The Painted Veil website review
Posted by Lindsayanng on February 25th, 2009
You site seems to have a LOT of colors happening. I know that a lot of it is not your choice because a lot of the colors are coming from your advertisements, but that just means that you have to organize better.
Your other issue is that you have WHITE text on BLACK background. This is a big problem for most people. Not just some, but at least 50% of people physically can not read it, and a little bit more just prefer not to. Now, black text on white is also considered a little bit too much of a contrast, and the idea readability is actually black text on beige or off white. The reason text on screen is different than text on paper is because of the lighting. When you look at text on paper, the light is coming over your shoulder and being reflected into your eyes. This is a much less harsh way of viewing highly reflective colors like white. HOWEVER, when you look at a screen, the light is coming from behind the screen, which means that it is going directly into your eyes and therefore putting more stress on the eyes. A white background can be painful over very long periods of time, and that is because of the constant bright light. The idea of using small words that have the same amount light being directed into the eye is just not a good one for a blog especially. Blogs are websites make for the specific use of writing and reading. When you choose white text on a black background, you are making it very difficult for a lot of your readers to be able to spend any amount of time reading. The small white letters create a lot of contrast and the amount of light glaring from those little letters makes it hard to really focus. Have you ever been in a dark room where there was a small crack of light coming through. That little crack of light looks like some type of spot light in the dark. That is what white text on black backgrounds are doing. The little letters are like pinholes in the wall that are letting the light through. It looks like its WAY brighter than it is.
So you have a couple of choices to try and fix this and make sure that ALL people who come to your website will feel comfortable.
You can change the black background to match the rest of your site’s background and keep the white.
You can do a simple black text on white background where just the inner background is white..
OR if you are dead set on the black, you can make your text grey instead of white. Or keep your text white and make the background a dark grey instead of black. Anything to offset the major contrast of white on black.
MY suggestion for your look would be the following. Make the outer background black (you will have to edit your banner then) and make the inner website white with black text. I think that they grey that you have in the outer background is clashing with your yellows in your theme. They are not colors that match in the design world. Having that grey is adding to the busy-ness of your website because the grey has no real purpose. You usually would pick your background color based on a color that existed on your main focus design OR black or white. Your header image is the main focus of your website right now, and that is ok. I think that the colors in your header a little light and by suggesting those colors to you to use would, i think, be telling you to change it TOO much. So I feel that if you created a black outer background, and a white inner background, you will have the same feel, but it will look cleaner, less cluttered and more readable to other readers. I also think that the gold in your text would look nice right on the black background.
Ok.. So i just deleted EVERYTHING I wrote after the comments about the text. I had a whole list of things you should do and then scrapped them. I am having a hard time helping you without having you revamp the layout of your site.
I can tell you to remove all of the ads except the ones that are really important to you, but I have a feeling that they are important to you, and that is why they are there. SO… If you want to keep those ads, but you want to make them look more organized (which i STRONGLY suggest) you should look at a different style template.
These are the styles that I suggest:
Lay Simples
Zine Press (with this one i would move the ABOUT ME to the top)
Green Valley
D’Black
Black Brown Art
If you are getting the idea, I am suggesting a theme that has the two columns side by side. This way you can set up ALL of your 125×125 ads and blog pictures side by side in a 2 x 4 cube. You have 8 images that would look VERY nice and organized, and then stragglers and be put on the lower single column.
IF you choose not to change your template and you are dead set on this one.
I would move the entre card widget down. When you think about it, WHAT is more important to your website?? Your readers first right? So you should put CATEGORIES in that place. Create a categories section or at minimum a tag cloud. Categories and tags are a great way to show a new visitor exactly what your site is about. With blogs, if you do not have those, and your first impression is your first few posts on your front page, you could be loosing a lot of readers simply because they did not know that you had a lot of other content. People who browse the web like instant gratification, and if your front page does not speak to them right away, they will likely leave not knowing that you have a post that would REALLY interest them from a month or two ago.
Archives are almost useless because even though the post is there in the archives, people don’t KNOW that they are there and they have to dig through a bunch that might not interest them to get to the few that DO interest them. Then, if you catch their interest with those posts, it can open their eyes to your other posts that before they would have passed over. So the archives should go lower on the side bar.
Then I would take the image that you created with the code box under it UP. You want that probably above your entre card box because you really want people to grab that code and help you advertise your blog. In the long run, other bloggers who blog about YOUR blog are going to get you more readers than EC. I would have the categories at the top, then YOUR image with the code, and THEN EC widget and the other ads underneath. Right now, the ads are spaced very far apart, and I am not entirely familiar with blogger, btu i would THINK that it is because they are each in their own little widget or box correct?
They would look SOO much better if they were actually right up against each other. Put ALL of the code inside of one box or widget and they will be right on top of each other and look more like a string of blogs and info than a bunch of randomly placed one. I would to the larger images on the top and the smaller ones beneath it.
Overall though, i think you need to prioritize. Make sure that ABOVE ALL your readers are taken care of.. Once you have enough resources for them to use and enjoy, THEN thing about advertising and make sure that the ads that you have on your site are accessable.. and THEN worry about your socializing and all of that. Those things are nice to have, but using them in valuable sidebar space does not need to be taken up by them
One thing you can do if you do not want to remove any of those is just choose the one that is the most important to you and leave that one. Then create a little link below that one that says “Click here for more social contacts by ME!” and link that to a new page that you created SPECIFICALLY for those social websites. There you can put AS MANY as you can possible want on there. Doing this gives the user the CHOICE to see all the rest of them and doesnt throw them their face, but it also doesn’t hide them on the farthest back page.
I do have a vision for your site, and it can be really beautiful, but you need to move away from the separate 3 column and grey background and get over to a side by side with a BLACK outer background with that beautiful image on top and that gold text on black.
I think you have potential because you have great content AND really neat graphics. You just need to reorganize. I would guess that you chose this template when you didn’t have soo may little 125 x 125 images. And now that you have them you didnt think that re-creating your blog with a new template was an option. In my opinion, its the BEST option… But I did give you a second option for you.
Want to know who is offering this awesome content? Here it is! Someone who is relatively new to web design. I am new enough to still remember how absolutely frustrating it was to try and get anything done in this field, but have also been around long enough to be able to help those that are where I was a year ago.
Aside from web design, I run the office of my dad's engineering business, and do book keeping by trade.
I love my pets.. All 6 cats, 1 peg legged dogs, and 1 hedgehog. LOVE THEM!!
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 author
