My new blog – Passion For Living Life

Your site is nice a bright.

Two thing I would change:

Your header image is expanded to the point of being blurry and pixelated.

The social media buttons IMHO are too large at 32px. Using snippets for your articles allows for two or three articles on a page view…all with the same giant buttons. They overwhelm the page, try making them 16px or maybe 20px.

Good luck,
Nick

I just looked at your blog, and my suggestion is to move from two sidebars on the right to just one. Or if you want to try another layout you can move to 3 columns, which yes you do have now if you want to get technical, but for the majority of the working 3 column layouts you have 20% of your space left and right and 60% in the middle gutter.

Also, please take this as very constructive and not negative at all, but you need to get the pictures of those kids off the internet ASAP. Pedo’s would eat your site up in a second. If you want to post pictures of your kids and pics of other peoples kids on the internet do it in a controlled environment such as Facebook where you can control who does and does not see the pictures. I have to be honest, if I came to your site and saw a picture of my kid on their I would have a coronary.

Best wishes to you in your venture, it takes time and consistency but you can do it. Just go study the themes here on wordpress and look at what works then you can edit one to suit your taste.

Cheers,

Dave

[signature moderated]

Dave, I just took them down. Thanks, I never really ever thought about that. As far as the column I will have to figure out how to do that. Thanks for your advice.

The column is easy, put up a new three column theme and go from there. Alot of what you have up are widgets and they can be reconfigured to go into the new column.

My other suggestion is content control, you are pushing out alot of content that could be reworked into pages that are static at the top of your site.

Holler at me if you need more help, I am working on 3 different content management systems in 7 days as a project so I will be very close to my computer.

Roostertail,
I took off the buttons and just left them on the site. Not on each post. thanks for your input !!

do a search on a plugin called Subscription Options, it is what I use over at Davescorner.org so you can see how it looks on a real site.

I appreciate your help with this as I’m kind of still learning. I’m not sure if I want the 3 columns as of yet. It took me forever to get this site like this. Can you clarify about the pages and static page? I sorted the content into categories, and I’m trying to think of more pages to add, I wanted to incorporate blogging and affiliate marketing in with the blog. That’s where I have the “money” page.

Well, you can go check my site out at [redacted]

If you notice I have pages setup up above the logo, then I have the logo and the categories come after that. I have not spent to much time adjusting the layout, it is pretty much a stock theme, but if you look at alot of blogs you will see that the overall standard layout is either a main column and a content bar on the right or else a three column layout with main content in the center and a left and right secondary content bar. If I was you I would really consider a 3 column layout, the two columns on the right are competing with each other, and it totally draws away from your main content column.

One other item of note is that your picture really pulls the eye away and dominates a persons attention. I am not saying anything bad about your picture lol. It is just the placement and how it jumps out and grabs ahold of a persons attention which distracts them from where you want their attention to go. Try moving this section to the bottom of your right gutter, see how it works after you do that.

Dave

Dave,
thanks for the input, as for the picture, I see a lot of people who put their picture on the right side…. I’ll move it and see how it looks.
About the columns, are you saying I should change my theme to a 3 column theme ? Or can I change what I have and move one of the columns on the other side to the far left? Not sure how to do that.

I did make a menu and it was above, but because of the picture I have there with the flowers you couldn’t see the words. I don’t know, I’m getting overwhelmed. There is so much to do, and I just want to do it right. I’ve been learning for over six months now.

I like the basic themes where you have the navigation on the top, not so much like mine where everything is all over.

Well, I am not pushing you to be a jerk, I have just done studies on this stuff before in school and also when I worked as a contractor for the Army in Iraq on a web portal they were setting up.
Now I am disabled due to some mental illness stuff, so I just try to reach and help others when I can.
I just would like to see you succeed is all so that is why I keep pointing things out.

