Stuff and Nonesense website review
Posted by Lindsayanng on February 26th, 2009
SO your site looks like a mish-mash of styles that CAN be good if you chose just one.
Your header looks out of what because of the two blue-ish boxes. You have your large blue box that spans the entire width of your blog, and then you have the blue background of your blog’s title. AND they are both slightly different colors so it REALLY now looks like patchwork.
The sign of a nice design is consistency and flow. When your site starts to look like patchwork, that means you are getting away from a nice style and you should start to look at scaling things back.
You also chose to put an ad right above your blog title/banner. This is basically telling a lot of new visitors that you are more interested in showing your ads than your content. Whether that is correct or not does not matter because that is what you are displaying. If you want to have an add in the header, I would put your blog title in the top with the ad and align the blog title to the left, and the banner to the right. If you are willing to move that ad OUT of the header, you will get an even better reception. I would remove that second lower blue box completely, then put the content from that box in the header. Then, if you really want to, you can put the advertisement underneath the blue header but without a blue background.
This is all easy stuff to fix with some basic HTML and CSS.
The other thing is the design that you are using as your header. Its not really “right” but theres nothing overtly wrong with it. The issue is that you have, again, a few styles going on there and you need to cut it down to one consistent style.
You have the Big white text, the smaller tagline text, and then the really out of place purple and blue box with your name in it. DOn’t you agree that it is a little bit out of place? Why did you put that there? Did you make it and decide that you REALLY love it? Because if you do, you CAN use it, but you would have to scrap ALL of the greyish blue and turn it into something that matches better. It is also very “1990′s” with that text being 3D-ish and the colors. I think it would actually look really nice if you instead made an image of your signature. You can do this pretty easily if you have a photo editor and a scanner. OR if you can not use your actual signature, there are some GREAT signature fonts that look really good. I think it will add a nice and classy touch to your header.
Then you also have some very faint white design and a darker blue design in the background.. That is a LOT of stuff going on in that one little area. I think you would benefit more if you just removed that entirely and had your header information in your top blue box and a graphic with your signature. You can even do the signature in white to add a little flair.
So now it brings me to the rest of your blog, mainly the sidebars. They are pretty well organized, but i think you can benefit from moving them around a little bit. I like that you have the subscribe top and center, and then the about this blog directly underneath it. Those are some important things. Your copyright, not so important. I mean, if someone sees your content and is going to copy it – they will do it. With or without that logo. It’s a good thing to have on there, but you can move it lower and put more important things up top. It might even be more noticable if you created a small image that says “copyright reserved” and put it at the bottom of every one of your posts. You can even create a new page that explains the copyright along with a note saying that you have taken certain measures to avoid copying and to track it. (If you dont know what you can do to track copiers, let me know, i will give you some links).
So if you remove that from your sidebar, that will move your categories up which is a good thing. But your categories layout is not really the BEST looking thing I have seen. The red does not seem to suit your blog design. Unless you plan on using some red graphics elsewhere, I would switch the color to something that is more inline with the rest of your design. And DEFINITELY remove that little “luggage tag” graphic. You have SOO many categories that it just looks silly with all of those images. If you want something, a simple, normal sized bullet point would suffice and change the whole look of that area.
Same goes for your archives. The little stars arent really matching your theme. AND you seen to have been blogging for a long time and your list is just going to get longer and longer. Maybe there is a way that you can show only the years, and then have the months expand when you click on them. This will make the overall look of the archive links more compact but you will still be able to showcase the amount of time you have been adding content by showing the years. So instead you would just have
ARCHIVES:
2009
January
February
March
and so on…..
2008
2007
2006
This will, again, make more room in that sidebar.
Then you have “Joel’s Links” which aren’t really LINKS but actually links to PAGES On your website. People usually use the term “Links” when they are listing links to sites that you would feel your blog readers would find useful. So when I click on them, it brings me to “i guess” the main part of your website. But when I look at it, it makes me wonder why you even have that main part of your website.. You blog LOOKS a lot nicer, has a lot more information, and it is laid out in a more user-friendly way.
If i were to design this site, I would make your blog a real website. You can choose to have visitors land on a static page that is much like your main page, but it will have all of your sidebar content of your blog.. This will be good because people will land on your page and see your new book and little bit about you, and they will ALSO see that there is a lot of content there that is worth reading. Maybe they weren;t interested in the book, but after getting to know you through your blog, they bought it.. OR it could be the other way around. Maybe the person went there to specifically purchase your book, and they aren’t really a blog reader so they didn’t even bother to click on blog. HOWEVER, if they did click on blog, they might stay more active on your website and would be more apt to buy a SECOND book because your website will be in the front of their mind because they visit your blog often.
Is this making sense?? Its all a big marketing thing, and its a REALLY good thing.
Also, YOU DONT SAY HOW TO GET YOUR BOOK!!! The actual content on your website needs a complete overhaul. The wording is clunky and seems like it is trying too hard to be witty. I think that you should rework the content to be more “professional”
Is the reason for your blog to promote your website? Or did you write a book to promote your blog?? Just curious.. Either way, the site can be better used to promote BOTH aspects of your talent..
You can even sell your book on wordpress using the e-commerce plugin. You might be surprised how many people pick up the book if it is fairly priced. You can even offer contests and giveaway a copy of your book. ANYTHING to create buzz about your blog, book, or BOTH.
So yea, back to the “links” section. Remove it and create some “pages” tabs at the top. If you go to your theme’s home page, you can see what I am talking about. there are these tabs at the top where you should always have your CONTACT, ABOUT, ETC here.
So on to the second sidebar. Your calender is nice, and it shows that you post often. You do not need to move it, however if you get into the idea of selling your book from your blog, that would be better used to promote the sale of your book and then put your calender beneath it. The rest of that column is fine. Everything is organized well, you have the nice little images aligned properly and are not all over the place like with some people. You didn’t over do it with the ads either, which is refreshing.
So yea.. I think that even though your blog in particular does not have a lot of work that needs to be done.. You site as a whole can use a major overhaul to make things flow nicely. FLOW is what it is all about.
Let me know if you need help with this.. This is the stuff that I LOVE doing!!!
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Aside from web design, I run the office of my dad's engineering business, and do book keeping by trade.
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Oh yea, and my husband. He lets me chase my dreams and I let him do the same. We are happy people because of it. Read more from this authorTags: easy web design, Web Design, web design for newbies, web desing for newbies, website reviews
