sitting right at the middle.

Opinions:

1) Get rid of the gray background. It clashes insanely with what you’re tyring to do. (It’s distracting because it overpowers the text. Such dark in what’s otherwise a light site.) You may want to try either using a lighter color or fitting in some sort of pattern in the background, maybe a few of those Japanese-style advertisement posters. (Example here.)

Alternatively, black instead of gray, or maybe a gray-black 2px repeat pattern, so it looks like the BG is textured.

If anything, think about going for that whole “down town, we stuck a lot of posters of the same thing here and now they’re all peeling away, ‘Vote for Pedro’ ‘Punk rockers in concert'” look. (Example here.)

2) Spacing is ok, but you may want to space out paragraphs a bit more, to differentiate them from straight-out sentences. Makes it easier to read without changing the feel. You may also want to consider making the text a tad bigger, and a smidgeon tighter. It’s a tough one to pull off and be readable, but it can look really good. Very sharp, serif fonts are perfect in this case. The text may have to be darker for this to work, though.

3) Right-align pictures within the text. It’ll make the page look cleaner while keeping the same feel. As it is now, your busy look has a LOT of dead space. (Though I agree with the whole “more white space crowd in some aspects, I see what you’re trying to do with this, and like it, but think that you’re using the little whitespace you’re allowing yourself in a manner inconsistent with what you want to do.)

Good luck with this.

Too many words…

Which is good content-wise. But you need to give the words some space to breath. Add some paddings, whitespaces and organize it accordingly.

You dont have to cut it down, just a little bit of reorganizing and playing with the typo :).

i’ve updated the site with new domain https://www.wordpressmag.com give it a comment =)

Gotta add some whitespace. Whitespace is good. Whitespace it Great!