How can I improve my website / blog?

[insomniacfoetus]

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[insomniacfoetus]

Post deleted.

[midenianscholar]

I do a bit of web design as a hobby, and work in a PR graphic design office.

The first thing that caught my attention is the sliding pictures at the top--particularly that one with pixelated clip art. Which... isn't a fantastic first impression, particularly if your dealing with pixel snobs.

Your site is already really busy, with a sidebar and posts in double columns. It's hard for me as a browser to concentrate on what's going on and what I want to click, and if it's hard for me to decide I won't click anything, I'll just leave the site. I might suggest trying to calm it down a bit. You could do this by changing the orange highlight color (good in small amounts, but might be annoying to people/hurt people's eyes when there is a lot of it). You could also do this by taking out the changing header, and just putting one simple image. (Or, if you still want different images, see if you can make it come up with a different one each time someone visits the site. Just don't have them be animated.)

Anyway, I love the background! And the texture for "read more" is really cool too. :)

[insomniacfoetus]

Hi Alyssa,

Thanks for the feedback; really appreciate it. I'm not obsessed by pixels but I know some friends who are - they could spot something off in Lord of the Rings - they work in post production. I agree with your comments but as it's a free template, there's not much I can do about the pics - I don't know why it's so pixelated when the original isn't - and the orange. I'm sure I can change but I don't know how.

The reason why asked is because I had started my old blog in March and this new one in June; and I wish someone had told me in March because now the March-June is in a different theme (it wasn't wordpress so wasn't able to transfer the data); it was quite basic. This one is wordpress so can be changed easily. It took me so long to put this one up; more to do with trying themes I liked but there was always one thing that didn't work and because they're free themes, the people who created them are helpful if the actual design is not working but when it comes to changing say the orange etc, they don't provide support for that, naturally - it is free.

I'm been looking around for website templates. There's the issue of can I get a website template I like that looks like the blog. After your comments, I may try and find another that doesn't have the pic slider - I do like it but you're right the pixelation makes it look amateurish. I may overhaul this one too. There's so many free templates out there but not many cater for the writer.

I did check out your website - I can see what you mean by a bit more serene and calm. Thanks again!