WordPress Theme

[ShinoKage]

Hi there! I JUST started learning about how to use WordPress about a month ago and I am very interested in developing themes (which uses a ton of code! I am a PHP noob). Anyways, I had a design sitting around, not being used and decided to turn it into a WordPress theme, so I was hoping you could take a look and give me some feed back

http://blog.seductiveopulence.com/

I am not a big fan of blogs, so I know it's going to be difficult to develop anything for them, but I'm hoping I covered everything I needed to. I want to know about the colors, the graphics, the layout, the link colors, if that search box looks stupid (I denying that it needs to be changed). So yeah, let me know!

Thanks in advance everyone

Oh! And don't worry about the footer... I know, I haven't put anything there yet.

[jimdoescode]

The black text on the blue is a bit straining to read maybe your could make the blue a bit softer (lighter). Also the green links on the side are difficult to see in the blue background. Making those white would make them stand out more.

Overall I think the theme is good, the colors just need to be tweaked a bit to make reading easier, after all that is what a blog is all about .

[Todays Logo]

I feel you need to do a bit more work on the site all round as it does not really hold much interest on first click. I have never been a big fan of coloured backgrounds in a text area. Maybe if it were not so dark and a bit more non intrusive it would work.

Firefox/3.6.12 - No problems found
Opera 10.63 - No problems found
Chrome 7.0.517.44 - No problems found

I don't do IE

[ShinoKage]

TodaysLogo - if you read my post, you would understand that this is suppose to be a WordPress theme (and as far as I am concerned, no blog is very interesting). It's not it's own website for anything, it's just suppose to be a theme for someone to slap on their blog.... So I guess if you could be a little more specific, that would be helpful

[mikeonrails]

I think this is a great start.With this type of theme(a "thematic" theme), you have to make it very immersive by playing up on the underwater aspect.

-For the header, I would reduce the number of clouds and make their spacing more irregular to give a more natural feel. Also, I think adding some small graphical additions like a small flock of birds, a mountain, etc... of a non-blue color would help diversify the color scheme. Maybe your nav links can have buoys or boats as background image. Another option is to have them as "debris" in the water.

-The transition from the top of the water to the bottom of the water looks a little strange, partially because the top texture has a horizontal stroke while the underwater texture has a vertical stroke. You should definitely keep the top's texture(waves) but you don't really need the underwater vertical stroke. Maybe also add a "wavy" transition between the top and underwater sections. Check out (http://cleantechnica.com/2009/10/23/...-ocean-energy/) for some more inspiration.

-For the left nav, I would change the hover state to a darker color(black) and get rid of the strikeout through the links(maybe make it an underline).

-You should consider changing the horizontal rule between each of the posts. Maybe make them green to mimic seaweed?

-The posts need some sort of background color or image. The dark brown dominance of the images clashes with your blue background. If you have a neutral background color/image(semi-transparent white?), then you won't have the potential color clashes and readability concerns.

-I was pleasantly surprised to see the turtle on the bottom. I think it's awesome. Could you make it so people could put their own logos up underneath the turtle?

Overall I think you have a good start to a fun, niche theme. Try diversifying the color a little bit, modifying some of the textures, and adding neutral backgrounds for the content.

[ShinoKage]

Mike - Thank you sooooo much for the advice -- all very helpful

I will get to work on some of those things right now and I'll update it. (Now the key is to not break it while changing it x.x)

[ShinoKage]

Okay, I made some updates, not too sure about all of them, lemme know what you think.

Same url: http://blog.seductiveopulence.com/

Oh, and I can't do that wavey sea-line thing unless I change some other stuff x.x I guess I could do it, but it will be a big hassle b/c of how I have the page set up.... ^_^;; So lemme know what you think so far

[jimche]

The site looks kind of rushed. Text is all the same color and and mostly the same font size. The links on the left are abit hard to read and would be nice to add a header logo. Wouldn't hurt to remove the initial 'hello world' post.

Hope this helps.

[mikeonrails]

The birds make the header look a lot better. I think you are tiling the header(3x). Try making one 100% width header and having only a few clouds and one flock of birds to the left. This will help it look a little more natural. Also, I think the header navigation looks a little out of place. Since you have the sidebar nav, do you need this header nav as well? The links appear to overlap to the same content.

The white background+dropshadow on the images really helps the visibility. Consider doing something similar with the text, maybe a semi-transparent background.

The bubbles on the left side with the nav are a nice touch. I like them. I also like the new look of the hover state of the nav links.

[Jake Collums]

Since your still learning wordpress here are few comments

Your background is all over the site and its difficult to read the fonts.
You need to have a clean background to the body
You need to fine tune the background color and the font color

there are few more advanced things to consider, for now you make the above changes

[ShinoKage]

The birds make the header look a lot better. I think you are tiling the header(3x). Try making one 100% width header and having only a few clouds and one flock of birds to the left. This will help it look a little more natural.

I don't know what you mean x.X I can't have 2 bg images. But thank you for the compliments.

Also - soooo the post background with the coral and fish... bad? I was thinking of doing something different too I think it will look better than an image (although I may still need a divider).

For a divider I'm going to have to go to a pet store and take photos of their salt water fish >.>

[bartabnews]

I use wordpress for many of my sites and I do not like blogs. Try searching for other themes that will allow you to present the material more as a website than a blog.

[EasyCo]

My first thought looking at your site is it's very minimalistic and transparency heavy.
I like the whole underwater feel to it but nothing really stands out. No one element seems to draw your attention. I think perhaps you need to have a different header text color or background within you blog post bubbles.

[ShinoKage]

By the way, I did make a few little changes -- I spread the seagulls out a bit more, and I did give the ocean some waves on the underside.

Lemme know what you think

[xlong]

I think I love your design, blue is my favorate colour btw.
Don't you want to make the blue a little bit more different to give out a depth expression? I mean more different kinds of blue...
Sorry if I cannot make myself clearer.

[lukeurtnowski]

First off, id say the white text for the menu iss a little hard to see (what about #cccccc), the green vertical sidebar links are also a little hard to see, try #cccccc also or something similar. The font size seems a little large so see if it helps to reduce that to 12pt.

[jvfconsulting]

You have some nice real estate under the turtle. Turn that into a footer with some social networking links and possibly some links to other parts of your site. You're using wordpress, so the possibilities are endless. Good luck!

[Pendragon128]

Also - soooo the post background with the coral and fish... bad? I was thinking of doing something different too I think it will look better than an image (although I may still need a divider).

For a divider I'm going to have to go to a pet store and take photos of their salt water fish >.>

One thing I would suggest is instead of wrapping the individual blog posts in a transparent div is wrapping the entire content area in a transparent div. That way things have a consistent flow to them and your eye isn't jumping from one box to another. I would also reduce the radius on the border-radius properties, but that may be more of a preference rather than a necessity.

A cool idea in keeping with your underwater theme might be adding illustrated sea creatures to each of your menu headers, ie. a stingray to the pages menu, a seahorse to the archives menu. Just something interesting to draw the eye but differentiate the different menus from each other.

Very cool idea and execution though, can't wait to see the finished product!

-JBird