dmc68

Thank you WPyogi, this is exactly what I was looking for.

Anyone?

[email protected]

Thank You

Hey Man,

Go ahead and delete the post. All I am trying to do is do something that helps people and I wanted a decent site to do it with. I needed a few different people who could devote a few hours of time to help me get it up and running, that is all. I would do it myself but I am not able to right now.

I have been in IT for 15 years before I had to give it up. Everyone has always gone on and on about how wonderful open source is because they contribute to free software blah blah blah. Well, anytime I have ever tried to work in the open source community it is honestly no better than windows or any other software that costs money.

Word Press is a really great piece of software, and easy to use out of the box, but the people who are a part of the community……….

Delete the post man, I will do it on my own somehow.

close this thread?

and what is wrong for asking here? I am trying to start something that will help people, that is volunteer as well, is it not?

If you are using a theme from wordpress on your blog, somewhere in the options it should include the ability to change the color of the hover over, click on and visted links for your site.

Adsense is making the point I have been pushing you towards all along, structure your site so that viewers can connect with the content you want them to see as quickly as possible.

In regards to his comment on colors research what colors give off a sense of optimism and positive energy, and build your base around that, but if possible go for white in your main content area, makes it easier for the widest variety of people to read it. If you have questions about this refer to academic studies done on color schemes which apply to people with sight challenges.

Ok, I want you to notice something. You moved your picture to the left, do you see any sort of improvement in this?

Now to hammer on ya more. Photography has a rule about how a picture is taken, the rule is that you always offset your main subject to the left or right of center. Halfway down the page is the paragraph that talks about this https://anythingartzy.hubpages.com/hub/Photography-Having-Fun-With-Your-Camera

I bring this up because that berry reaches out and smacks you for attention, and he/she whoever lol, gets it at the expense of other information on your page.

Ok, the font in your logo. People use Times New Roman, Arial, Tahoma and other popular fonts for a reason, they do not create a strong emotional atmosphere which causes the user to difficulty in absorbing your message. See, when you first started your site it looked kindergartenish. So, the question was who is the audience kindergarten teachers? Ok, so lets pretend you put a sombrero in your logo, would the site then be passion for living a mexican life? You want to speak to as broad an audience as possible, and neutralizing your font will accomplish that.

Now, look at the font you use in the heading of each article on the front page. What I would encourage you to do is go to www.ads-software.com first and look at the size of the title fonts, then go to CNN and look at the size of the categrory fonts , they seem to go against what I am saying at first, but what you are looking for is do the size of the fonts enhance or detract from the other content on the page, especially your main content. Chop the size of your title fonts in half, and also the word Christina above your picture, then look at the page and see if it naturally flows better.

We are getting there :). Just so you know, I had a design I took into class one day, and we ended up revising it I would say 40-45 times before we got something that felt good. This is a process, it may seem tiring, but for me I love it. ??

Hey, we are only trying to help you pull it off. If we did not think you had what it took we never would have replied. It is that passion for living life thing ??

Christina

Even though I prefer a different design style Nick has some great ideas. With that said, About me, Contact Us, and other static links tend to go at the very top in the right hand corner. Is it always effective? No, but it worth heavily considering.

Nick has brought out a very good point about the noise on your site. Always ask yourself this question when designing, can I accomplish more with less.

Hope all of this helps, for color schemes check out Kuler at Adobe.com it is excellent color matching tool.

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

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

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.

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.