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Author Topic: I changed my website layout: opinions?  (Read 5182 times)

superboyac

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I changed my website layout: opinions?
« on: May 19, 2010, 11:35 PM »
Hi everyone, I am in the middle of changing my website look.  It's pretty stressful for me because I'm not good with programming.  So I'm hacking it together with existing themes and cutting/pasting things I find around.  My front page is not ready yet, but here's an example page of an article:
http://aram.dcmember...g/bluebeam-pdf-revu/

My goals are:

--widescreen, so articles are easy to read.  I want it to feel like you are reading a piece of paper (8.5x11, like a magazine).  I hate how most articles now are narrow.  before this, if I put a medium sized picture, it pushes all the text aside and makes the article look super long.  It's not pleasant to read.  And I think narrow is the trend so people can clutter all the area around it to stick in ads and a bunch of other things that take attention away from the article.  I truly hate it.  I know, some people will say narrow is good to accommodate smaller resolutions or monitors, but those days are gone.  Even the cheap monitors now are at least 1024 pixels wide.  i want people to be able to read comfortably.

--simple and elegant.  No clutter.  No widgets around the sides.  I don't want it to look like a blog.  I want it to look like a place to read articles.  I know I can't get away from the "wordpress" look, but it's still pretty clean and nice so far.

--one-column.  No more multiple columns for me.


Anyway, I am loving it.  if I do say so myself, it's the most easy to read website that I've come across, and I've only started!

Now, if only someone would come up with a nice CMS system that tranglos was asking about a while back.

daddydave

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Re: I changed my website layout: opinions?
« Reply #1 on: May 20, 2010, 04:41 AM »
I don't remember seeing what it looked like before, but it looks great now. Very professional looking and great content.

mouser

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Re: I changed my website layout: opinions?
« Reply #2 on: May 20, 2010, 05:29 AM »
i like it -- i dont know if you need to have the site motto twice right up at the top.

superboyac

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Re: I changed my website layout: opinions?
« Reply #3 on: May 20, 2010, 08:34 AM »
Thanks!
 mouser, yes, the motto is displayed twice (once in my logo picture, and also with text next to it).  I don't know how to take the text one off, I've mentioned it to the theme developer.  I tried commenting stuff out in the theme, but I don't know what I'm doing.

All these things look like simple changes, but for every little thing, you have to go in and get the code exactly right.  Man, programming can make a person go crazy!

Perry Mowbray

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Re: I changed my website layout: opinions?
« Reply #4 on: May 20, 2010, 09:51 AM »
Yes, I like the simple too!

When I was setting mine up I definitely wanted resizable columns so that the wide screens could take advantage of their width.

Narrow makes it easy because it displays the same anywhere; but I don't like the wasted space (for me or my guests).

superboyac

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Re: I changed my website layout: opinions?
« Reply #5 on: May 20, 2010, 10:07 AM »
I like the flexible width of your site, Perry.  I may have to try to do that later, also.

Perry Mowbray

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Re: I changed my website layout: opinions?
« Reply #6 on: May 20, 2010, 05:48 PM »
I like the flexible width of your site, Perry.  I may have to try to do that later, also.

I started with a strong dislike of fixed narrow width  ;)  In the end I found The Jello Mold site with lots of css templates that both helped me learn layout in css and get exactly what I wanted.

Stoic Joker

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Re: I changed my website layout: opinions?
« Reply #7 on: May 21, 2010, 07:02 AM »
In the end I found The Jello Mold site with lots of css templates
-Perry Mowbray (May 20, 2010, 05:48 PM)

Damn, that is an interesting option; I didn't know there even was a middle ground Solid vs. Liquid.

Thanks!


New layout looks great superboyac