Ak 443

Thanks for sharing this site here. I have to say a lot of these articles are very personal to you and speak of your passion for what you love and do.
I have tried my best to be as thorough and breakup this review in to a few sub topics so it’s easier to read.
Here is my usability experience and feedback from visiting this site

Header

1. The title of the site was listed on the header – Inspiration Point.
2. Since I’m outside the sphere of visitors that this site was targeted, I was a bit clueless about what the Tag line meant (ref: “Not your typical Christian blog!) The third line on the header gave me a better idea of what Inspiration-point.org had to offer.
3. Check for typography in header text.
4. The header image is really pretty “Inspiration Point”. Those green meadows read inspiring, though the dog and the fence on the extreme left side and the covered cabin on the right could be cropped off.
5. The font for the Title of the site is very different from the rest of the site and a little smaller in prominence. I would probably blow it up by a few points

Header Navigation

1. I see that clicking on ‘Home’ takes me to the front page (blog), but there is another link called ‘Video Blog’. I would remove the word ‘Blog’ from the ‘Video Blog’
2. If my main content is “Encouraging Stories” (since the header content says so) I would probably make that my second link. But I think reordering the links would finally boil down to your sites analytics. If more of your users are returning users, I might move the ‘About’ to the third spot. If I have more new users than returning users, I might just include a summary of ‘About’ on the right column in the Body of the page.
3. ‘Review’ – I was not too sure what was being reviewed here. Was it articles, books, movies, some other content that’s related to Inspirational Point.
4. Search bar is subtle and has text and a ‘Call to Action’ icon. That’s good.

The titles read clearly, but I was a little confused where each link was taking me. Basically this is what I figured. ‘Home’ is a combination of a blog and posts from the landing page for ‘Encouraging Readings’. Encouraging Reading as smaller sub sections and Video Blog didn’t display videos on the landing page (unless I clicked on ‘continue reading’

I would suggest the following
Navigation sort order

Encouraging Readings | Blog | About | Forum

Encouraging Readings would have a landing page listing the five sub-sections and explain what each of them contain. Clicking on the heading would take them to their respective page
Blog would contains the posts from ‘Home’, Video Blog, Reviews
About no changes
Forums no changes

Body
The Font choice and text size is easy to read. There is one thing I have to say, avoid using ‘Continue Reading’ if the text is just going to be a few more lines. (i.e Video Blog Posts)
Since the site is text heavy. Use relevent images one in a way to break up walls of text. Flickr has a large collection of Creative Common Photos you can use for your posts

Integrating social icons can be pretty useful to get new visitors. Having all of them displayed on each post can also make your site take a little more time to load.
From a quick observation, you seem to be getting more facebook likes and probably a few tweets and google+ impressions. I would avoid having the rest of the icons show up if they are going to display ‘0’ till I have more people hitting those social share buttons.

On clicking on some of the images in the psost. The image size didn’t scale up. (ie post with beautiful but small images). If those images are going to be clickable, make sure they lightbox to a larger size or else remove the ‘click through’ action on them so they don’t take the user to the image preview page.
Caption all your images if you have taken them.

Body / Right Column
The right column has a search bar on top. This search bar is redundant as the site already has a search bar on the header navigation menu.

Background
The background blue goes well with the link colors and flows with the theme, but currently it reads a bit too plain for ‘Inspiration point’.
My suggestion – Search for a big BG images that has the same values and slap it on the back (for example: https://the-halfwayline.com/)

Footer
Since the articles are lengthy and at times below the fold, add a header navigation or have a ‘back to the top’ button.

You can also use Footer Widgets to guide/suggest recommended articles to your users.

I wish I could tell you more ways on how to monetize inspiration-point.com, but not my area of expertise, BarryB64. Hope you find this review helpful.
All the Best and Cheers!

Ajay Karat

I have to resonate everyone else’s thoughts and say
This site indeed looks very well made
The theme colors are prominent, the grays and whites have a tasteful amount of reds that help break up the visuals of the site and make it easy for visual navigation

Here are a few thoughts
1. At first I was not sure what I was doing at a site called Sad Useless. It took me a moment to read the site’s description on the browser bar that said “The place to be when you are sad and useless’
I would probably add that statement somewhere to the header, besides the logo so if I accidentally stumble across this site, I immediately know what this site is about
2. I have to say – remove the date form the upper left corner. It’s not serving the sites purpose, feels very superfluous.
3. For the moment I would remove the #number of subscribers from those social icons. I would probably drop it back in to the theme when those numbers are exploding
4. I would probably remove the “Home Icon” from the navigation bar. Out of the three navigation icons (namely – Home, Search and Back to the Top) the home looks a bit flippant compared to the other two
5. I like the ‘Back to the Top’ icon since it’s round, matches the other icons (social icons) and breaks the rule of rectangular layout that the theme employs
6. Going one more step ahead – I would theme Saduseless twitter and Youtube’s page (Background image) the same as Saduseless.com
BTW – the youtube’s banner is aweosme. You should probably use the same here on your main website to maintain continuity

