A design for my blogging application

[billgrant88]

Hi, I have been reading up on CSS and HTML since Sept, and have learnt enough PHP and MySQL to create a small blogging application. The software will never be released as obviously it is very elementary and is no doubt full of performance holes but I would really appreciate any feedback on the overall design of the homepage.

I understand an image is not the full picture, so to speak, but nevertheless, I have faith I can learn a lot from any comments!

http://twitter.com/#!/billgrant88/st.../photo/1/large

or view the attachment.

Thanks

[Ayla]

Very nice and clean. You have a sophisticated design style. For my own personal taste I would prefer a bit more color, but just with little accents here and there. Perhaps an image too or a few icons.

[billgrant88]

Thanks I will try to add some more images into my next project, probably in the form of icons.

[billgrant88]

Any other comments?

[RyanReese]

Overall I like it.

I'm not a fan of where the social media icons are. I'd have them right aligned. I think that'd look better.

The site is also lacking some color to it, but I suppose that gives it a bit of charm. It's not the end of the world if you don't add any .

The footer text shouldn't be center aligned either. It just looks awkward that way. It might be just me but I think most of the time, only headings have a place to be centered.

The text box at the bottom of the page, you should probably change the font for that. It looks generic and pretty bad looking.

I only focused on the bad things I found from that screenshot, since there'd be no point in telling you what I DO like .

[RyanKing1809]

Nice design - here's a few things to consider.

I agree with RyanReese, the columns in you footer would look better left-aligned, and I would also change your the font on you input fields.

Other than that I would your categories navigation sits a little awkward in relation to the heading below. It'll take some fiddling around but my tendency would be to move it closer to the header.

The text "tagged in: css" rests a little too close to the article heading, it may look fine if the heading fits the full width of the container but when it doesn't (like in the example taking 2 lines) it throws off the balance. Left-aligning it should fix this but may also look a bit odd - I would try moving it next to the by-line. Or if you'd prefer it right aligned I would try repositioning it closer to the the category navigation - then of course it would read as a element of the navigation and not the article.

[corwinm]

Like you said, it's an image so there isn't a lot to cover. Other than what was mentioned above, one obvious problem is contrast. You use light grey on white background which is not easy to read. As someone with great eyesight, it was a bit annoying and I had to move a bit closer to the screen to read, for someone on a small screen or slightly visually impaired, it's barely readable. Add to that the very small font you are using and I think it's a real problem.

Other than this, it looks good, especially considering it's a first shot. Good job.

[billgrant88]

Thanks for the reviews guys, everything has been noted! Especially the font size and contrast issues.

Here's a link to a live version I quickly uploaded to a free host, login as kat with admin as the pass to see a slightly different version.

http://localhost/sandbox/blog/index.php

[shantana]

I would like to see your facebook,twitter share button top of the article.
You have made the outlook very clean and fresh. i really appreciate your color sense.

[Mae Rose]

My apologies but it looks minimal to me.

[msvip213]

Overall I like the fact that it is a very clean design. I think that the gray just makes it a little bit to plain. I would add a little bit of color but over all I like the layout nice work.

[ClickController]

It looks very professional. As a front end page for an application I think it looks good, and gives the feeling that the
application behind it is of equal quality. I've seen a number of these types of sites and many of them take away
from the credibility of the application by looking as if a 9 year old created the site. Great job.

[printbucket]

Couldn't view the image you posted for some reason nor download the attachment. It would seem that twitter is taking too much time to load in order to display the image.

[TechnoBear]

As this thread is two months old, there seems little point in pursuing the issue.

Thread closed.