The Detroit Times – Better Look, New Template

hmm..

https://validator.w3.org/check?uri=https://thepopulistblog.com/

257 errors.. while that doesnt seem to completely break anything outright, its bound to break something for someone.

Your sidebar..

when you mouse over the images, there is a hover affect – the color doesnt gel well with your background.

The google search box is like squished, I thought it might be the fact that I block ads, but ie displays it similarly.

The general feel, I get is that it’s too cluttered; there seemed to be alot of things just plopped into the sidebar any old place. Myabe its my adblocking that makes it look that way.. I dunno.

I would have commented on several of your posts – but according to your _about_ page, I dont belong “there” – I have to agree, actually, since I wasnt too impressed with the look, the feel, or the content of your site.

LOL… I didn’t write the template. the author This guy tell him.

Funny many other people seem to like it.

can’t make nobody happy in here. always someone got to gripe. can’t you just say, it looks nice?

I guess momma didn’t teach manners.

Oh well.. I try.

-Chuck

FYI… I removed all the widgets and there were still 64 errors… I can fix those in the widgets. But the other 64, them are on the author of the template. I don’t know enough about editing to be messing with someone’s template…

thanks anyhow…

I saw it with and with out all that garbage in the sidebars you removed. It looks so much better without it.

go tell michelle malkin and all the other WELL KNOWN bloggers who run ads and various widgets that their blogs suck and see what happens to you.

heh.

ThePopulist,

I refer you to this:

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/WordPress_Site_Reviews

It’s my understanding of the intent of this area that a review ought to be honest. If you wanted me to lie, you might have said that from the outset.

For what it’s worth, even my commentary on your about page was intended to be constructive, since you clearly set out to alienate ppl that might otherwise be interested in what you have to say.

ThePopulist,

Don’t take it personal, you asked for us to take a look.

I really like the color scheme, for the most part – however I agree that the hovers don’t work with the background on some of the ads. For instance under the “Headlines and News” bits whenever I hover over a headline the background turns a dark gray and I can’t read the black test anymore.

I also agree it looks a bit cluttered.. perhaps you should try rotating some of the banners on the site instead of having all 300 of them on the page at one time. When you have that many on the page, I just instinctively ignore them all..

It literally took me 5 minutes to find the “About The Blog” link that Whooami was talking about – because it was buried 2/3 of the way down an entire column of banner ads. I imagine casual readers won’t even know it’s there and isn’t going to bother to scan through all of those buttons to see what’s at the bottom.

A few suggestion to reduce clutter: I’d move the amazon and other ‘buy me stuff’ buttons to their own page called something like “Support this blogger” or something. That way the people who are seeing them are ones that actually want to support you – plus, they don’t detract attention from the more important buttons.

I’d also move the stats buttons to their own page or at least to the bottom. While you and I find it interesting, the average visitor doesn’t care that Akismet stopped x number of spam comments and how many hits/visitors you have.

You have 4 graphical links to feedburner plus two other link to your RSS feeds. Yikes.

I’d remove the calendar, I never understood the purpose anyway.

Move your blogroll/pages/Archives to the top of the columns.

I’d seriously think about reducing some of those RSS feeds.. the page is HUGE… take a look at this:

https://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d27/nolageek/TheDetroitTimes_1190111856812.png