Blog redesign (and some HD-Loli)
Seems like every year in September i feel the need to upgrade my blog. At least I did so exactly one year ago too.
There are several things I’d like to improve with the new design:
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1) The “contacting me” problem: Got a few comments of folks, who asked me how they can contact me. I have this icon with some little guys representing some instant messaging services, social networks and such with some additional text up there. This icon and text links to my Social-Me (aka About) page with all the information need to get in touch with me. Did you find it hard to find out some contact info too? Let me know below! Going to switch to a different theme with a navigation bar on-top and will add an about-page link there too. Should fix this problem hopefully.
2) Font size and font support: A simple question? Does text appear like in the picture shown above on your system?
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3) The sidebar and the blogroll: Yes i know, there is way too much stuff in my small sidebar. Will be improved! Especially the shop banner section and the blogroll. What do you think about moving it to an page accessible via the upcoming navigation bar? Like this one over @ Blowfish’s burogu http://www.flyingpussyfoot.com/annotated-blogroll/
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Wondering if otaku.fm will ever be back? If not I guess I have to do something about those banners in my sidebar too ToT Has anyone more info about what Danny is up to with otaku.fm?
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Another thing that’s quite important nowadays is how your webstuff performs on smart phones.
How does my blog look/work on your device? Can’t do much about it as I’m on wordpress.com but I’m interested nevertheless ^^
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Last but not least: The banner. My banners history isn’t very spectacular:
From V2.3.1 …
… to V3.2 …
… to my current one: V4.5
Special Cirno Day banner from a few days ago xD
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Will have to edit my current banner for the new theme. How do you like it, any ideas for improvements?
Would be great if you share your thoughts below. Feel free to suggest anything!
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And as thank you for those who didn’t stop reading half an hour ago… some ULTRA-high res Loli! (33MB)
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Hmm well, if I were you, I’d test out all the different possibilities that I felt like trying out. From there you can get accurate feedback from others even if they had no experience with any of the styles.
/save loli
The contact info and such appear OK, but your layout is a way to wide! Either make it the standard 960px wide, or make it fluid, because it’s not only that I don’t see the sidebar on my 1024×768 laptop, a part of the text is behind the monitor as well.
One thing:
A smaller site!
Not everyone haves a 24″ big tft.
Make it smaller. I hate such big sites.
Because I don’t want to maximise the FF Window, I don’t see the things in the right.
And it’s hard to fill them.
The second thing, don’t use center text all the time!
It’s bad to read and the eye have to search for the beginning in the next line.
And somehow the theme.
Why not try with a anime/geek deisgn?
I mean Anime Char that haves a computer or something like that.
Not like those (fuckin) Apple Wallpaper and some other Random stuff that don’t fitt and looks
like 2 seconds with paint made.
And yes: Those closing Apple Windows stuff, ugly pixel!
Your banner history is interesting. I think I like your first two banners. ^^
I redesigned my site like three months ago and I’m in the middle of redesigning again…it’s an addiction, so I totally get wanting to change things up.
Narrow the main content area a bit. The lines of text are so long that occasionally I have to double back and reread just to make sure I’m still on the same line. As Gargron suggested 960px wide or a fluid design is what’s best for the largest percent of readers now.
The problem with the contact me section is on a 1024×768 monitor, you can’t see it without a horizontal scroll. Most people are accustomed to a vertical scroll when searching, but not a horizontal one…and when the site is so large as to scroll in both directions it creates a disconnect.
What content you want to blog about and how you want to blog about it plays a large part in the design!
Sieht doch garnicht mal schlecht aus^^ Besser als das vorherige wie ich finde. Da hat mir der BG an den Rändern absolut nicht gefallen^^”
Wundert mich ja nur, dass du nicht gleich auf eigenen Webspace umgestiegen bist.
Ja, theoretisch sagt man sich, je breiter desto besser beim Theme aber ich finde jetzt z.B. die Breite bei mit von 848px generell bzw. 528px für die Blogeinträge Ideal. Zudem ist der Standard halt noch 1024×768 bzw. 1280×1024 und entsprechende WS varianten.
Du Hast zwar deine Kontaktmöglichkeite erwähnt aber ich bin Faul xD Wäre der Hikky evtl so gütig den Link zu mir in seinem Blogroll anzupassen auf pantsu.jp?^^
In my honorable opinion your old design was quite better.
I dont believe your sidebar is to full of stuff, double or tripple wouldn’t be harming.
It should be common knowledge that the best is hidden, especially for 17″ users…
The best of your banners up to now is obviously the cirno banner, although you just cut it off.
The HD-Loli is on Konachan, so every Lolicon should have seen it.
