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Flickry Flash on WordPress, part 1 Tuesday 2006-02-14

Oh gee am I tired!

In my effort to redesign the Regulus theme I decided to have all sorts of syndication bunched together in the upper left corner of my site. In other words, I want my feeds, Technorati, del.icio.us and Flickr in my newly built left sidebar. To that end I was googling for a suitable icon to represent my Flickr stream.
For hours I scanned the lots of sites with tips and widgets for using Fickr, and search and behold – it’s everywhere. And it’s exciting!

I couldn’t sleep, so this day will be at least 36 hours long. My eyelids are taped to the bone and my eyes emits a faint glow, as I stumble on.

I’ll be back with some more details on my findings, as soon as I recover from this ordeal. For now I can only offer a demo page showing my hastily mocked up family show or banner.
It is composed by the ticker service at Slide from my Flickr stream, and presents a image set called “family”.

You can study the rather incomplete result on my demo page.
It’s breakfast or sleep now.

Catch you later!

Comments»

a gravatar Lorelle writes on
Tuesday 2006-02-14

Well, okay, since you asked nicely, though I don’t have much time to do much right now.

First thing noticed is the header. It doesn’t reach across to fill the space. You mentioned that, but it’s really an eye catcher.

Clutter is the next thought that enters my mind. I know you want to put everything everywhere in every corner, but it is really, really, cluttered. Remember, you are designing for the reader not YOU. YOU might want your del.icio.us and feeds right there, but the rest of us don’t care. Our feed readers will find it no matter where you put it and combined with the tiny picture, it equals clutter. At least change the Syndication Title to a blue block to match the rest of the titles in that column. Consider remodeling those into something equal and clean or put them elsewhere, like in the right sidebar, a more appropriate place.

Again, look at what your eyes look at first. The bright yellow around the header title pulls the eyes away from the content. Then the clutter at the top of the left column. The ads under the Page Links are nice and work well in the Theme, as do the ads along the left column.

Another issue that I have a problem with the Regulus Theme is that the font is too small. It needs to be bumped up just a hair. If it is, it might blend better with the ads in the left column. Right now, they are SCREAMING just because they are a larger and less “decorative” font. Blend them in to resemble the font throughout and you will probably increase your click through rate because people will click them by mistake. ;-)

If you are going to abuse this Theme, think it out all the way. Do you need to have descriptions under the links? I like mine, but honestly, could you make the link for me, as an example: Lorelle – Helping Hand of WordPress Fame? In other words, push the descriptions into the titles which will eliminate the second color in the column.

Also, how important is the calendar and archive? I never use them when visiting other blogs, so do you? Is it critically important that people remember when you published something or in which category they will find it? Consider eliminating the calendar and archive list. I find them useless blogs.

I haven’t run this through a validator as this is just a quick go through, so I expect you will. The idea is good, just clean up the clutter and don’t try to include everything. Minor stuff.

OH, and why include a tag cloud from Technorati. Make your own with the Ultimate Tag Warrior Plugin.

Hope it helps.

a gravatar Petit writes on
Wednesday 2006-02-15

Oh, yes – thanks a bunch Lorelle!

I’ve already decided to do away with the left upper corner mess and place my syndication links at a slightly more obscured place :)

I agree that the font is too small to be easily read, and the lack of contrast doesn’t help much either. It somewhat bigger now. Sadly enough, I’m prohibited by Google terms to do much about the Ad fonts – I’m busting Google about that.

The screaming “Abusing the Regular 2 Theme” in the page head was a disclaimer to be interpreted as “under reconstruction”, however ugly. I got rid of it and made the header image fit the width of the page in a rush.
We don’t want to look ugly while we work, do we?

I also finally found the check box for killing the likewise ugly and real estate wasting descriptions, that haunted my Blogroll links for so long.

As for tag clouds, I don’t care much. They give you a visual hint as to the most popular or used terms in a certain context, but apart from that I don’t think they are of much use. And to be readable, they take up a lot of space. As a phenomenon of our time, I think they will disappear in a near future.

For the Technorati link I first used the term “Profile”, but I changed it to “Cloud” to go with the stream.
On the question of validation, I’m working on it and I’ll be there once I’ve dug out the culprits crafting the standard deviations.

When you’re working on a redesign like I have for a while, in splendid isolation, there comes a point when you have to ask someone trustworthy for advice. I did and I got good advice.

Thanks Lorelle, “Helping Hand of WordPress Fame” ( See Tool Tip ;)

a gravatar Lorelle writes on
Wednesday 2006-02-15

You are always welcome! And I like the new look. The photo in the corner of you is fantastic and really blends in well with the overall color scheme. Excellent work! Keep plugging at it.

a gravatar Petit writes on
Wednesday 2006-02-15

Thanks!

I’m happy to hear that. Your coaching was most welcome.
I’ll take some pause in the redesign to get time to maybe blog a little to ;)

a gravatar Welcome/Välkommen Petit