This is what I’m going with
I’ve been working pretty hard on getting a new site up and running. I had to switch to WordPress as I had outgrown my previous site.
The site isn’t 100% finished, there will be some tweaking to Adsense placement and other things. I will be adding a reviews section among other things.
I wanted the site to remain pretty minimal in design.
I will be doing minor stuff while the site is live to customize a bit more. Consider this a beta test.
Where are the comments?
Yeah, they’re gone. I gave up trying to import them. They weren’t part of an RSS feed. I will keep trying, but I’m not sure if it’s really needed. Is it?
Hiccups
There will be some, if you hate something on the site… let me know.
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I like it.
Would be great if the URL system you adopt makes searching and retrieving easy, for a specific news item (for the purpose of making it easy to link to a story that’s no longer on the top of the page (not the most recent). I see also that you’re making the new URL’s informative (with date + title), that’s nice but it makes the URL a bit long.
Good luck! love the site!
Good luck from Spain! :D
Keep up the work> It’s a lot of effort maintaining a living site and many may not appreciate it.
I like the categories and recent posts/comments sections: easy to get to.
A big improvement on the depressing grey of earlier! It is much more readable now. Well done.
The fonts are still tiny, though. I use a 120 DPI laptop screen (a typical Dell 15″ at 1400×1050). For example, because you set the comment text font to “11px” in your CSS, I see the equivalent of a less than 7-point font. (11px / 120 DPI * 72 = 6.6pt, there are about 72 “points” in an inch.) Even if you set the value to points, you are at the mercy of the user’s/OS’s DPI setting: it may not match the DPI of their screen and different OSs have different defaults. If you set it to a percentage, it all becomes much better: it will use the browser’s default font size and the user can set that or scale the page as required. You are then off the hook!
For example, here are some reasonable values:
body { font-size: 100%; }
h1 { font-size: 130%; }
h2 { font-size: 125%; }
h3 { font-size: 120%; }
.ctext { font-size: 90%; }
That makes a huge difference for me. Perhaps you won’t see a difference on your screen, but that is kind of the point: it should match most users’ screens pretty well.
Don’t know if you have any kind of a pocket fruit you’re using, but please don’t forget about us mobile users when testing your new site design. I am reading your site primarily on a WM smart phone, and your old site was pretty easy to navigate and read the new posts…
I appreciate the comments from everyone.
Squinty:
I’ll look into the issue with small text. I’m looking at the site 1680×1050 @ default 96dpi on a 15.4″ laptop screen and the text is quite large enough. However, I’ll pay attention to anyone else that has concerns about the text size.
Chris Herd:
I didn’t forget about the mobile devices. I’m actually developing an iphone version of the site to work along side this one. Don’t expect it before November. I hope you’ll be happy with it.
Congrats!
IMO it looks much better than the crashed dark version.
I like “red” on it.
I would try using red font for all titles (like yellow on NikonRumors.com)
The HTML does not flow or adjust as the browser size changes. On my monitor, the heading is too big and scrolls off the right along with the third row of divs (holding the Recent Posts). Based on my browser, I’d say you are scrolling off 15% to 20% although my horizontal is 1200 pixels. Perhaps you header line is an image that is too wide? What about putting the CR numbers under the logo?
You may wish to design for a minimum 1024 across, or even 800, and let the design expand and flow as the browser window expands.
The old site had none of these problems….
Also, the anti-spam gadget is gone. That was a really good idea, you know.
sfwrtr
The site is designed for 1024×768 and larger. That size and smaller accounts for 4% of total site traffic. The site is 1000 pixels wide. An astonishing 11% of the site traffic is running on a 30″ monitor resolution.
I also don’t like variable width web sites and will retain the fixed width.
The site design is for the enjoyment of the majority of readers of the site. I can’t please everyone. There will be a mobile version of the site in the next month, that may be more what you’re looking for.
There will be some tweaking to the header because I dislike the ad the way it is.
There is an anti-spam gadget running behind the scenes that I can customize and works a lot better. It already caught and disposed of 2 WOW Gold spambots.
Thanks for the comments.
I like it. WordPress is realy nice.
One thing that might be nice is enabling OpenID for the comments.
Keep up the good work.
1000 pixels wide? I’m running 1200 wide! (1200×1600 on a 22 inch monitor, to be exact.)
Ah, I see. You are using some HTML that works properly only under Internet Explorer. You may want recheck the compatiblity of your coding.
Your site is also trying to put up an Active-X control. Are you sure you want Active-X controls? (I block them.)
Suggestion: During initial developement, please test on Firefox, also. (And Safari to handle the Mac people.) The older site looked geat under Firefox 3 whereas this one doesn’t. (Great content, though).
Opps, my mistake! I turned off the 20% zoom on my browser and the new CR look just fine under Firefox 3. As they say these days, “My bad!” Sorry.
Everything looks fine on Safari on my 24″ imack.
Site is very much improved. Keep up the good work.
Don
sfwrtr:
Excellent to hear, I was actually starting to stress… heh
Love the new design, it feels very fresh (and not as murky as the grey one)! I like the font-size as it is, but for comments it’s a bit smallish.
Stefan:
Hows the font size now?
I like the theme more than the grey. It’s more readable on devices other than your big desktop. Also has better ad placement.
I would also like to point out you have 2 “Recent Posts” sections. 1 with tabs and a dedicated box under it. I find it a bit strange, maybe you should get rid of one.
Also your site should have capabilities for RSS feeds as well. Perhaps you could provide a link somewhere on the right so we can throw this on our iGoogle pages for an example.
Lastly, I know you are aiming to make some longer term posts like reviews. Perhaps you need a link section to these longer life posts somewhere too.
Jerry:
1) You’re right about the recent posts, I will correct that this evening.
2) There’s an RSS link beside the date at the top right.
3) I will be adding a menu system for the reviews, I’m just waiting until I get one done.
Thanks!
CR: The comment size is perfect now, thanks!
Firstly congratulations on the blog. The design with a white background, I like more and more is clean. Greetings from spain
The site looks great. Well done!
Wow, I like these refinements even better!! White is definitely an improvement over the tan.
But what happened to my other 2 comments?
Now it’d be really cool if there was a mobile portrait version!
Wow, I like these refinements even better!! White is definitely an improvement over the tan.
But what happened to my other 2 comments?
Now it’d be really cool if there was a mobile portrait version!
oh and big thanks!!!!!!!!!
Michael:
I killed the comments accidentally because I killed the post. Sorry about that.
I’m giving in and getting a Blackberry (I just can’t type on the iphone), so a mobile version is a must.
Change d background color to “black”
CR: The Blackberry bold is coming out soon (so the rumors say). Looks pretty sexy. I’d check it out before switching to any of the current BB models.
I hope this is useful to you.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001105.html
Apparently you should be sure to get the caching plugin for wordpress?
Looks great, thanks
Please dont forget mobile user’s using opera mini browser
I have a logo ready for you.
Where can I send it?
it looks really nice and clean. kudos.
Ultimately, an issue that I am overzealous about. I have looked for information of this topic for the last several hours. Your site is greatly appreciated.