Please comment on my design for a technology blog / portal

[tomlin]

Hi guys, please have a look at this first gash at an attemnt to create a blog / start a community. all the content isnt mine, its just there to fill the gaps for now before i get going....

...all crits welcome...!

http://thetechnologist.x10hosting.com/

Thanks, Dan

[freecrm]

Very impressive - even works well in IE6.

From a personal point of view, I like the colour combination and the layout is clean and nicely spaced.

The only comment I have is the use of 4 different fonts.. yes 4!

Arial, Helvetica and Tahoma, as well as the header image... this looks weird and a bit disjointed. On my screen, the content within the latest post p{} (for example) is in Tahoma and the edges of the font are starting to look pixelated and not easily read.

I like the mix of Helvetica and Arial as the two complement each other nicely.

You could also tone down the link colour ( in your right column) to say a dark grey. This would blend it in well with the design but really bring the main content to the fore.

Good work!!!

[tomlin]

Very impressive - even works well in IE6.

From a personal point of view, I like the colour combination and the layout is clean and nicely spaced.

The only comment I have is the use of 4 different fonts.. yes 4!

Arial, Helvetica and Tahoma, as well as the header image... this looks weird and a bit disjointed. On my screen, the content within the latest post p{} (for example) is in Tahoma and the edges of the font are starting to look pixelated and not easily read.

I like the mix of Helvetica and Arial as the two complement each other nicely.

You could also tone down the link colour ( in your right column) to say a dark grey. This would blend it in well with the design but really bring the main content to the fore.

Good work!!!

Thanks for the great crit, i pretty much agree with you on all the comments - ill have a beaver away tonight - im a complete noob to web design though so im still trying to feel my way through it - especially editing the php files, its completely trial and error for changing fornts and the like as you sugested so ill be busy for a while tonight!

D

[freecrm]

I did think it was templated but I didn't want to say anything!

Do you understand css yet?

A bit of help in your efforts:

For instance, if the word "London" is in a font you don't like, just look in the source code for that word.

The scan up the page until you come to a <div class="something"> or <div id="something">. This will tell you which container (or division) your text is in.

Next you need to find what is making the text do that. Open your .css files (two you have I think for different browsers) and find the style line for that <div>

In the case I mentioned above, it would look something like this

.latestpost p{
style:somedefinition;
etc.
etc.
etc.
font definition

}

I think though in your site, the .latestpost is defined seperately from the p (paragraph).

A simpler way might be to do a search for Tahoma in your css files and replace them all with another text, like helvetica or arial.

Then trial it!

[tomlin]

css - no not really - all i know is to look through like you said and pot shot so to speak.

Right, i had a look and expelled all the 'tahoma' references so it lokks a little near now - also found the code for the link colours - that looks really good now, quite happy with that. ;)

other than that i'd quite like to move the 'featured post' bit to the top and delete the asides bit - above the latest posts - dont have a clue where to start with this - will it be in an individual .php file or will that be governed by the style sheet? My intuition tells me it isnt the style sheet....

Thanks for your help so far!

D

[freecrm]

Had a quick look againtoday and it doesn't seem to have changed. Have you updated/ uploaded all the css files?

About your second question, your featured post comes in a div at the base of the page and doesn't have anything in the css about specific positioning other than float left, which means that, yes, this is in the php code.

Unfortunately, as I can't see the php from the source, I can't advise on how to move it.

You could try looking for something like

<?php

echo "<div id='home_featured'><h3>Featured Post</h3>";

echo "<div class="feat_content">

and finished by

</div>
</div>

?>

That will give you an idea of the code block, which you can then move up in the page to just after the header (or <?php include('header.php');?> ).