And me too would appropriate if you had an own webspace.
Waere nicht schlecht wenn du die Adresse auch angibst wenn du einen Kommentar schreibst, momentan ist noch die alte WordPress Adresse drin ^^
I like your new design way more than the old one. It’s just more unique and the BRS banner looks awesome! It was really necessary to reduce the width of your page as I had to maximize my browser window when I was using my laptop (which has only a 1280×800 resolution).
This looks good! The only thing I can think of right now is that I’d want the header banner to be clickable, you do have the little house button, but still^^
Oh Gosh my Annotated Blogroll is the worst example you could have picked…Its sooooooooooooooooo oit of date…
As far as Smartphones go…Dont use one
And everything else looks good on my 15″ Display
looking good, i like the new look
Advice?
Blogroll is a bit too long, I’d move it to a different page. You can keep it if you are actually posting posts that are long enough to reach the end of your sidebar. I find sidebars that are twice-thrice as long as an actual post-length annoying, as you get a lot more down-scroll space.
The “Social” section, since it’s all one button which leads to the “About” page, give it a header, even if the header of that text widget is “Contact me!” or “Social”. As it is, it’s a tad confusing.
Live Blogroll is kinda nice, but maybe you should take it down to 10 links only.
Cut down the “Meta”. There’s absolutely no use for it on any wordpress site, ever. It’s dead space.
“IE Not supported” is incorrect, and the “IE sucks” alt-text is really not the way to go with those who are using IE.
Thumbs up!
You know, you have the one thing that made me consider paying for custom CSS, the custom header. That’s the real thing missing from iNove. Of course, longer usernames being cut in the comments is annoying, but acceptable
A friend suggested hosting me on his site, but then I might go for a wholly different theme, and well, it’d cut down on visits. Not only would people need to point their browsers and readers elsewhere, but the “Blog Surfer” and “My Comments” services would die, and that’d be a major blow to usability.
Hell yeah, thats the sort of response I was asking for^^
Didn’t notice I had that IE sucks thingy in there.
And the blog-roll was really way too long.
Daymn I still have that optimized crap up there in my header.. I’m on wp.com I can’t optimize anything!
Speaking of Custom-CSS: They have some weird problems atm, can’t save my stylesheet since a few hours @_@ http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/i-cant-save-my-css-changes
Yus, I would like to move over to a self-hosted blog too cause you just can’t pull of sthg awesome with all those limitations.
I’d consider limiting comment-nesting to 3, unless you have a really wide style, like the one Asian Ed and ELTBoy use, otherwise the column becomes too narrow and annoying to read, as you’ll see in this case
Also, I personally like a longer “Recent Comments”, but that’s more into the personal taste realm.
And glad to help
I have the same issue but a different reason why the layout should be less wide.
From my Interface Design and User Experience background I can tell you that the article space is waaay too wide. Wide can be nice for images but it’s a pain for long text. A good reading experience is when there are around 12 words in a row, your blog has nearly doubles this. What you can do is make the font bigger or make the layout less wide.
Thx, fixed. But I’m srsly wondering whats up with those 1024×768 px resolution? @_@
And yeah, way better to read now,thx for your help.
Yay, a lot better now! ^__^
“Throw away your 17″ Tfts folks, it’s 2009!” is what I wanted to say but as I am very concerned about my readers I downgraded ASAP of course.
Hope you like it that way.
Apple shit banner got burned! Using a temporary banner atm. Didn’t really like it too.. was just too lazy ^^;
Where I’m sitting right now I have a 22″ TFT, where I sat before (my laptop) there I had 17″. And in school we have IE5. That’s the real world, and it’s simply about being able to read/navigate normally from 80% of places. I think.
There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction, right?
Like your design btw, looks like some sort of gallery^^
We are now on a 960width, should be fine for most users that way.
IE5? OMG Your schools admin = Fail!
Just tested my new theme with IETester, looks not as it should with IE5-IE7 ^_^
Wenn Frau bedenkt, dass Webspace Geld, kostet und dieses nur für lebenswichtiges Zeugs aka Figuren und so ausgegeben wird is es nicht mehr wirklich verwunderlich oder
Standard 1024×768 bzw. 1280×1024 … ich verstehs nicht…
Oh sry, ja wird geändert ^^;
Ich merke schon, dass mit der “geringen” Auflösung bei dir ist wie mit dem hype um die Apfel Produkte bei mir. Wir verstehen net warum das so ist xD
steht doch im comment
Ich meinte eher der Link (der dein Name ist) unter deiner ava. Also den Link den du mitgibst sobald du ein Kommentar schreibst.