crazytaxi

First off: this is head-and-shoulders above 90% of the sites submitted here. So rejoice in that.

Quibbles: We don’t discuss content here, but since that music playlist in the header is an image, I guess it’s part of the design. Why? Nothing to do with photography, several of the artist and title names are spelled incorrectly, and you risk alienating potential clients/subscribers who don’t particulary like Kiss or “Peter Gabrielle” (wtf?).

I’m not as adverse to the splash page as the other commenters; it loads quickly and is kinda special. Maybe it could have some more drill-down links other than “enter” and that would redeem it as a landing page.

Looks good overall. Good luck.

On screen the sans-serif is more readable.

We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one. Like I said, I know I’m a lone holdout on the issue, and all manner of studies and wisdom run counter to my own preferences. But then again, two centuries of medical wisdom recommended bloodletting and leeches.

Looks very good on my end now.

My background before the web was in print — so I assumed it woud have been called something like “tracking” or “kerning” and be under Fonts.

I also came to the web from a print background, which brings up a side discussion. I still prefer the print rule of serif fonts for body text and sans-serif for larger type. All of these younger web wunderkinds may disagree, but as my eyes get older I see the wisdom in the old paradigm.

That’s definitely more readable on my end. I’m not a big fan of percentage sizing for fonts, although you’ll find arguments on both sides of the fence. That body font is more readable, but is still rendered kind of funny; hard to put my finger on it. Try changing that font-size to a fixed pixel height and see if you don’t notice any difference.

site looks well done overall! I have one dealbuster issue on this end though: the content text is rendering very poorly for me on IE7. Headlines and sidebar text are fine, but the post type is poor. Don’t have time to look in FF; may be be a percentage-sizing issue or font choice vs BG.

I’ll have to echo Chrisber here. Your columns are very wide for scannable reading. A significant portion of the content is in blockquote format, which is still too wide, and when it reverts to the full column width it’s pretty daunting.

Clearly, you’re a writer at heart. I’m right with you in that regard, and I respect a healthy content-first approach. But when the page is just one long scrolling block of black-and-white, you risk giving off an “OCD” appearance that may turn away prospective readers.

The lack of any imagery is double-quizzical (?) when your “that’s me” photo depicts you holding a camera. So maybe it’s intentionally ironic and I’m missing the point.

My first ideas would be adding a left sidebar of some sort, which would shorten the main column width and thus lighten up the page appearance. You might also try using some floating photos inside the stories, or some icons to mark off page elements. Or even just using excerpts instead of full stories on the front page.

One thing I do really like is the way your theme handles the post metadata. It’s a fairly rational format for a single-author site; I may have to try to work with that format for my next project.

sigh… they’re like lambs staring at satan approaching on a dark horse.

hm.
RSS feeds in multiple langues?
live traffic reports showing metro/domain and trackbacks? Seriously, my IA (internet anonymity) just cringes at that. keep it to yourself.

I’m really not sure what to say about this site. Are you making money?

hey ginger!…

obviously, this is a great project taken on by a very creative young person. I do a similar “stream-of-consciousness” photo thread on a couple of blogs, and it can be very effective if enough love and care is showered on it.

I do really think you should find some way to break up your initial load time, because asking the user to load all those dozens of photos on first click is a little overwhelming.

You could try limiting your pages to the most recent x-number of posts (which is very easy to do in the WP admin), or making your hame page a static page with only a couple of featured photos and links to categories or dates of photos (a little more thought, but do-able).

Either way, it would make the front page load faster and let your visitors enjoy the stuff up front instead of stressing over the page load time.

Cool enough so far, though. Hope you keep this up.

I’m not messing with anybody. We actually devised a drinking game here based on who can guess face vs. fish. You’re not allowed to point at anyone wearing a ballcap, tho, and that rule always screws me up.

Gotta go, Seinfeld is on.

oh and bytheway.. your content’s nice. very niche. future plans should include map navigation (click to find my adventures there). good luck.

looking good.
all trying to be constructive here:

the orange header font on the photo is just not going to work, ever. I can’t read your blog title. This is prolly convertable through your CSS file but this is the wrong forum for that. 1) Make your blog title more readable.

get some space from your header to your sidebar and main content. This is likely a margin width, and has prolly been altered from the theme original.

reduce the space between, headline, dateline and content start.

give some room (padding) around your photos to prevent the text from edging them.

tackle those four things, and you’re going to be in strong shape to move ahead.

this site does everything it was intended to do. look, content and marketing… you just might make a few pennies (or pounds?).

a traditional designer would be after you for the extremely tight margins, but with your stated intentions of mimicking a tabloid, it’s hard to argue. Your content and paid links are perfectly married, just like the experts advise.

are you planning other drums for other locales? or is this a one-off?

actually, that animated banner is awesome. fish, fish, fish, fish, FACE!! fish fish fish FACE! it rules.

you should add a midi file that plays automatically on page load. I’m thinking Manilow here.

also, at least in the development stage, there should be an animated gif of a guy with a jackhammer that says “under construction.”

add those two elements, and you’ll be golden.

Wes…
I MUST HAVE the “where is Wes” functionality… must have it. Is that accomplished through a plug-in, or some hack you’ve worked up?