mandaszewczyk

I recently upgraded, but I used to run my blog on the Poetry theme by Cuikai, and it was not buggy at ALL. In fact, I can’t imagine how I would ever improve it — I was EXTREMELY happy with it, and have the utmost confidence in ANY themes designed by Cuikai.

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/poetry

Recently I upgraded to a much more customized look for my blog because I needed more advanced features and because I finally found the time to do the customization I wanted. But, for the months that I used the Poetry theme, I was very happy.

As far as how I created a customized look, I used php and html to edit the theme. If you don’t have a design or programming background, you might just want to search online for tutorials or see if you can find a designer to help you.

Hi Chrisber,

I love your blog. I think that the design is refreshing, friendly, and easy on the eyes. I also really like your writing and your posts. I think it may be hard to produce large reader numbers without a more focused topic, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who will come back because they’ve enjoyed your blog — really nice work.

My only criticism is the bullet holes. They are fun, and I’m sure that there are a lot of people who will love them. The only reason I don’t like them is because I think they take away a little bit from your content. You content is thoughtful, mature, and interesting. You’ve tackled political topics, personal beliefs, and national crisis in your writing, and you’ve done a great job. When I see the bullet holes, I assume the blog belongs to a high-school kid blogging about video games — if I hadn’t been purposely taking a close look so that I could give a critique, I may have moved on when I saw the bullet-hole roll-overs without giving your strong content the attention it deserves.

One other very small criticism: the roll-over color on your sidebar items is so close to the background color that the words seem to disappear when I roll over them. It might be better if the rollovers were a different color so that the word stands out on a roll-over, instead of blending back into the background.

Sorry for the long post! All in all, a really, really nice blog. I’ll definitely be back to read more (and would be very interested if you end up coming up with some tasty healthy recipes in your new quest to eat healthfully – hopefully you’ll share them with your readers!)

It’s BEAUTIFUL!! As are your photos – extremely nice. As a designer, I have only two very minor (and very nit-picky) critiques:

1. The text size of the content in your footer is extremely small (on my monitor). I had a hard time reading the paragraph about yourself – and my eyes are fine. Maybe make it the same size as the majority of your content instead?

2. The blue and green in the footer are confusing since the rest of the site is black and white. You may want to either change the black in the main part of the site to the dark blue, and then make all of your links throughout green. OR, you might want to make your footer black. Just for consistency’s sake — so it looks like the website and the footer go together.

Other than these two small things — it looks FANTASTIC!! Great work!

Hi rkrieg,

You’ve created a challenge for yourself in that your blog subject isn’t easily searchable. It’s not like you’re blogging about dogs or recipes — those are things that someone will type into Google. It’s also more difficult for you to find your audience. You can’t just look for dog owners or people who like to cook.

LenK is right. It takes a LOT of hard work and time to build traffic. I probably spend more time marketing my blog than I do writing posts. I’m very new, so I’m hoping that will change eventually, but I don’t think that you can build readers without actively going out and looking for them.

I suggest tracking down your market and then trying to connect with them. It sounds like you’re probably looking at the YouTube/MySpace crowd. Post comments, get on forums, and converse with these people. The more they like YOU, the more likely they will be to support your blog. I also highly recommend Twitter. I wrote a post on the advantages of using Twitter for designers, but it sounds like it could be EXTREMELY valuable to you too:

http://www.creativeopera.com/2009/7-reasons-why-all-designers-should-twitter/

Make friends, talk to people, and encourage them to post to your blog (but not in a salesman-y way).

You’ll also want to make sure the your site is optimized for search engines. I also wrote a post on simple (and free) ways to do that:

http://www.creativeopera.com/2009/search-engine-optimization/

It sounds like you have a good idea, and I’m sure it will take off. It’s hard because a site like yours depends on reader participation. If you have to, let your friends post some embarrassing stuff about you to get things rolling 🙂 Once people know you’re out there, it will be much easier to get them to come back.

Good luck!
Manda

Hi Anton,

I think your site has A LOT of potential!

I also like the simplicity. It is extremely user-friendly.

I would think about changing up the color scheme. As a designer, we are partial to aesthetically pleasing websites, and your colors are a little uncomfortable to look at. I love the orange, but would rethink the other colors. Maybe check out the Kuler color tool: http://kuler.adobe.com/ It has loads of awesome color schemes.

I love how you have set up the categories – very easy to use.

I’m not a big fan of justified type. Especially on the web. It leaves big gaps like on your “Computer Banners” add on the Latest Freelance Jobs page. I’d left-justify instead.

I would also make all of the links so that they open in a new window. If I’m looking for jobs, I’ll probably want to keep coming back to your site. And, it can be hard if I keep losing you every time I click on a link.

Also, just go through and do some design proofing. On the payment page, for example, the spacing is inconsistent, and some titles are underlined and some aren’t.

I think you have a great idea here. Your site is very easy to use – and that’s the most important thing.

Super work!