Mar 23, 2008
new look, same great taste
as i’m sure you’ve noticed, i changed the look of the site around. the change was entirely motivated by scott’s new blog and the look of his site. i’d started working on it live in the evenings, and then changing it back to the old one before i went to bed. scott must have hit my site during the short time period i was doing my live edits, and decided to post about my new look on his site before i was done. it was just the motivation i needed to get it finished!








11 Comments, Comment or Ping
zameericle
nice rework… curious though, how many quarters of a penny do you make with each visit?
Mar 23rd, 2008
Vince
hey neil, nice layout. i’m might try something like this. i’m kinda getting tired of my current layout.
Mar 23rd, 2008
neil
lol. i wish i made a quarter of a penny for each visit!
the ads are just to add some colour to the site. :)
Mar 23rd, 2008
neil
thanks vince! yeah, it was time for a change - i never really liked the last theme i had, and missed my old text-y look from way back the moment i changed from movabletype to wordpress. i think this one will work out though.
Mar 23rd, 2008
martelc
I like the new look & feel. However, I don’t like the location of the comments. Twice today I’ve clicked the comments only to discover the list was for the wrong post. They’ve moved from the more standard location below the post, to the less standard location above the post. I’ve seen it on a few sites, but I prefer it below. It just makes more contextual sense that a comment would proceed a post. That being said, if a person knows they want to read the comments, they don’t have to scroll to see both the post and the list of comments. They can just click the comment at the top and read it all in one shot - one less scroll.
Mar 23rd, 2008
Scott
Hey Neil thanks for the plug and links! The sites lookin’ good. I agree with what Crystal says about the comments. I did the same thing too. But not a big deal in my opinion for regular readers who will have figured it out.
As for the ads I think you should change the colouring. Try the following:
For the Skyscraper on the sidebar:
Border #EEEE
Title #3333
Background #EEEE
Text #3333
URL #3333
I would also take off the 768×60 banner on the top as it may look better without. If you want 2 ads on the page you could put another skyscraper on the left sidebar. Say after your recent comments.
In response to the
comment on my site about the images, some are mine, some are public ones from flickr and others are ones I have purchased from iStockPhoto. It is a good source of stock images.
Mar 24th, 2008
neil
thanks crystal and scott. i’ll take those suggestions into consideration. i do agree with the location of the comments, and scott, i’ll give you suggestion about the ads a try too.
Mar 24th, 2008
Scott
Hey Neil just to let you know that your site is not aligning properly in IE 6.0. ( I know, I know IE sucks but I’m at work) The sidebar is going down to the bottom of the homepage. Everything seems to work fine on the article permalink pages though. Perhaps it is something to do with the image sizes in your posts?
Mar 25th, 2008
Scott
But everything is cool in Safari and Firefox on my Mac at home.
Mar 25th, 2008
neil
thanks scott, i’ll take a look. it looks okay in IE7 now (there was blue border around the flickr images and a javascript error - both fixed). now, i just need to get my hands on a machine with IE6 on it. i should be able to round up a VM at work tomorrow if i have a few minutes to spare.
Mar 25th, 2008
Scott
On IE6 at work and everything looks great!
Mar 26th, 2008
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