New custom theme. Ideas, suggestions?

I like the simple themes best – easy on my old eyes. Good job.

Looks great to be, crpearson. Your design looks simple, yet elegant. Good job.

Thanks for the input. What do you guys think about the date block near the story title? Some have said it is too large. I like it, but it does conflict in some cases and I do understand how it might feel distracting.

I think its a perfect size

Nice clean look. Palette influenced by your gardening and violin-making passions ?? An easy fix but you will hate this one = go to “About” = typo = “chief”

Also, viewer can get “sort of” an idea of focus of site. Might help to spell out purpose of site, a tagline, something for search engines to grasp on to as well as casual surfer looking for areas of interest. If this info is in your site, I missed it sorry.

The related topics = is this a plugin, or came with theme, or you customized yourself.

Regarding dateblock, since site is so clean one starts looking for distractions. I teach typography and like small but find the dateblock a non-issue. Maybe it comes down to article title editing: an art in itself!

Thanks again for all the great input! Typo fixed… Thanks for the catch.

The related topics piece is generated by a plugin written by a friend and coworker of mine. I don’t know if he has put it in the plugin database, but it’s called bsuite. It uses tags to find similar stories. Of course, it’s not always 100%, but it does a pretty good job. It also adds a nifty stats tracking admin page and a bunch of useful functions to wordpress.

The general purpose of my site is a tough one because it is really about whatever I’m up to and feel others might find usefull… I have been reading SEO papers lately about how important it is for a site to have a clear “topic”, so it is something I will be working on defining for myself. I completely agree that the casual surfer would be confused about the purpose of the site. It’s a great point and I will start working on that right away. Thanks!

My mind has been set at ease about the date block. I like it a lot, but I had been thinking that it might not be the best use of screen real estate. I’ve decided to keep it though. Thanks for the affirmation.

Cliff