Would appreciate your opinions on my new site design

[rogersmj]

It's been awhile since I redesigned my site, but I finally got it done earlier this week. It's a Wordpress theme I built from the ground up (I'm calling it Chocolate), using a static home page. My goal was to do something very different from the designs I normally create, and to keep the superfluous visual elements -- shine, dropshadow, etc -- to a minimum. I wanted to work with a color palette I hadn't used before, and I wanted the typography to be a strong part of the design, rather than an afterthought (this, I think, is often overlooked).

Home page: RogersMJ.com (http://rogersmj.com)

The specific post where I talk about the redesign is here (http://rogersmj.com/2008/09/15/new-site-design-chocolate/).

Things I'm still planning on doing are cleaning up and cutting down on the blog categories -- I want to get it down to just 5 or 6 categories. The massive list I have now is leftover from before Wordpress supported post tags. I also intend on designing custom templates for more of my special pages; I've already done one for my bPhone BlackBerry theme page (http://rogersmj.com/bphone).

I would appreciate your constructive feedback so I can decide what to focus on when I start working on some enhancements. Thanks!

[jdl8422]

You should start by scrapping the blackberry page and getting an iPhone page:D The first thing I noticed was the categories like you mentioned, I would also make the font smaller and less bold. The blue really pops on the background so its a little much to have it that size and that weight. I really like the color scheme and your logo. Overall its a killer site. Nice job. Just being picky, I would like to see some kind of separation between the post. Between the bottom of the comments and the title to the next post. I dont think it will make or break the site, but you may consider it. Thanks

[rupie94]

I think it's beautiful, but... i think you should make the right bar a little bit less wide and the left a litte bit wider, so that all the content, the text gets its needed attention more.

[davidwes]

How did you do the top bar that changes content?

[OzExige]

Very nice
however IMHO too subtle
The dark theme (background) needs to be a gradient
reminder: quick look - quick opinion - AND IMHO

[scotty96LSC]

I like it. The only thing is if you get a long narratives white is much harder to read than black. But very easy to find things and navigate.

[rogersmj]

Thank you very much for your input everyone, I appreciate the input. I'll definitely take some of those suggestions under consideration.

The color scheme was definitely something that got a lot of consideration. A gradient didn't look right, but I may punch up the lighter brown in the main nav tabs and the footer because on cheaper monitors I've realized it kind of washes together.

How did you do the top bar that changes content?

I built it myself using a little jQuery. It's pretty easy, I've built them a lot for web sites at work. It's known as a carousel. You can just view the source on that section of the page and see how it's done; all the necessary javascript is right underneath the markup for that eyepiece. I have some extra stuff in there to randomize the slides on each page load that most people probably wouldn't need.

EDIT: Oh, and @jdl8422...I actually do have an iPhone now, but that BlackBerry theme got ridiculously popular (I was interviewed by C|Net and featured on Download.com, I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, and I was called by RIM's lawyers!) so I keep it up on my site. It still gets at least several dozen downloads every day, sometimes hundreds.

[tominated]

holy crap man. that is so awesome, i can't begin to explain.

[txhockey9404]

Looks awesome. That theme makes me wish I still had my Blackberry! (No, I don't have an iPhone) The left side seems a bit like it got cut off though. Maybe a small bar like the one on the right would make it seem more natural. I love the color scheme too!

[polar-blair]

Mmmm I want to eat that website :D

Looks yummy LOL

I really like it, the colour palette is really slick, the top part of the page works really well, I would make the left column more dominant than the right one, make the left bigger, also it feels its sort of just hanging there, Maybe some kind of border or block behind the paragraphs.

But this is one of the best websites Ive seen being discussed on macrumors, good JOB!