Remember when I tell you things that it is based off of convention. Let me make a point, if you look at a physical paper flyer, the ones that are good have two to three vertical or horizontal columns because that is what works based on years and years of studies. Yes you will see some increible designers out there who can break that mold but they are the exception not the rule. And the same applies when it comes to designing a website. So, we can break yours apart and rework it, and hopefully get you some new traffic.

The banner is very colorful but to high and to busy. The length needs to be narrowed to fit the two or three column design you choose and its height needs to be 200 pixels max. Passion for living title goes in the upper left hand corner of the banner, ditch the clouds, offset the butterfly below and to the right of your brand, cut down the number of flowers to two or 3, shrink them down and move them over to the right hand corner of the banner.
Below the banner in the left hand corner you will have your slogan, which could be something like rediscovering the passion in you, or whatever you decide on. That slogan needs to be in an offset color so that it stands out.

Background of the site needs to be a strong maroon color, yet pastel so that it is pleasant but at the same time suggests power and positive energy. The left and right gutters should pull a color from your banner and the middle gutter should be white with a complimentary font and text.
Put all of your static information in a menu up across the top right of the site. The main buttons should be about us and contact us. Really that is all you need for static pages.
Left hand menu can include your navigational structure, which for a blog is your categories.
Right hand menu is going to include at the top, a random post generator, which pulls post randomly from your blog and places them in a little content box. Below that will be a blogroll showing other blog sites you find of interest. Below that will be another about us link if you choose to have it. On second thought you can replace the random blog post with products you choose to offer. You can also add affiliate marketing ads in between you main posts.
Keep your content to 5 posts on the front page, at the max 10, but make sure you put a read more plugin on your main page posts.

But one final thing, get that picture out of the right hand corner, it kills any site when you have that strong of a visual presence in the upper right hand corner of the page.
Last but not least, you need broader category tags, and hopefully on the backend when you create a post you have an SEO plugin helping out.

Now that I have said all of that, my site does not have alot of what I have detailed here. It started out to be an art site for my paintings, however it has kind of morphed back into a technology site, but I am having a hard time managing it because of concentration and memory issues.

I hope all of this helps. You can make it doing what you are doing, but you have to present your content in a way that people can absorb it.

Cheers

Hi Dave, what is your email, so we don’t have to post on the forum. Otherwise just email me at [redacted]
I’m going to work on changing my theme to the 3 columns. And take the header picture down, it’s too much. I want something nice but not over doing it.

Christina,

With a wide screen monitor and 1600 resolution, your page body is too wide now. It makes it very uncomfortable to read such long lines of text. I would suggest you set a maximum width for the fluid theme you selected.

When I got started designing a couple of web sites, settings like this didn’t mean anything to me, nor did what browser to use. But, there are many screen resolutions and browsers to consider. Eventually, I installed copies of all the common browsers, just to confirm how my sites looked for each (Chrome, Safari, IE, Firefox, etc.). Try not to fall in the trap that what you are seeing is what everyone else will see.

If you use a wider screen monitor, minimize the width to about a 960px, just to see what the result is. I think you will better understand what I said above.

I don’t see the need for three columns. The few things you have now will all fit fine in one sidebar.

Nick

Nick,
someone else was telling me to put 3 columns. Ugh. I’m so confused …

Nick, how does it look now, I made it smaller.

Christina,

Much better…

I guess colors are a subjective thing, but I don’t find your color choice appealing. Adding colors the way did was a good idea however.

On the front page you have navigation to your pages in three places, and all on the same page view…across the top, below your header image and in the sidebar. Personally, I like them below the header. Across the top of the page may get lost if you only scroll slightly. And having them in the sidebar is redundant. Doesn’t hurt anything, just takes up space for other information.

I’m still not sure you need the third column. The left sidebar doesn’t have much in it and it adds some complexity to the overall look. Your right sidebar is mainly additional navigation. Since the Blogroll is for navigation as well, I would move it to the right. Perhaps the left sidebar could contain some other widgets, like a calendar for events or for a login block.

Nick