They Call Me PastaBagel

  • THEY CALL ME PASTABAGEL
    So my website is up running WordPress after a brief and unpleasant experience with Mambo. I really like WP, more so than b2 and movabletype which I also tried. Good work! Excelsior!
    I tried to go for a design that would emphasize the writing, so I reworked the standard wp-layout.css heavily to conform to the insane torsions of my imagination. The text gets centered, the menu goes to the right and is faded a little, and left is open for future use by migrant bunnies.
    The columns aren’t floats, but rather absolutely and relatively positioned variable width columns. I know this goes against the grain of a lot of good WP designs, particularly the Gemini template, but I was trying to go for something different. In either case, the design looks fine in IE and Mozilla. (The page holds its design unless you squeeze the page to the extreme, and then the calendar starts to fall off the page. But who needs Saturday anyway?)
    My goal is to put up a new 500+ word essay every day, rather than the eleven two-sentence postings a day about how the author loves rainy days and comfy sweaters that you see on other blogs.
    Seriously, please visit PastaBagel.com and leave me a comment or two about the articles or the design and what you think. Help a bagel out, won’t you?

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Thread Starter pastabagel

    (@pastabagel)

    Also, I had a question.
    Looking at the site, what I really want to do is display only the headline and the excerpts (now in italics) of recent postings on the index page, but when the user clicks the title, they get the full article, without the excerpt. In addition (and here’s the kicker), I want the article title styled completed differently than it is on the index page.
    I’m fairly handy with CSS, but my question is how do I create that second “full-view” page?
    THEY CALL ME PASTABAGEL

    Nice work, although I’ve got a few suggestions design-wise.
    That header is (almost) great. It’s a wonderful tall, bold statement. I’m assuming it’s Impact with negative word spacing. However, Impact isn’t quite working out for you as you can see between the G and the E. If I can find another font that works I’ll be sure to let you know… I guess little tiny things like that (1px red lines) bug me. But that’s me :p
    To me, I feel as though the rest of the site could sure go for some overall typogrpahy makeovers. You’ve got a wonderful, bold, sans-serif title. Sans-serif italics on the right. Serif mixed with sans-serif on the left. Personally, I’d just make it all go with that bold-sans-serif look. I’d get of most of the itallics,
    Also that blue link color should probably change. May I suggest red? If you’re going for it – make red count. If Done correctly red can be my favorite color for basing a design.
    As for getting the excerpts… I’d be glad to tell you how, but it’ll take a day or two before I get the time. Basically what you need to do is use PHP to see if you’ve got any querystring (?p=5, ?cat=2, ?m=200408, etc) and if you don’t, just show this version of the loop, otherwise do this. You should also move that recent thing out of the loop so it doesn’t reepeat with every excerpt.
    Great work, glad to see more people actually putting efforts into blogs. A year ago I was bitter towards blogs because of those eleven posts a day “My mom sucks” blogs. But now with the birth of blogs that show actual effort, I think this community is going somewhere.

    Uh… not showing up. I meant the < ! – – more – – > tag

    Thread Starter pastabagel

    (@pastabagel)

    I made some changes based on your comments, Brak.
    I’ve decided to make the index page different from the full article display page, so I can have a more effective layout on the main page. This is coming soon…
    THEY CALL ME PASTABAGEL

    Thread Starter pastabagel

    (@pastabagel)

    Also, Brak, I fixed the header graphic.
    As an aside, are these forums a WP plugin, and if so, which one? If I have to install phpBB, there’s going to be trouble.
    THEY DO NOT CALL ME NOODLE PASTRY.

    These forums are a heavily modified minibb.

    Nice progress. I like it a lot better!
    A few small gripes (Don’t take these as serious, I just point out every little thing that bothers me):
    -That blue next to the green looks interesting. I’m not so sure I like that green.
    -Footer text needs to be white, it’s completely unreadable atm.
    Good work, I like the heading titles much better!

    Thread Starter pastabagel

    (@pastabagel)

    It’s funny you mention the green, because based on my email, a lot of other people hate it to. The people shall have their wish…
    Actually, a lot have asked me why I bother with that top paragraph. The top, currently in green, is the excerpt field, which I’m populating in anticipation of future use. When I get around to adding an “email this article” button, I will probably only email the headline and excerpt, with a read more button. Also, I’m looking for a tighter homepage (see testing here that runs with only the excerpt.
    The idea is that the article should be readable without the excerpt.
    THEY CALL ME PASTABAGEL AND BOY AM I LONG-WINDED.

    Why do they call you PASTABAGEL ?
    And who are THEY ?
    ??

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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