New layout warning

I’m going to be monkeying around a bit. If you see the layout suddenly change and look terrible, just bear with me, that means I’m actively tinkering with it. I’ll be switching back to the tried and true one once I run out of steam chopping up CSS. New layout won’t go up permanently until it’s done.

Edit: Alright, well, I’ve decided I’m happy enough with my progress that I’m going to leave what I have up. I still have a lot more to do, of course, but this should hold pretty well for now. For example: comments are now threaded, hurray.

My to-do list:

  1. Find a good font for posts
  2. Change post title font
  3. New color for the right sidebar
  4. Add some better things on the sidebar like “greatest hits” and rss/etc links.
  5. Change links color
  6. New background color
  7. Copy blockquote design from old layout
  8. Somehow get comment avatar images to float left
  9. Other things I can’t think of

I’ll take any other suggestions as well. I’m perfectly open to many design tweaks.

17 Comments to “New layout warning”

  1. HP
    @iamapaladin
     26 April 2010 at 7:50 pm #

    Haha, what a coincidence. I’ve been tinkering with my blog too. More of an inside job and stuff though so the changes aren’t really apparent. I’m a noob at blog tinkering though so I’m pretty inefficient.

    Looking forward to the revamp!
    HP’s last blog ..Why 25 man raids man may still be better in Cataclysm My ComLuv Profile

  2. zelmaru 27 April 2010 at 10:07 am #

    Hehe I keep checking back to see the progress
    zelmaru’s last blog ..Monday Haiku (Ode to Putricide) My ComLuv Profile

    • Rhidach
      @Rhidach
       27 April 2010 at 10:17 am #

      What do you think so far?

      • zelmaru 27 April 2010 at 10:22 am #

        I think the header looks better! It seemed like the header was supposed to stretch all the way across the screen before, and it didn’t.

        I like the wide sidebar with the bullet points. Very clean.

        I would probably put the RSS subscription nearer the top, just because that’s where everyone will look for it.
        zelmaru’s last blog ..Haiku Monday (Prophetic Warning in Haiku Form) My ComLuv Profile

        • Rhidach
          @Rhidach
           27 April 2010 at 10:26 am #

          Thanks :)

          Yeah I don’t know why the default setting is to have RSS all the way down there. I’m going to sneak it back up top on the siderbar and then figure out something to put in the bottom corner.

  3. Kuro 27 April 2010 at 10:21 am #

    I really like it actually.

    From a web designers point of view it looks really great, although the header and the big blocks of black kind of draw a bit much of the attention away from the actual content.

  4. Kuro 27 April 2010 at 10:22 am #

    Also the big black borders around the gravatars ain’t really that beautiful.

    • Rhidach
      @Rhidach
       27 April 2010 at 10:25 am #

      Haha agreed. That’s a default thing I need to tweak. I want to border the images with something, but a 10px wide border doesn’t seem to be it!

      And agreed again on the black blocks above. I needed a filler to keep the header image a minimum height and that was the best I could gin up on short notice.

      • Kuro 27 April 2010 at 12:13 pm #

        I am sure you will get these little tweaks fixed over time. The overall feel of the new design is really good though. Keep it going in the same direction. :>

  5. Vorian87 27 April 2010 at 12:31 pm #

    Looks pretty neat Rhidach. good work :)

    • Rhidach
      @Rhidach
       27 April 2010 at 2:05 pm #

      Thank you :)

  6. Joe Ego 27 April 2010 at 1:58 pm #

    The link to view comments on posts is very small. Making the chat bubble clickable for the same link would help a great deal.

    • Rhidach
      @Rhidach
       27 April 2010 at 2:05 pm #

      Ooh, good suggestion! I will do that.

  7. Fawatam 28 April 2010 at 9:01 am #

    I’m really digging the new site design. Sure there may be some tweaks here and there but the overall feel is much sleeker and has a lot more polish to it.

  8. gravity 30 April 2010 at 2:13 am #

    I really like the new design too. Couldn’t see it until today (read you via RSS). Loverly.

  9. gravity 30 April 2010 at 2:19 am #

    Some constructive feedback for you.
    * Consider getting the “wp ajax edit comments” plugin. Then I could have edited this into the previous reply rather than a new one. I have it on my blog if you want to check it out live.

    * Have a list of ‘recent posts’ up the top-right, say last 15 or 20 posts.
    * Demote the blogroll to the last item in your right-hand column (it should not be so prominent, we’re here to read your stuff).

    * Have ‘recent comments’ after your new recent posts section, so readers can follow the conversation more easily.

    • Rhidach
      @Rhidach
       30 April 2010 at 9:23 am #

      wp ajax edit comments isn’t on WordPress’s plugin site anymore. I wonder what happened. I tried some of the other solutions but one didn’t work and another seems unwieldy. I’ll try to find something that works.

      Thanks for all the suggestions Gravity, I really appreciate the advice!