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I have currently revived my blog, and redesigned it... the system is wordpress, if you could be so kind as to give some feedback on the look or on my writing style, or ping some of my newest articles... I'd appreciate it a lot...

The design is purposely built for highlighting the content and whatnots. I'll be more active in updating it now since my priorities and schedules have now looked up, so don't forget to visit regularly. Oh and if you have some cool articles, or cool sites that needs some review or exposure posts, I would gladly repost it on my blog or write about it... Thanks!

http://www.demonhale.com/blog/

The design is very nice, only comment I can make is that on wider screens you can see past the background pattern the color of the background
E0E0E0 and it looks a little weird

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Thanks for the reply, can I ask what browser and resolution you are using so I can check? it would be helpful if you could also provide a screenshot if it isn't much of a trouble, since I used a tiled background via css and the bg color shouldn't have shown...

Attached one screenshot 1680*1024 FF2

Overall nice look some suggestions

Drop Caps
Its great to see people using drop caps but your method is not very efficient or accessible (particularly using logo design for the alt attribute
http://ventureskills.wordpress.com/2007/05/18/5-css-fonts-typography-tips/
Have a look through some of the articles but in particular the drop cap example.

Headings
Story titles should be H2 not H3 to be semantically correct

CSS
Keep it clean and simple but also make sure its in external style sheets mixing and matching where your CSS is will turn into a nightmare when you want to upgrade the theme in a few years time.

Clean URL (permalinks) Wordpress calls it perma links but clean URLs are great both for you and search engines its easy to set so your rather then ?p=12 your posts URL become /dd/mm/yyyy/mytitle

I like your little bits such as resizing tool again I think you would be better off using a slightly more accessible technique to keep the overall layout (so your drop cap resizes as well)
http://ventureskills.wordpress.com/2007/05/05/5-accessible-and-pretty-css-tips/
(Its the third one down though all the ones on that page would be useful)

I do like this site though a final small point the lime green in the left hand column doesn't fit with the rest of the theme

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is the URL secret? (or maybe I'm blind)

http://www.demonhale.com/blog/
I added it to his original post before and it vanished

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small suggestion:

a list of the last x comments on your threads, this is good for SEO if the comment was on some old thread and is also useful for visitors.

in the same way place a list with x last blogs on the sub pages.

Tell me if you need the WP code for the sidebar (check my weblog for an example)

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small suggestion:

a list of the last x comments on your threads, this is good for SEO if the comment was on some old thread and is also useful for visitors.

in the same way place a list with x last blogs on the sub pages.

Tell me if you need the WP code for the sidebar (check my weblog for an example)

Thanks for the tips, if you can share the WP code, then I'd definitely try it out on my blog... however I cant seem to understand the x last blogs thing...

[I hope I fixed this one, can you check again please?]

Attached one screenshot 1680*1024 FF2

I hope I fixed this one, can you check again please?

Overall nice look some suggestions

Drop Caps
Its great to see people using drop caps but your method is not very efficient or accessible (particularly using logo design for the alt attribute
http://ventureskills.wordpress.com/2007/05/18/5-css-fonts-typography-tips/
Have a look through some of the articles but in particular the drop cap example.

I do agree here, I forgot to change the alt tags to be just letters, I do agree on the method posted on your site I did something like that for this blog before but I was thinking of a more unique font, maybe I'll try the drop cap css method on my next update

Headings
Story titles should be H2 not H3 to be semantically correct
[/h2]

Yep, I'll change properties on markup soon, just updating more pressing issues first

CSS
Keep it clean and simple but also make sure its in external style sheets mixing and matching where your CSS is will turn into a nightmare when you want to upgrade the theme in a few years time.

