My weblog! Comments appreciated

Commenting on the editorial content of a site is not what we are here for. This forum is more for the “look and feel” comments of the presentation and use of WordPress. Friends, visitors, and relatives are best left to commenting on the editorial content.

As for look and feel, do you want it nice or hard? I like it when people are a little of both. I’ll do my best, and maybe while we are at it, I’ll tell you what I look for in a website since yours is a prime example, and we can all learn as we go.

First, when I visit a website for “inspection”, the first thing I do is look for original use of WordPress. I start at the header, then sidebar and content area, and then scroll down to the bottom to see how the footer and end content is displayed. In your case, I see the default Theme of WordPress, a big blue blob at the top in the header, no use of graphics, images, or color, and nothing unusual or special other than the very good but standard default theme. Since there is nothing new here, I move on to the next inspection item.

The details. The header plays a critical role and what I see on yours is nothing that tells me what this site is about. No graphics, no design, not even the words that says “We are about to enter the strange and mad world of Kent Larsson”. It just says “Kent Larssona€?s Weblog”. In the description below, it says even less. I’d remove the second line or say something that gives us information about what we are supposed to be learning when we visit.

As I look through the details, not even the categories tell me what this site is about. This is critical information. There is room for improvement here.

Then I click on a single post to see how the posts look, and the categories, and they all look like the first page and the default look, so now I move onto the harder things to test.

I always run a validation on a site to test the basic HTML and XHMTL. This often leads to a lot of answers to the problems people have with their site, and it also is a preview of potential problems that might crop up later. Getting these fixed NOW will save headaches in the future. Not everything validates, but after a while, you learn to spot the errors that matter and recommend fixing them.

On your site, you have a bunch of little errors that need to be fixed. They aren’t life threatening, but the validator caught the lack of ALT tags in your images, something you have to add manually when you include a graphic on your page in order to comply with accessibility standards.

Then I run it through a CSS validator to make sure there is nothing wrong there, and everything looks okay there, too. Since it doesn’t looked like you changed anything in the Default Theme, that makes sense.

To learn more about validating your site, check https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Validating_a_Website.

Now, what can you do with this. I’m sure everyone will have their opinion on how to make this better, but I’d start by going through the WordPress Lessons on designing your WordPress site and start to play a little with the look and colors. Add an interesting header. Give better explanations in the header. If you feel adventurous, try different WordPress Themes to totally change the look and feel of the site.

There is a great introductory article called First Steps With WordPress written with you in mind, taking you through your first WordPress site and thinking about how to improve it and make it work for you.

It’s a great first step, now let’s see what you can really do as you personalize this to match YOU and your writing.

Thanks for your thorough and informative reply!

I guess I misunderstood this forum a bit, I should have read some description before posting. But if you think it’s obvious it’s often easy to jump to conclusions.

As for the header, yes it’s a bit on the large side. But I really like a lot of the other aspects in the default template. I will take you up on your advise though and try to create something on my own to be a bit unique design wise.

I really find it hard to argue that “We are about to enter the strange and mad world of Kent Larsson” is a better description than “Kent Larssona€?s Weblog”. I don’t consider the stuff I write about to be strange and mad enough I guess, but maybe you are right.

I thought that “This is the url of Kent Larssona€?s weblog” would be nifty to have as a sub header as my sites domain is thisistheurl.com.

Being a bit more descriptive would absolutely be a good thing though. In my own design I could have one of those little boxes with descriptions that a lot of bloggers do?

It could say something along the lines of

“Welcome to my weblog! I am Kent Larsson, a 27 year old dude with an almost unhealthy computer interest. Here he rambles about programming, artificial intelligence and personal thoughts. ”

Would that be an improvement in your (and anyones of course) opinion? I should still change both the headline and sub headers?

The categories. As I use the default template I tried to keep their names short so that they would fit within the template without being broken. If you hover your mouse over a category I try to give a better explanation.

I hope that I don’t come off as defensive. I’m just trying to give you my reason for having done what I have.

I will be sure to fix all errors and warnings that are displayed when validating the site.

You are defensive in the least. And I can see that you learned something from the process. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with using the default Theme for WordPress. It is a great starting place. And already you are thinking about how to make it more “you” and less “WordPress”.

I think the “thisistheurl.com” is fantastic, but I get no sense of it anywhere in your site. Why is it called “this is the url?” Then tell us. I’m getting a peek into your sense of humor here, so why not showcase it. Call the site “This Is The URL” as a replacement for “Kent Larssona€?s Weblog” and then put your description in the smaller area like this:

An unhealthy interest in computers featuring ramblings about programming, artificial intelligence and personal thoughts on nothing in particular.

Or abbreviate that to “An Unhealthy Interest in Computers” and use the other for your meta data in the sidebar. You can use whatever you want, just let it be YOU.

Remember, this is YOUR blog. You can do whatever you want with it (especially after fixing the errors ?? ) but help the world of the web be a better place by allowing it to represent you, your feelings, your opinions, the you that is special in the world. If you are a boring, all blue and white dude that isn’t willing to risk when it comes to web page design, that’s cool, too. Nothing wrong with that. We need more simple stuff in the world.

This isn’t a condemnation. When people post their site here, as you did, and ask for reviews, we give them. Nothing personal. Just trying to help.

No I am not taking it personal, just wanted to point out my friendly attitude. As English is my second language the way I formulate messages could send the wrong signals if I am not careful.

I will take all this advice and try to follow it! Many thanks! Bye!

I think Lorelle meant to say you are NOT defensive in the least. ??

Hehe, yes I know! ?? I was answering the “nothing personal” part last in her post.

After you’ve made the changes, post again so we can inspect and be REALLY MEAN to you this time. ??

I will do! People underestimate the positive impact on society it has to be really mean nowdays. ??

It will take some time though as there is a lot to do. I hope you all have a super fantastic happy day!