Critique Please - New site and new to blogging

[iAdderall]

Hey guys,

I'd like some serious critiques on a WordPress site I have been working on. This is actually my first WordPress site to ever develop, and honestly it's been very different. A few years back I developed vBulletin and IPB Boards, and worked for vBSkinworks before it was sold to someone with no feel for design.

To get to the point my new site is http://MacOSXBlog.com, and I'd like you to tell me what you like, dislike and what you would change. I welcome all suggestions no matter if they are harsh or not. I haven't made a logo yet due to my lack of creating one, therefore I will have to wait until a friend or I pay someone to do it.

Thanks in advance for your responses,

iAdderall

PS. After giving me your critique what are your Text Editors of choice, or software you use? Right now I just use the default editor in Lion.

 

[jotade11]

For a WP blog, it looks very clean and neat. Well done! The header (with Apple logo and ad) is a bit large for me, but it is reasonable. One thing I love about Gizmodo is that as soon as you visit the site, you are reading content; perhaps you might reorganize the ad a little bit, if possible (I know it's WP, and not exactly a breeze to monkey around with, but with sufficient determination, it can work).

But even as it is, I like the light layout; just another possible change (not improvement) you could make would be to make it silver, like the color of Macs these days) and used dark highlights (ie. the menu bar background), but I am a big fan of dark layouts while others are not. Again, looks good as is.

In terms of a text editor, my personal favorite is BBEdit, but it is not a dedicated HTML editor; I use it because of its versatility. I can edit just about any language known to computers on it, but while it can do everything, it is not -great- at any one language, in particular. Coda is not a bad choice in my opinion, nor is Adobe Dreamweaver if you so choose. Just my 2 cents.

Nice work!

EDIT: Just realized that "ad" bar is actually where the logo will go! Oops!

 

[iAdderall]

Thank's for the honest review jotade11. I agree with you, the header is too large right now because of the huge apple. I stuck the apple in header and footer until I have a logo created. I'm actually horrible at designing logo's.

The advertisement will be removed shortly. I'm planning on adding a small text banner after each post, that way it's not blocking any content nor making someone lose interest in what they would be reading. If you were a subscriber to my site, where would you not mind seeing a small advertisement? I'm definately not going to have many, but I'd like to make a few bucks to pay my hosting atleast.

It's funny you mention the silver and dark highlights. When I first started developing this site I was going for the "Macbook Pro" look. Honestly, I figured out how bad I really sucked at blending colors after that approach. Mac has great vibrant colors. With that said I'm going to be playing with a few different glossy colors, but still keep it simple and easy on the eyes.

I will see if those have have a trial. I've seen Coda around, but never attempted to download it. Also, I haven't found a FTP Client worth a ****. I've been doing all of my uploading via cpanel which is a pain in the ass. I'm sure if I would have been using a Mac for more than a few months and not so busy I would have found something by now.

I really appreciate you reviewing my site man. I have literally been sitting around all day waiting on some reviews. I figure most people thought I was just spamming. Hopefully, I'll be able to get a few people to help me with content and I'll be able to see you visiting me on the regular. Again, thanks for everything and I believe I'll have a few things fixed tonight. If you don't mind stop by this thread sometimes in the next couple weeks to give me some feed back on my journey to have a nice site.

Thanks,

Matt

 

[marsmissions]

Design is ok, nothing to write home about.

Speaking of writing - the articles are juvenile, at best. Also, text formatting isn't consistent.

Get it together, and you have a lot of potential. Blogs need good authors to succeed.

 

[iAdderall]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

I actually asked for a critique, not a troll. Yes, the design isn't the best I understand that. Content, won't be me writing that either. I like SEO, design and basically development in general. If there are things you dislike I'd really like to hear it, just keep in mind my posts are for testing. I want to create something users will like and navigate easily.