I think it looks great! Very clean and professional. Red is a nice Liberal colour, good choice! Are you planning on releasing the spoils of your labour to the community?
Not just yet as the theme is quite bodged.
When I get some time to re-work the code and tidy things up then I may well do so 🙂
I am worried I have too many ads on there though.
The ads do not overshadow the theme, itrends. For your purpose, it is a job well done. I like it. I too would be interested in a copy of the theme if it is ever made available to the public. TIA 🙂
Well I would need to change it so that e.g. the pages list and category menu were CSS Li divs etc and automagically generated. At the moment the menu is hard coded because i couldnt get a dynamic menu written out correctly.
I know pro users could easily sort, but its the people who will complain when it isnt all bells and whistles or doesnt validate that will be the issue 🙂
Will have to try and enlist help to try and fix it up. 🙂
Dave
I stumbled across you the other day from something else and loved the theme.. I was wondering if you’d pop up here as so many wordpress people do.. I’d be really interested in it!
The use of red and grey looks great. I like the illustrations next to each post/section, the way you kept it pretty consistent with the art style on those, although it almost is boring how they’re all positioned exactly the same (to the right by the sidebar). I like the all-caps headlines.
The diagonal red section is distracting, I guess that is meant to be covered up with ads? If not make a gradient or something else not bold diagonals. (The dark low-contrast gray diagonal background is fine)
The orange RSS/Atom buttons clash on color. Re-color them to match?
I like how there’s a “stat” in the header, but, I don’t know if that particular stat is very useful for your readers (# Users Reading The Site At This Time). I’d prefer something like Number Of Articles Today, Number of Articles this week, Number of New Scams, or something. The stat you’re using just sounds like it’s meant to show how big your site is or something maybe for ad-sales purposes, not high on the list of things the visitors care about.
Last, I have no idea how to do this, but I always get bored of sidebars that go all the way down, that makes it look like a Kubrickish blog which isn’t your purpose of making it more of a website. Is there some way to fill the bottom/empty part so that your main content adjusts to fill in the space, or, fill it up with some dynamic content?
I have taken on board what you said. I do not fully understand your last paragraph about adjusting the side bar.
Agreed though, I didnt want it to look like a blog, of course i dont want it to look like a corporate site either as there must be the personal touch.
I deeply thank you all for your comments though and once i get back from racing this weekend I will get to work on cleaning things up.
Any other comments and clarifications are welcomed and warmly recieved.
Thanks again
Dave
on the sidebar comment, I found an example, sort of like how the left-column on this page comes to an end when it’s out of content, so the main column can grow wider and fill in the space there:
http://www.hyalineskies.com/blog/about/
thus there is not a long border of empty column that looks like a giant stripe
It looks like a ripoff from this site that has been around for ages.
http://mamboteam.com/
Maybe you own the mamboteam site, but I immediately thought of mamboteam when I saw your blog.
I don’t see the resemblance..hahaha…yeah right..weee!=) Nice theme though…LOL!
spencerp
Hello referrer logs: I saw my site linked here, so I guess I should chime in with a reply.
Unless mamboteam has released that template open-source, Dave, you’re probably breaking some copyright laws and stealing a design that isn’t yours. That’s fairly despicable, especially considering the fact that they hired a design firm to make that template for them. We don’t take kindly to those who blatantly rip others off. I will, however, give you the benefit of the doubt and hope that you’ve either asked permission from mamboteam, or this is a free template. Either way, let us know, as it’ll help your reputability if 7milesdown is wrong and you’re not ripping anyone off.
That said, the column I made on my about page is just a <div> that has been styled in CSS and floated left. Here’s the style for it, right out of Gridlock’s stylesheet:
#about_sidebar {
width: 210px;
margin: 0 10px 10px 0;
padding: 10px 5px 10px 5px;
border-top: 3px solid #ccc;
border-bottom: 3px solid #ccc;
background-color: #333;
color: #eee;
font-size: 11px;
float: left;
}
All in all, it’s really simple. What you’ll want to do for that theme is just float the divs that contain the sidebar right and let the content wrap instead of having that massive diagonally-striped sidebar background, which is pretty garish even if it was a design feature.
Also, Dgold, there’s nothing wrong with something appearing “Kubrickish,” IMO. It’s a style thing.
Hope this helps; happy coding!
Thanks for the tips, hope you don’t mind I linked your page for an example. Maybe shouldn’ta done that in the ‘awefully similar theme’ thread. I probably got your link off eston screen-name link on here & bookmarked it one time. I shouldn’t use that typical kubrick slam, it seems to have a bad rep on this board from being the default theme, however if my screen-name was linked you’d see all my novice blogs are on the default theme. I’m just slowly learning to code myself away from that, but haven’t created my own custom theme yet. It’ll be a long time ’til I could get a layout as customized and smooth as yours.
No, that’s fine. I don’t have control over where I’m linked, and if he steals my theme, well, he’ll not be in a good position. I can’t stand it when people steal others’ designs (and I don’t think the rest of the WP community is really for it either.) It’s laid out in my copyright info page. I’ll be releasing my current theme open-source in May anyway.
In all honesty, Kubrick shouldn’t get a bad rep. I’ve talked to Michael Heilemann before and Kubrick is well-designed. That doesn’t speak to its ubiquity, but hey, it’s a nice, solid theme that works extremely well.
Thanks for the compliments on Gridlock, btw. I’m already working on a new theme 😉
I have indeed re-created the design as a wordpress theme. As far as I knew the theme was not copyrighted and was infact a mambo template itself, of course I never seeked the mambo theme as i dont use mambo 🙂
I will sling them an email and find out as if it was a theme just for them or even designed by themselves then I will be post haste about changing my existing one.
I certainly do NOT want to be upsetting anyone at all and I commented on this very mambo theme earlier here in the wordpress forums requesting help to turn it into wordpress. When I got no help I figured I would try myself etc etc 🙂
Anywho, I will let you know if it turns out this is not an open source theme. if it os not I will be looking to change my sites one. I would not want a site of mine ripped if I paid for the design and I am sure they would not either.
Thanks for all the comments.
Dave
itrends, any word on this possible copyright issue? Going by what eston said before, it doesn’t sound promising for this to be allowed correct? Please let us know soon, it’s kind of peaking my curiosity here lol!
spencerp
