This is very short and simple. I got an idea for a new Wordpress layout, and I want to get some feedback as to your preferences for the structure, assuming you were either designing or reading a site based on the structure. Traditionally, we see a lot of left hand navigation elements on the left side of “normal” websites. Blogs tend to favor the right for sidebars. In this layout I’m plotting out, there will be an “aside” type element that I do not want juxtaposed against the sidebar area, but I also don’t want it hanging free against the right side of a center aligned page because I think it reduces the readability of it. So the options I crafted are as follows.
Option one is a left aligned page, with a left hand sidebar area with the asides floating on the right of the content. Option two is a center aligned page with a right hand sidebar area that allows the asides to come in on the left of the content. Both of these examples are optimized for 1024×768, but I am toying with the idea of making them full width, or possibly flexible width (though I generally find that harder to get “perfect”). Click either thumbnail to view an actual sample page. I welcome the opinions of both designers and random people alike. Also keep in mind, this is just for planning the basic wireframe of the site, it has nothing to do with how the final thing will actually look, from a “pretty” point of view.
Polls follow after examples.
Loading ... Loading ...Hey look, the theme is done! At least, done enough that I’m ready to start taking feedback. Use the comment form below for that. Even if it’s just to say “neat colors” or “I h8 u kthxdie.” But really, feel free to let me know what does and doesn’t work for you. I’ve tried keeping things simple, but engaging enough to make it worth looking at. I’ll also consider making it into a downloadable theme, if people are interested anyway. But I am very interested in what you think of it. I’m not really a designer at heart, but I do think this is a big improvement over the last layout. I have one more change slated for the main frontpage, but I’m battling a vicious, nasty little bug, and I’m not gonna hold up the theme because of it, so that part’ll get done when it gets done.
I have not yet upgraded my blog to the famed Wordpress 2.5. No, instead, I am taking the cautious route for a change, which is a little unusual for me since I normally am not afraid of being bleeding edge. The thing is, I am dependent on a couple plugins I’d rather not lose. And having just finished this theme, I want to make sure all the hooks and functions I call aren’t being deprecated. I did help a buddy get going in 2.5 last week though, and it looks okay. I just wish they’d done more with care towards backwards compatibility. In the end, once I upgrade, you actually shouldn’t notice. So, you probably don’t really care. Sorry to waste your time on this paragraph. I love you for it though.
On that note, am I the only one that doesn’t like the WordPress site? It always feels like content is out of date/sync with other parts, and the support areas are painful to navigate and find what you need. I feel like I get led in circles a lot. And the forums always come across very hostile, even those users marked as “moderators.” That might just be me, but it always seems like for every question with a good answer, there is one with a snarky one and one with no anwsers. But, at least the wiki has good information, which is all I normally need. But if you want my advice, avoid their forums like the plague, and if you can’t, don’t even dare asking a remotely vague-ish question.
I am continuing to try to stick with an active social web presence. My attempt to live mostly through my NetVibes page didn’t go so great though, but I can say it’s sped things up in a couple places at least. It’s just that there’s too frequently not enough info in the feeds I’m reading, so I find myself visiting the sites about as much as always. I did do a new thing in the sidebar for my blog though, with the integration of Profilactic. Which is nothing like what you might think. It has nothing to do with sex that I have discovered (so far), and trust me, I’m looking. It’s a site designed for lifestreaming. That is, coordinating feeds from all your various social web stomping grounds. You can also use it like I did at the right to make a nice link list that can be styled up so people can see you in other areas. Then it adds pretty icons and all that jazz without you needing to screw with it (well, technically you do have to screw with it if you don’t like their default styling, which I didn’t, but it’s classed well and can be changed with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) easily). At the site, it then creates a mash up of all the sites’ RSS feeds that you can send to people who want to keep with you on various fronts, but at one source. One feed to rule them all, one feed to bind them. Stupid hobbitses.
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