Phew, that was a wall of text. Hope you find that useful

Cheers
[sig moderated as per the Forum Rules]

Hey Tsiddons,
First off, I like the site. The domain and the big background image all match with the theme. Overall very appealing and clean layout.
There are a couple of things I want to be picky about because the site’s heading in the right direction
1. The site’s logo and the green field background image are pretty heavy. Try optimizing the bg. As for the site’s logo, it’s really large refer: you might want to scale that down.
2. The snowflakes is pretty, but that trend has passed. These effects can come off being a wee bit tacky as that trend of seasons affecting websites has gone.
3. The header navigation is repeated above and below the logo creating redundancy. Stick with one of the two
4. The footer navigation links are broken into two lines, try keeping all the links in one line like that of the header.
5. You have this rich green in the background which color clashes with the blues used for the logo and heading text. Try using more complimentary colors for eg:
5. Use one line to describe what the site is about in the header
6. The subscribe field is right up there which is helpful and I’m glad the site doesn’t start with that forced option (also see Tab Closed; Didn’t Read
7. The ‘About’ section is placed well above the pages fold, which is good. But the content is a little vague in my opinion.
8. Follow us on Twitter – Have two to three feeds, any thing more than that can become noise
9. Since your site hosts a lot of articles, give that more than the current 50% page width that it has currently been assigned.
10. The middle column can be incorporated in the right column.

Here are some really good tips from Good UI that might be worth while.

All the best!

Ajay
[sig moderated as per the Forum Rules]

The info I got off your site was though google translate, so pardon me for not understanding the content clearly.

Here are my thoughts:

1. The title of the site says “China University Guide” and yes, the content matches the title. That’s good

2. The colors are appealing and the palate choice is good.

3. On clicking into one of the post. it took me to a page where it described the university. Good content consistency.

I guess my only suggestion may be to include photos of the college or the college logo. May be a picture or two of the city where it is situated to keep the reader interested in the college and it’s surroundings.

Ghostridep! nice work.
Would have loved to see how the old site looks too.
Either way, love the site. Very Professional
Good use of colors on the site and type. Strong logo, consistent font usage.

Here are a couple of suggestions

Navigation

For starters, you can drop “home” from the nav bar. I believe we are in an era where almost every one has used the internet and are aware that clicking on the logo will take the visitor back home. On the other hand, if the site is targeted towards a group of users who are not too internet-savvy, yes, then I would leave “home” on the nav bar.

Highlighted nav links have a rounded box around it. This rounded edge box is not used anywhere else on your site. We have a couple of options here, either make the white box (bg box for the site) also rounded edge, or make the rounded edge nav box more sharper edged, or lighter in color, etc. This definitely needs more exploration.

The header links read fine, on the other hand the footer links are not exactly consistent. General rule of thumb, header and footer links are mirrored, and footer links can contain disclaimer, privacy policy or links that may take the user to any ‘finer details’ of using the site.

If you intend on using “home” on the header, change the footer link “dleedon” to “home” too or vice versa, for overall navigation consistently.

Image Slider

I like the images used here. It is so detailed and rendered well. Bu the slider is set to such a low value, that before I can actually admire the art it zips away. My suggestion would be to increase the hold time to around 5-6 seconds for each image and have it “fade” (instead of the harsh slide) off to the next image.

Page Title Your page title reads “dleedon” (This is what you see on the window when you open a browser). I think you should elaborate in a few words what dleedon is about. ref: https://www.wilsonweb.com/articles/title.htm for a quick read.

Project Details

This page has a table that really brings down the value of this classy site. try alternative formats and styles for this table. (e.g see the formating on this example https://goo.gl/TYIqJ)

Text Formatting
The text formatting is something you can explore. You have text in toe home page and in the architect’s boi page. But the lengths vary a bit (due to the inclusion of images in the bio page)
Quoting another internet user
"How long are your paragraphs? A strong visual cue for finding the "next line" is its distance from the beginning or end of a paragraph. The further you get from one end of a paragraph, the harder it seems to repeatedly find the next line. Inversely, it can be difficult to deal with lots of super-short paragraphs that stripe up the page. Stretching line-lengths can help keep long paragraphs to a healthy 4-8 lines, while reducing them might help bump up staccato 'graphs to the same line number."

