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http://www.instigatorblog.com/new-design-at-instigator-blog/2007/01/14/ -
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(Sorry if I don't seem totally supportive - I figure you want honest feedback. I really do think you did a good job! I especially like the header.)
The three column style and the color's match is great, a clean style, and honestly so much more better than the old one. ;)
Maybe you should do a screen shot of the old blog so new visitors can compare new to old.
Good job!
It is nice and clean but you will need to add pictures of some sort to more of your posts to keep it from looking to clinical.
Great work!
Lorna - what resolution are you at?
Does anyone else see a scrollbar at the bottom?
Char - I agree regarding the pictures, that was one of my fears with this style of design: looking to clinical (which to me is the opposite of inviting.)
The change looks good. I especially like the new color scheme.
The scroll bar shows up at 800x600. The cutoff is about half way through your subscribe button, so the contact link is off screen. All content shows up, though.
In fact, this might just inspire me to give my blog a new look. It's definitely time for a face lift over there.
I do know from my own research that 800x600 is a fairly small percentage of Web users, but again, this is the kind of thing that concerned me with switching and going 3-column -- making the site LESS inviting...
Thanks to everyone for the feedback.
One important thing, your RSS auto-discovery seems to be broken/missing. It is very important for numerous things, especially making it easy to subscribe , but also can play a role in syndication etc.
Can you try again and let me know what happens?
I've just added a snippet of code into the header -- I'm hoping auto-discovery picks up the FeedBurner feed.
Thanks!
Auto-discovery comes up with the following
http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http%3A%...
Just my $0.02... anyway :)
Leah - I agree. I've added some padding, but I think I may use a little graphic of some kind to help highlight individual elements in the sidebar.
One of my biggest problems is making mine work in IE. It was looking ok in IE6 but IE7 messed it up again.
I just tried IE6 and it looks like it worked properly - auto-discovering the FeedBurner feed.
I appreciate the help!
The subscribe icon and tag are on both your home page and single post pages, just not your archive pages.
I've also left the SUBSCRIBE stuff in the far right sidebar - but after mucking with sizes and having sidebars disappear on me in IE, I'm leaving the width as is...
And thanks for testing Rick!
Andy -- if you want me to send you the code I've used just shoot me an email. Maybe it'll help you in IE7...
Does this blog theme look broken? Get a browser that supports standards
Don't you guys ever sleep? ;)
Since that last comment I launched a new website and had a good 6 hrs sleep.
(OK that was a complete lie.)
Having two sidebars adds some flexibility which I like, but it also opens up the door for cramming in more stuff. Very likely I'll be reducing over time not adding...but there are some essentials in there for me (and hopefully everyone else too!)
Since recently launching my own blog (kind of a blog and kind of not www.techtraction.com please pardon the shameless plug), I've started paying closer attention to what others are doing with their design. I like your new design simply because it makes sense to me. Easy navigation and no nonsense.
I'm not totally thrilled with my design but figure it's 1.0 and gets me started. After I've learned more about what I want and how to do it, I'll work on 2.0.
I also just underwent a massive site redesign over at www.2dolphins.com (yup, another shameless plug). I'd had the old frames-based design in place for more than 2 years and it was just looking stale. The new design moves the blog itself front & center and all of the other pages are modelled after it, so there's a consistent look (mostly) throughout.
I've been puring over every little detail. Even down to a custom "quote" graphic used for blockquote insets. I'm still refining the code a bit to try to make the pages load a bit faster. I hope to move the stylesheet data to an externally-linked file, but this is still presenting a few problems...