Need honest feedback...but be gentle

Hi fellas,

I've been lurking around here trying to learn. This is my first post. I found this place from the Plenty Of Fish blog, and I have to say I've been pretty insprired by what Markus has done.

My background is technology, primarily J2EE and web development.

I've started a "blog" but I'm not sure if I am going to keep it as "just" a blog. I was very impressed with what Smashing Magazine did using Wordpress and therefore used that as the basis or platform for getting on the net with a fairly small amount of effort. My first instinct was to build the thing from scratch but ran into a brick wall with the almost absolute lack of Tomcat hosting options out there. PHP rules, and Wordpress is built using PHP so I have been teaching myself that language in case I need it in the future.

I've got two issues:

--I haven't settled on a niche.

--I haven't settled on current layout and theme.

Any thoughts from you guys would be sincerely appreciated.

I'm already approved for Adsense but I have yet to add them to the site. I'm still trying to strategize. There's a lot of knowledge and experience here and I thought I'd tap your collective brains.

I've already made one mistake. In one article, I seemed to have praised ebaumsworld when I had no idea he was so controversial and allegedly ripped off other people's content. Lesson learned: don't say too much before researching it, at least somewhat. I was just genuinely impressed with how he made serious money.

Ok...here we go. Let me have it.

It was started around May 22 on wordpress.com but moved to Media Temple on Jun 1.

It's small. It's not much. But it's mine and any suggestions would be welcomed.

Thanks...

www.boojies.com

 

Sorry, I have no suggestions.
I would like to say that I enjoyed reading the stories on your blog... is it unique?

 

content is good and interesting... i liked that adsense post of "Blast from the past: $10,000 from Adsense in One Day"

placement: ur right slider goes down and does not stay on...do something about it

Navigation is easy...but design template didnt impress me... srry !

 

Thanks. About the slider...I'm not sure what you mean or what you're seeing. I simply used a Wordpress theme and haven't done any customizations. I don't notice anything weird on Firefox or IE7.

I'll let the gf know that you didn't like the template she likes.

 

cool site...wide scraper at the right side link unit at the top and a ha,f banner or a banner between posts...


goodluck...

 

I'm using IE6. The first thing I would like to ask you about is what is up with the button dig this story? Some times it appears with a blue bar across the content, and sometimes it doesn't appear at all. I have yet to see it actually above the articles where I think you meant to have them placed. If it is suppose to be a slider bar, then it is not working correctly.

The other thing I noticed is if I'm at full screen, the content is beside the links with the headers pages and recent posts. If I narrow the screen any, the context goes below all of those links. My screen settings are 1024 x 768.

the last thing I notices is that no matter if my screen is at full setting or not, the archives and catagories links are below all the content. If I have a full screen, then it is on the bottom left in the blue bar below the content. If not at the full screen, it just goes below the content.

 

Thanks srac,

You touched on something I wasn't even thinking about. I mostly use a laptop at home with a resolution of 1920x1200. At work, I have 20 inch monitors with 1400x1050 (I think) and since I was using a Wordpress theme built by someone else, I didn't even think about the issue of resolution. I thought the theme would take care of it, but when I noticed your comment, I decided to downgrade to 1024x768 on the laptop to try and see what you are seeing and it was bad. As a software developer, you'ld think I would know better, but I let this slip by.

I use either IE7 or Firefox so I can't truly see what you're seeing on IE6, but I'll take your word for it. Pretty high on my agenda is switching to a different theme and shrinking the images to make sure that at least 1024x768 is covered. I think that's the lowest resolution I'll worry about since I realize it's still pretty common.

I don't see the Digg button problem, but I'll address that too in a different way by moving it to a new location and/or changing the image used.

This is all great feedback. I sincerely appreciate it. I'll work on it.

 

You're welcome. Just realize that when it really looked bad for me was when I reduced the size of the page from the full screen by using the arrows on the edges of the browser width wise. Who knows how many others are doing that with IE6. I do this so I can have multiple pages up, and switch between pages easier. I can set my settings higher, but the text and images get a little small for me. I rather not strain my eyes. They are bad enough. I have a very bad stigmatism, and can not wear contacts because of it.

I suspect with firefox and IE7, which my husband has, they have tabs you can switch from page to page at the top. I don't see people reducing the page size any, unless they perfer having only browser 3/4 ths of the screen, or possibly smaller especially on pages the words span almost the entire screen.

BOL