Requesting Feedback. 1st WP site, original theme.

  • jf0

    (@jf0)


    15 years ago

    Greetings,

    I am working on my first WP website. I consider myself at most a hobbyist when it comes to web code and design and while I have been photoshopping and coding for at least 10 years this is my first real project outside of personal pages and general coding tidbits. It is also a project I have committed myself to sticking with for the long term and appreciate any feedback to help me along the way.

    About,

    My site is a recipe book and is geared towards being a website with dynamic content and updates more than a blog. The basic goal of the site is to catalog recipes used in my household and ultimately I hope to get interest from family and friends and see what happens from there. I have stripped out much of the word press functionality in order to keep the focus of the site clear and concise. I do not expect myself or visitors to browse mindlessly through random and unrelated content or have to sift through bloggishness and other distractions.

    Background,

    I am currently in the 3rd build process of the website, and I anticipate 1 or 2 more builds before I am satisfied and can move on with the lifecycle of maintaining and updating the site. During the previous 2 builds I focused on out of the box wordpress features, backend administration, content, navigation, and exploring plugins. During the 3rd build I started creating my own theme to help put some ideas gathered from the previous builds into perspective and give some identity to my vision. The 3rd build also got me dangerously comfortable with tearing into the boxed code and removing or modifying things (also, breaking things).

    At this point I am happy with the direction the site is moving so far but as I got more comfortable and engaged with the build process I feel I have made some mistakes in haste that I would like to revisit on my next build. Notably, the CSS has become hack and slash the further I develop and change the look of things and I am not happy with the sloppiness I have created, also this has created some IE display issues. One thing I am saving for the next build is styling the comment system.

    Right now I am taking a rest from developing much on the current site until I regroup my thoughts on the future of the site and get feedback from you folks. My plan then is to take your considerations and start from the ground up again, painstakingly paying attention to my code and not taking shortcuts, and build what will be the final version of the site.

    Vision,
    Create a website to catalogue recipes for the home, while creating an interest for others to visit and share recipes.
    Maintain a clear focus on the usage of the website. Recipes should be the center of attention and easy to find/search/browse.
    Printable version of recipes. Recipes should also be easy to view and understand on screen with little distraction for kitchen computers.
    Facebook integrations. Each recipe has a “Share on FB” button so that visitors can let their friends know what they are cooking. Possibly integrate facebook accounts with commenting or signin/registration. Facebook group?
    Ability to have selected contributors share their recipes.
    Ability to have anyone share their recipes? Moderation? How to organize, don’t want untrusted recipes in the mix.
    Scalable. Might want to add things like wine,beer,cigars. Entertaining, complete meals, kitchen products.
    Code Validation, SEO.
    Build in content areas on all pages, similar to the “features” below the navigation on the home page but less intrusive.
    Improve “in-line” or “per-page” navigation.

    The site is heavily focused on a plugin called Recipe Press which is still under development and gearing up for the first non beta release.
    The theme was built on Starkers which is basically a no-theme theme.

    Link,
    https://www.justinflener.net/wp3

    Thanks,

    Justin

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Thread Starter jf0

    (@jf0)

    Hey Mod,

    Instead of sending my post back down to the bottom of the list why don’t you instead encourage the community to do a site review? Isn’t that one of the major purposes of this forum?

    I spent a lot of time explaining my site and the development process I have taken and what I am looking for in a review.

    In retrospect I should have read a few other posts for examples so I could have instead just spammed my site like most others. Ironically, the posts with the least amount of information seem to get better review responses.

    I would think it be nice for you the mod to encourage “reviewers” to hold up their end of the criteria mentioned on the Site Reviews page instead of letting my post continue to get buried.

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

    Thanks

    slurd

    (@slurd)

    I can see things are in the works, but the general idea and focus of the layout is superb.

    I am definitely a huge fan of the pictures, they actually look professionally taken, which seems to be a major detail when running a site with food. Good job.

    I cruised through the site for awhile, and although it’s tough to critique a work-in-progress I did notice when using the search feature that the results page doesn’t align properly. Also, that none of my 20 search terms found anything.

    I think there should be a link from your front featured recipe to the actual post. I was attempting to comment and had to revert to the sidebar. Just an idea.

    I will certainly bookmark to watch continued progress.

    Thread Starter jf0

    (@jf0)

    Thanks for the browse! The images are stock right now, but once we start pouring our own recipes into the system we will definitely aim for professional looking pictures taken ourselves.

    The current release of Recipe Press plugin does not work with the built in search so I will have to wait for further development from the plugin on that, otherwise I may look into some “Search Everything” plugins I have seen in the WP plugin gallery and see if those pick up the recipes.

    Great idea about making the featured recipe clickable. As you found, the comments and facebook share button only appear on the actual recipe page.

    Will keep you up to date as I make progress. Thanks again!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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