25
Aug
(Mostly) Live!
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There will be a few visual tweaks here and there on the theme (I never even got the previous theme to where I wanted it!) but I’d say TavenMoore is ready to hit the big time.
New theme and new domain are a-go.
I hope you enjoy the new look and the less cluttery navigation. Having everything in the menu is awfully nice, as is the new “quick card” view for blog posts.
Pending changes include:
- slight tweaks to the background images
- different logo
- default images to replace the “no thumbnail” silliness currently on blog page lists
Also, it becomes increasingly clear to me that I need to get off my arse and actually write that wordpress widget for my progress bars. I’d started it once and got all huffy, but I want it to be easier to edit at a glance.
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Oh I heart this big time and it fits so nicely on my little netbook screen, too!
<3<3 Thank you!!! I came thiiiiiiis close to asking you to peek at it ahead of time, since I know you've got that designer background. I'm so glad it fits on the tiny screen, too!
Oh, I’m going to miss the pink bunny-ness. But this is very nice and sophisticated.
There will definitely be pink bunny-ness in sidebars and in posts. =]
My “default” image thumbnail will still be Sugarberry.
Besides, I fancy this one has an “Alice in Wonderland” flair to it, which makes it fun.
Not sure how well I like the diamond background (when I first came in, that’s all I saw until the site fully materialized, and it was a shocker!), but I think it will grow on me. I definitely like the parchment-like background for the main window. In fact, I love it!
Oh…just saw this as I was ready to post: the “Notify me of followup” is below the check box; and the checkboxes for ComLuv and comments aren’t aligned.
Also, Steven’s projects aren’t separated like Tami’s are.
Hmm, not sure how I’m going to fix the display of those addons – they add themselves. Good catch, though. Looks like the comment text box is too big for its britches, too
Gorgeous! Fabbo!
I have a crush on your color scheme <3 (do you think you could get me his number? I don't have any plans for Friday night *wink wink*)
<3 Thank you, Miss Courtney! The teal was a happy accident, we'd planned on going with a deep berry red.
Oh lovely! I will miss the bunnies/animals too, but I’m glad you said there will still be some here and there (and I spy some already!).
Love the colour scheme! The background is quite strong, but I really do like the pattern. I wonder if a “background-attachment: fixed” would help a little there (if you know CSS)? Means the background won’t scroll when you do, which makes it a little less full-on, as it’s not moving up and down the screen :)
Thank you, Mazil! Added that, and I like the effect. Seems several other folks don’t like the background, though … not sure what I plan to do about that, if anything. I agree it’s strong, but fading it out destroys the feel of the overall.
Here’s my unsolicited opinion because I can’t keep my damn mouth shut (keep in mind I’m an old man that hates everything, idolizing Statler and Waldorf):
– http://tamimoore.com/blog/ doesn’t redirect properly (which means any permanent links you and others had also don’t, so, if you’ve been linked, those are dead now).
– You might set up a 302 redirect on tamimoore.com to tavenmoore.com. The rel=”canonical” should save you in the end from an SEO perspective, but I think it would be better to just have one domain anyone sees (plus it makes it easier to repurpose tamimoore.com if you want to way down the road).
– The background has too much contrast and detracts from the readability of the site. I find myself staring into the background, going blind, and being unable to read what you wrote. This is particularly true with your masthead. I would suggest going with a gray (or a dimly grayed color) that compliments your footer background. You could add some pattern to it so long as it was muted.
– Minus the background, I think the color selection is very nice. Maybe its the goth, emo wannabe kid in me, but I like the grays with the light blue.
– The widgets in the right gutter don’t have clear borders because it’s white bordered by a really light blue-gray on a light gray background. I think you want contrast here (or maybe just leave off the light blue-gray border and keep the drop shadows).
– “Buy the Books” should be consistent with the other items in the right gutter. I like the graphic, but I think they should be the same (i.e. either more graphical titles or less).
– The “Smile!” in the footer could probably use something to ease into the white (too much constrast). Also, it would be nice if it was as wide as the header line (maybe just frame it in with a white box).
– It took a little while to load on my Droid (longer than the old one). Not sure why.
– Speaking of my phone, have you seen CSS media queries? That would be slick to do (where the site layout changes based on the viewport size). You could move or drop the right gutter for my tiny phone and make the blog entry more prominent.
tldr; I’m a grouch. Change the background and you’re good. ;)
I appreciate your feedback. I agree that the background is strong, but I haven’t found an alternative that I like as much anywhere yet which still preserves the theme and fits with it. I’ll play with it and see if I can find something I like as much that might be less stark.
FYI, I think it looks better on my droid — maybe it’s the smaller resolution? The inner parchment background is what loads last. Might be worth shrinking the file size or putting a similar color as the background while the image loads.
The menus cause a problem with mobile users, but that may not be important really.
The smaller band of background does look nicer on smaller screens.
I’ve got a new background up that dims the black a little, I added a border around the “smile” images.
All the links to specific blog pages from tamimoore.com still work.
Tried changing the widget border color and everything I did detracted too much from the actual page content. I may try darkening the parchment color slightly instead, see if that helps.
I haven’t looked into css media queries yet, but that’s something I plan on doing even for work – we want our site to be mobile compatible and right now it’s a mess.
Set default backgrounds for both the diamonds and parchment images, so if they take a while to load, you’re not left with something freakishly pale.
and I’m working on the “buy the books” image, which is a throwback from the old site.
FYI, one of your feed thingers for facebook was broken on my phone earlier (I clicked it and went to an error page). It might be fixed now though.
Also, neat feature where the comment box grows as I type — I choose to call it a feature, anyway. Unfortunately, the scrollbar is only partially visible in Chrome. This may only be an issue on the nested comment reply box. Interestingly, now I can’t read the left-most 4-5 characters of the top-level comments (though it didn’t impact the post content).
Everything you’ve done so far has helped immensely. ;) I will say some of my issue with the background is apparently a difference in color between various monitors. My droid and 2nd monitor show different colors than my primary (nicer, I thought) monitor. The parchment and diamond background has a yellower feel to it — it looks much grayer out on my main monitor. So maybe the issue here is on my end (or you managed to pick out some of those magic colors that show up differently on different peoples machines — some of the colors show up identically).
I remember the image. ;) The new one does fit more nicely.
You have a mild anti-aliasing problem with your round social network links in the header and I still think the background should be a bit more solid near your logo.
…I’ll go back to making fun of Muppets now.
I lied. It’s the twitter feed thinger that’s broke.
Twitter feed seems fine to me. *boggle*
Example from my phone…
“@tami_moore: TamiMoore.com > Sangre, a dream http://t.co/BSHN2cm”
The url doesn’t work for me and the posts still lead with the old domain. Also, the url is odd because it seems to be different than the normal shortener. In any case, the url sends me here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TamiMoore/~3/F8MkOmgTEh4/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=tami_moore
On that page, I get a 404 message.
Oh noes! Your twitter profile url is wrong (https://twitter.com/#!/tami_moore). Whatever shall you do?!?
Where is this link on my site? The twitter “stamp” at the top doesn’t have it and neither does my hard-coded one in my Elsewhere page.
It isn’t. Your twitter profile points at tamimoore.com (not sure if you meant to change it or leave it). Just ran across it by accident
OH.
Yes. Well. That makes sense then. Thank you, I’ll fix that … um…someday. (silly work blockers, denying me twitter)