The last thing I want to spot out is the line that reads “Register Interest for d’leedon here”. This line is in red. It’s the only color not used anywhere else in the text formatting. for consistency, try the dark purple that you have used on the logo or colors that already exist on the site.

All the best

Hey Terrysmith, good work on the theme adaption.
Just being nit -picky here but I noticed that the header part of the theme has rectangle boxes with sharp edges, and the lower part of the site (from the navigation bar to footer) uses rounded edge boxes. My suggestion would to to either stick to sharp or rounded edges, since they are two different styles.
I would also work a wee bit more on the placement/staging of the header. You currently have three information boxes and a phone number (i.e “Sky Habit logo, CapitaLand logo and Mitsubishi logo). These logos are placed in such a way that they are throwing off the visual balance of the site. Since it’s the first thing a visitor would see, emphasis on Skyhabit logo, right align the other two logos and have the number listed below them. Try various combinations.
There exists this odd spacing between the navigation links and the body text. Play around with that spacing a bit more.
Use the same drop shadow (that is used for the nav links) everywhere, including the header.

I personally like this one https://blog.glassespeople.com/
Other than the fact that it’s very simple, I would use images that bleed into the text (meaning the images of the glasses should be on a white background)
This theme looks clean, spick and span, kinda like a eyeclinic.

I guess most of the points have been covered by lailagwb, home-remedy
Member

my suggestions are

1. the three images that load in the lower part of the page (author,etc), take a long time to load. I believe they are very high resolution images are and being shrunk down. Possibly try saving those three images to a smaller size.

2. The title of the blog “The Unfolding Myth” is currently broken into two lines, I would suggest dropping the type size a bit so the three words fit into one line.

3. in the ‘about’ link, mention a bit more about who you are. If people are interested in the writing, they would like to know who is this personality.

4. The page title is currently set at “Home|The Unfolding Myth”. This may not be too helpful for search engine optimization. You might want to expand that page title as ” The Unfolding Myth – works by author name” or whatever.
Basically in a few words explain what this site is about, along with the title

5. This is just a personal opinion. Set your slide show to ‘fade’ rather than random or shuffle. It would probably reflect better with the title name (i.e “The Unfolding Myth”.

-a

Hey Howie
Been though your site. Here’s my opinion –

Colors
I like the colors, they are very pleasing. The off-red band on top draws a lot of attention and actually caught my eyes even before I could read anything about ‘howwhowhen’.
The blue bg is pleasing. The big white header with the logo holds well. It balances the footer well.

Layout
This basic two column layout works well. Helps separate the main body of text from the links you have on the site.

Text Formatting
This actually felt like it was a cluster of information. A lot of text styles, (eg” get 10,000 subscribers is a different font, the first blog post is in sans serif, etc)
Too many text sizes and type styles can confuse a visitor.

Mascot
I Like your mascot. Clean, not too overly complicated. Has a message from you, which can reveal what this site is about. Try to get the same mascot in different sizes, line art style and doing different things, so you can use it in your posts… basically theme the site a bit.

Overall opinion

1. Reduce the type of font styles.
2. Stick to two font size at the most.
3. Remove all the extra blue background colors from within a blog post. It can be very confusing to a viewer because a lot of content is given emphasis.
4. Change you logo from all caps (which doesn’t read very well) to HowWhoWhen, so it’s more legible.
5. Try and get rid of the ad (red bar on top) or use it to post your messages/twitter
6. Simplify the header to hold just enough information. Currently you have your mascot saying something, and besides it you again have more information ( i.e – Marketing Case Studies…etc”)
7. In the about page, lose the 10,000 subscribers. Feels a bit spammy.
Give viewers information about you first. They clicked on about know about who you are and what do you intend to do with this site.. Give them that info first.
8. You can remove “contact” or put it on the site column or on the footer, or added to “Connect with Me”

Well, these are just my thoughts. Hope you find them useful

Ajay
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https://i.imgur.com/ur7OT.jpg
i have color coded your site into different parts an d frankly there are hardly any ads.
but if you look at the three shades of green, the darkest shade is your content that makes the page
The second lighter shade is basically the site navigation so its a bit redundant because it’s too close to the navigation on top.
The lightest green is a ‘sub-category’ which may or may not be too useful
the red section is completely redundant because it shows the same posts in the dark green section.
hopes this gives you a good idea of what you need to do.

