New Blog in Need of Review

1) It’s simple. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s overwhelmingly attractive – the font is rather plain, as is the main body of the page. There’s minimalist, and then there’s just plain plain! It certainly isn’t unpleasant, however, so don’t worry (although I’m not a fan of the dark background – rather a claustrophobic feel to it).

2) I think you’ve basically achieved that (subject to point 4 below).

3) It’s alright. I don’t really like the calendar, and I think you could delineate between your recent posts by a dotted/dashed line or something to that effect.

4) I won’t comment on content or context, but it’s a little large for my taste. On a normal 1024 monitor, it goes at least halfway down the page. If you want to be content-centric, perhaps make it a little less intrusive?

Hope this helps.

My first comment is the header . . .
Good image, just way to large. You should reduce the size to fit the space and maybe compress it a bit. 270K is a big load for a header and people on dial up will not sit around and wait.

Second, squeeze it down a bit in width – – the whole page I mean.

Other than that . . . Its plain, but nice.

These are just of my immediate thoughts …

1) as mpgeorge said, the header image is rather large. The “best” portion of any page, to display the most important content, is the top.

2) Where am I? On the “Home Page”, I see your first blog post, but the description of your site is way over on the right, all “smushed” up. This is the home page, so a nice concise description would be nice, right up front.

3) The header is not a link. It’s standard nowadays for the header to be a link back to the homepage.

4) (my personal preference) the left margin is kind of small. Think about a piece of paper, the left margin is quite big and makes it easier to read. the black so close to your text on the left is distracting.

5) When I get to the bottom of the page, where do I go? your navigation is st the top, but nothing at the bottom. A “back to top” would be nice. Even after the post content in a single post view; If the user doesn’t want to read the comments, give them somewhere to go.

But overall the design is really quite nice. Good big font size (although sans-serif is easier to read on-screen), well spaced out sections and headers. Good job.

Thanks very much you guys. Great comments.

Some of the things you suggest I am not sure I can do with my Sandbox template or at least I don’t know how to do since I can only change CSS not the HTML:

* Edit the footer in any way (as it is automatically generated by WordPress) to include “back to top”

* Hyperlink the logo/header

I will definitely:

* Increase the left-hand margin
* See if I can add the navigation at the bottom as well
* Try mpgeorge’s idea of delineating recent posts (it looks good on your site)
* Play with the background color
* Consider Helvetica

The picture is quite large, but I don’t mind that since on even a small screen, it means the only text you see is the most recent post and the “about this blog” which is what they should notice.

However, I do like how MattRead has a description of the site front and center. Looks great. Hmmm….

Thanks very much again guys. I appreciate it.

Thanks so much ALWStaff for the comment.

The site is currently set to whatever the width is of the screen being used. I had been asking myself whether or not to set a fixed width. Maybe that makes sense and the header image width will be smaller and set.