My name is Jen and I have a blog.

  • Like 99% of the people lurking around this site, I’m fairly new at the whole blogging scene. I haven’t blogged about what I’m making for dinner yet, but I’m sure I’ll get there someday.

    I’m a writer and I was told that a blog would be a good way to get my stuff out there. So tada!

    https://www.jenstayrook.com/

    I’m looking for feedback, clearly. Are there things you like and dislike about it? What turns you on? Sure, most of my content is geared towards writing, things that I read and write, etc. Basically it’s my blog. It’s about me. I’m so original I should have marble statues erected in my honor. Sometimes geeky topics slip in the mix: reviews of video games, trysts with Google products, etc. You understand. You’ve been there.

    It’s still kinda new. And by kinda I mean it’s been gathering dust for a few months but I’m working on it. Geez. I’ll get off my butt soon.

    More specifically, I want to try to make use of that gosh darned footer. Suggestions?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • Suggestions for the footer? Get rid of it. You have nothing there that can’t be displayed in the sidebar.

    Your navigation: mouseover suggestion.

    Drop the Twitter from the top (the birdie behind the RSS icon). You’ve got the one on the sidebar that does the same thing. (Redundant)

    Get a plugin for search that returns results that are relevant to what is being searched for. (I searched for “blog” and got results about your anniversary (nothing to do with “blog”).

    Do you really want people leaving comments on your about page? Template -> page.php -> conditional statement (if you want comments on other pages) or just get rid of the comments call altogether.

    Fancy links are your friend (but entirely up to you.) I know someone else would rattle on and on about SEO goodness, but – I’m not that person.

    Just a few things I noticed, anyway. Probably more, but I didn’t want to give you a massive tl;dr in your first reply.

    Jen, considering how relatively new the site is, I think it looks great! I’ve have a lot of attention to detail and you’ve done an excellent job so far.

    That said, although there are many things that I believe are done well, here are my initial thoughts on improvement areas.

    1. Navigation could be improved. Perhaps Featured Sections could be along the top? Seems like a waste to have so many posts buried and hard to find. You could move the About area to the sidebar or the footer.

    2. If you care about SEO at all, use permalinks that spell out the topic. That’s just one easy thing to take care of. So rather than jenstayrook.com/?p=269, it would read jenstayrook.com/the-magic-in-writing.

    3. In addition to the About snippet (see #1), I like recent posts, recent comments and top commenters. Add one or two of those to go with the blogroll.

    The important thing is that it looks like you’re having fun with it. Keep up the good work!

    Jen, I love the header!

    I’d increase the size of the body type a couple points as well as as the line spacing

    font-size: 14px;
line-height: 18px;

    that should do it, and I’d also get rid of the annoying smiley face in the bottom right corner with this handy plugin https://regentware.com/software/web-based/wordpress-plugins/wp-stats-smiley-remover/

    —
    Christopher Ross

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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