The site looks really cool!

This is my first wordpress website https://gamingluso.com.
Please help me improving the website.

Hands down, amusing header, really caught my attention ??
The ocntent is well presented and the site has a good layout.
Just gonna be picky cause most of the site looks solid
1. The brand colors of the site are blue and darkblue with a a bit of red, yet most of the site below the header is mainly gray. could use a bit of the branding colors for er. post header messages
2. fonts used in the logo and header are ‘San Serif’ styled, but the good portion of the front page is in ‘serif’ styled font. I would probably stick to ‘San Serif’ though out the site to maintain that continuity.
3. Just a suggestion , but the “Premium Member” login is kinda taking a good portion of space on the right bar. (try : https://goo.gl/795G0 ) Pretty sure you had placed that cause it’s a key element for monetarily purposes.
4. Looking at the site overall, I have to say that you have used a lot of gray outline boxes that encapsulate a lot of content boxex. Using these framed boxes is good when you want to emphasize a content box, but currently it looks like everything is emphasized.. just my thoughts ??

All the best with Social Media Glue!
Cheers

Pretty cool site dude. I liked the widget on the bottom left and right of the content area and like the playful way the sublinks pop up on the top bar. You could play around with the fav icon a bit more. so it does not look like an image/photo and reads clearly. The colors used for the site look solid and go well. I’d prpbably brighten the Top links a bit, since they feel a lill lost on the gray brackground. Would alternatively try making those fonts bold or a big bigger.
Im curious to see the site with mores sublinks wondering if that jumpy menu effect will be effective for a longer list of links.

All the best, Have fun with wordpress

Cheers

I’m not the best technical help. so here’s hoping this answer helps

Correct me if I’m wrong, here goes

You have installed the Jwplayer using wordpress’s dashboard. The FLV files that you have are currently in another folder/root dire/where ever, rite?

The shortcodes that is available on the Jwplayer site is

[jwplayer type=”highwinds” file=”https://hwcdn.net/xxxxx/fls/xxxxxxx.smil”%5D
do remember to remove the ” when inputing those values… for example

[jwplayer file=https://www.xyz.com/video.flv]

the “type” is the custom player that you have created in the Jwplayer option ref: https://i.imgur.com/dD5Ci.png . If you don’t create a player, it will take the default player vailues (width and height)

there are more shortcodes available here https://goo.gl/746rI

Hey Ricky!
Interesting site ??
Yes, I agree .. lot of content. but the good thinks is you like writing and thats what wordpress is for!

so here are my thoughts and suggestions.

First off
1. lot of content like you said. Content can be optimized many ways so its easy for a viewer to read. Other than using archives or categorizing the information, one can also use the “more” tag to expand posts that are have a informative. (ref: https://goo.gl/G5X6)

2. The photos you have used in your posts are of good quality and to complement that, it would be nice to see the header image at a higher resolution. Stretching a small image makes it very pixilated. The same applies to the Background image (ref: https://goo.gl/jMKVh) Ton of sites out there that have higher resolution images.

3. I’m not sure I completely agree with nmfrazer, The color pallet for the site is not exactly complementary. Don’t take me wrongly, but some times using too many colors can be a bit confusing to the viewer (for eg : the site’s header is black text. the posts header is green on yellow background. The side’s description is red, links are blue, tags are multi-colored.. etc) use a color generator site to find ‘complementary’ colors ( colorschemedesigner.com maybe? ). Stick to two colors is good enough. This will help your viewers figure out whats a header or what is highlighted. Use font thickness, boldness and size to make up for emphasis.

4. I noticed that at the end of the home page I could not access any of your previous posts. You could place a “previous page” link here so one can read previous posts.

5. the “about me” page can be changed to just “about”. It reads clearly either way. Not to correct your style of writing, (Im terrible at writing.. better at drawing) but the first line in the about me page is in third person and then it switches over to first person.
You could also change “About Columbus, Indiana” to juts “Columbus, Indiana”

6. It would be nice to have a Gallery Page so it showcases all the photos which you had taken of this pretty place.

7. Avoid having long pages, Break up the pages

8. The title of the page and the header both contain text that kinda reads the same. You could just add “52 weeks in… ” to the header image.

9. If the option above sounds like a good idea, you can kill the ‘home’ page link on the nav bar and make the header link back to the home page. This is becoming the rule of thumb to have the header image clickable.

Hope you found these suggestions useful and all the best with the rest of your stay there at Columbus!

Cheers