Alright, I’m still planning (hoping?) to design my own theme for Wordpress… I’ve got quite a few ideas, but as always, they don’t really seem to fit together. I just pick out “oh, I like how they did that” and “gee, that’s really cool” and “wow, I should put that on my site!” from various places, and none of the independently great ideas work together.
So, after the success of our “Wasted Weekend” poll (hey, that’s catchy… I may have to make it a regular thing…), I thought I’d open up the floor again and see what you guys thought about themes.
Everybody has certain things they like and dislike from the webpages they visit regularly, and it’s foolish for me to think I’ll ever be able to please all these personal opinions. Still, I’d like a little 3rd party (and 4th and 5th and 6th…) advice.
What are some of your favorite aspects of a theme / design? Not just Wordpress or blog related, but in general over the entire web. Do you like navigation on the top or left? What kind of colors schemes - light or dark? Do you love blue as much as I do? Any other website design pet peeves you think all designs ever should abide by?
If you don’t have anything right off that you know of, just keep this in the back of your mind today while you surf around on company time, and let me know what your favorite parts of the sites you visited today are later tonight…
Just consider this a useability study… before the product has been created…
9 Comments so far
Tom Simpson, on December 5, 2005 at 2:58am, said:
I have been working on something all night, and then you come along and post this strange version of the same post that I
was going to makemade. We must both be tuned into the same wavelength, or at least hearing the same interference.Anyway, as far a WordPress themes go, the big reason that I changed mine the last time was because of the ads. I know that you’re not running any ads, but when I changed my template, the income shot up! I know that a redesign would do the same sort of thing for content, as well. I normally don’t read blogs that use the Kubrick theme. j/k
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Abdul Mueid, on December 5, 2005 at 1:56pm, said:
So, we meet again Mr. Meller (reminds me of the Agent from The Matrix when he says “So, we meet again Mr. Anderson” :P)
Seeing that my “little 3rd party” opinion will mean something to you, I will shed some light onto things I might consider when making a template.
1. I prefer light colors (yes, blue is included). They are much more pleasing to the eyes. Those who say that dark colors are more pleasing to the eyes are liars. Go to ColorCell (http://colorcell.uneven.org/index2.php) and pick a nice color combination.
2. Navigation can be anywhere as long as it is easily accessible. Some people like to use pretty flash or javascript based navigations that slide open etc. They look good n all but I sometimes find them very annoying. I’d rather stick to the traditional list based navigation stuck in a corner of the page.
3. Use rounded corners, but dont abuse them. Personally I dont have anything against rounded corners but sometimes people just exaggerate it and what is supposed to be a block ends up looking like a circle.
4. Use as few images as possible. Or if you need to use images make sure they are small in size and easy to load. I have seen many blog headers where the owner makes a nice image in photoshop and saves it as a jpeg which is 500KB in size.
5. Keep it simple. Do not clutter it with unnecessary chunks of text here and there. Those that think “the more clutter the better” are lame.
That’s it from me Mr. Meller. Have a good night!
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Chris Meller, on December 5, 2005 at 2:32pm, said:
Tom: I think designing a room (of any type) would be fun. The most input I’ve ever had on one was along the lines of “Which shade of charcoal burgandy do you like best?”…
Abdul: Some very good points here. As you’ve no doubt noticed, blue is my favoritestestest color! :)
I’m pretty OCD about navigation. It should be at the top of the page (left, preferrably - only on the right if there’s no left column), and Flash should never - ever - under any circumstances be used for the navigation of a site. I use FlashBlock in Firefox, so I’ll never see your navigation if it’s Flash-based. Javascript is alright, as long as I don’t have to wait for a cascading menu to show up, which are usually very picky about your mouse position. If the menu disappears while I try and slide to a sub-option, I’m gone.
As you’ve probably also noticed, I love rounded corners. Anything with a 90 degree angle makes the page feel a bit harsh. A circle, of course, is bad. As with everything, rounded corners in moderation.
Images, like rounded corners, should be used sparingly. I never plan to go much further with images than you see currently. We’ve got a T1 at work (1.5 Mbps), with ~70 people and several servers using it, so I get very impatient when my own blog won’t load quickly enough… :)
As for the clutter, I agree. Just look at Tom’s site… Talk about clutter! ;)
No offense, Tom, I just don’t like multiple sub-columns bordering each other… Which is why I hate all the Weblogs, Inc. blogs as well (since they all have main content on the left, then two sub-columns on the right).
If you have any other suggestions, please let me know. Are there any sites you find particularly attractive for one design reason or another?
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Abdul Mueid, on December 5, 2005 at 2:47pm, said:
“Are there any sites you find particularly attractive for one design reason or another?”
Ofcourse, check out my blog. Although it’s not blue, I still consider it better than some others in terms of design and looks. It’s not very cluttered, links are organised, not so round, easy on eyes and easy to read. I took the Almost Spring theme as the base and since the birth of my blog I have been modifying it to match my taste.
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Cal, on December 5, 2005 at 4:25pm, said:
I’m working on web pages and and a couple of blogs (not published ones yet), and in all my research I have come up with the following:
General Design:
Pages download quickly
Home page fits into 800 x 600 pixel space
All of the other pages have the immediate visual impact within 800 x 600 pixels
Use photos, subheadings and quotes (in bigger centered text) to break up large areas of text
Every web page in the site looks like it belongs to the same site; there are repetitive elements that carry throughout the pages
Navigation on the left - most of us are taught to read left to right (please don’t take offence at this if you are in a part of the world where you read from right to left, as no offence is intended), and have been brought up with web pages having menu’s on the left.
Text:
Background does not interrupt the text (personally I prefer a white background with dark blue or grey text, but dark backgrounds with lighter text are okay, it depends on your subject matter)
Text is big enough to read, but not too big - purely subjective this one, but if you think your text is borderline for size, take it up one notch
The hierarchy of information is perfectly clear
Columns of text are narrower than in a book to make reading easier on the screen
Navigation:
Navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use
Navigation is consistent throughout web site
Navigation buttons and bars provide the visitor with a clue as to where they are - what page of the site they are currently on
Try not to use frames, or if you have to make sure you dam well know how to code them properly, and don’t make them obtrusive (borders etc)
A large site has an index or site map
Links:
Link colors coordinate with page colors
Links are underlined so they are instantly clear to the visitor
Graphics:
Buttons are not big and dorky (official technical term :) )
Every graphic has an alt label
Every graphic link has a matching text link
Graphics and backgrounds use browser-safe colors
Animated graphics turn off by themselves
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ANONYMOUS?, on December 6, 2005 at 6:54am, said:
I would like this design if you avoided the excessively large gradient head image. I like my menus on the top, if they’re to the left the content is a bit out of place (although a lot of designers won’t admit to this mistake). You read from left-to-right, but if there’s a huge menu between the start of the page and your menu, it becomes an annoyance (many major sites do things this way, but they are slowly all converting).
Too much of a good thing (such as the color blue) can take away from a design. Especially if the colors are all near the same shade.
Another thing, the comment boxes have borders above and below, but the borders don’t really serve a purpose. It may just be ME, but it looks tacky.
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Chris Meller, on December 6, 2005 at 2:07pm, said:
Cal: Some very good points there. Things I’ve never really thought about, such as the page width being narrower than a book, really make sense but are less obvious than you might think. There are also things like the alt tags on graphics which you really *should* do, but I’m usually too lazy to do… Besides, there are browsers like IE out there that will display crap like that as tooltips, which is just ikky (granted it may no longer do that, but it used to, and turned me off to them entirely).
Anony: The ironic thing is… The blog header actually spurred my desire to design my own theme. As much as I like blue, this header is a bit bright even for me, so I designed a couple (3 or 4) different headers that I thought looked really good. Unfortunately, they look like crap when I throw them in with the remainder of the default page… So this is really putting the cart before the horse I suppose, but whatever motivates me to get the job done, I’m willing to go with. :)
Too much blue?? NNEEVVAAARRRRR!! *hides his blue Windows XP theme, his blue Outlook 2003 theme and his blue Firefox theme* Obsessed? Oh, you have no idea…
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ANONYMOUS?, on December 6, 2005 at 2:54pm, said:
I meant the comment display area, not the comment post area. Sorry for the confusion, I should have worded that better :).
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Chris Meller, on December 6, 2005 at 4:09pm, said:
Ahh, I see… I agree. I suppose if the poster’s name lacked any defining style, the lines would serve to seperate the posts, but as it is they’re pretty useless.
I was thinking about wrapping each comment in a box of its own with a header containing the poster’s name and the date, kind of like a mini window of its own (albeit a Mac / Safari-looking grey one, at least in my head).
Oh, and the boxes would have rounded corners, so take THAT Abdul!
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