I do have individual external css for the main theme

Clean URL (permalinks) Wordpress calls it perma links but clean URLs are great both for you and search engines its easy to set so your rather then ?p=12 your posts URL become /dd/mm/yyyy/mytitle

Noted, i'll get the SE friendly URL's plugin up soon

I like your little bits such as resizing tool again I think you would be better off using a slightly more accessible technique to keep the overall layout (so your drop cap resizes as well)
http://ventureskills.wordpress.com/2007/05/05/5-accessible-and-pretty-css-tips/
(Its the third one down though all the ones on that page would be useful)

I'll re read this one soon, I really like the tips on your blog, but I might get excited and do too much work on my blog rather than schedule and pace myself. Theres no installation instructions on that sample however, so I just saved the whole page and get it from there.

I do like this site though a final small point the lime green in the left hand column doesn't fit with the rest of the theme

I totally Agree, I'm contemplating white and light blue on that area, care to suggest some colours?
Thanks for taking the time, and giving me thorough and comprehensive feedback, thanks for the tips and information, I'll update this thread every update to the blog I made, thanks. Btw I added your blog to my blogroll, I think you're blog is pretty useful. I'll post about your suggestions soon/ Thanks again

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I think this way its much easier to navigate through all the posts by the blog reader, example:
the reader has got your bog page via digg.com for example and get access to the other (new) blogs.

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Designer you need to add this function into functions.php (template folder)

Code:

<?php


/*
Description: Returns a list of the most recent posts.
Created by Sadish for his ShadedGrey Theme
*/

function sg_get_recent_posts($no_posts = 5, $before = '<li>', $after = '</li>', $show_pass_post = false) {
    global $wpdb, $tableposts;
$time_difference = get_settings('gmt_offset');
$now = gmdate("Y-m-d H:i:s",(time()+($time_difference*3600)));
    $request = "SELECT ID, post_title, post_excerpt FROM $tableposts WHERE post_status = 'publish' ";
if(!$show_pass_post) $request .= "AND post_password ='' ";
$request .= "AND post_date < '$now' ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT 0, $no_posts";
    $posts = $wpdb->get_results($request);
$output = '';
    foreach ($posts as $post) {
        $post_title = stripslashes($post->post_title);
        $permalink = get_permalink($post->ID);
        $output .= $before . '<a href="' . $permalink . '" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: ' . $post_title . '">' . $post_title . '</a>';
$output .= $after;
    }
    echo $output;
}
/*
Description: Returns a list of the most recent comments.
Created by Sadish for his ShadedGrey Theme
*/
function sg_get_recent_comments($no_comments = 5, $comment_num_of_words = 4, $before = '<li>', $after = '</li>') 
{
        global $wpdb, $tablecomments, $tableposts;
        
        $request = "SELECT ID, comment_ID, comment_content, comment_author FROM $tableposts, $tablecomments WHERE $tableposts.ID=$tablecomments.comment_post_ID AND post_status = 'publish' ";
        $request .= "AND comment_approved = '1' ORDER BY $tablecomments.comment_date DESC LIMIT $no_comments";
        $comments = $wpdb->get_results($request);
        
        $output = '';
        if($comments) {
        foreach ($comments as $comment) 
        {
                $comment_author = stripslashes($comment->comment_author);
                $comment_content = strip_tags($comment->comment_content);
                $comment_content = stripslashes($comment_content);
                $words=split(" ",$comment_content);
                $comment_excerpt = join(" ",array_slice($words,0,$comment_num_of_words));
                $permalink = get_permalink($comment->ID)."#comment-".$comment->comment_ID;
                $output .= $before . '<strong>' . $comment_author . '</strong>: <a href="' . $permalink;
                $output .= '" title="'.__('Comment by','c4m').' ' . $comment_author.'">' . $comment_excerpt . '...</a>' . $after;
        }
        }
        echo $output;
        //echo '<br/>'."\n";
}

and call the in the sidebar this way:

Code:

<?php sg_get_recent_comments(5);?>

<?php sg_get_recent_posts(5);?>

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I think this way its much easier to navigate through all the posts by the blog reader, example:
the reader has got your bog page via digg.com for example and get access to the other (new) blogs.

Got it, it's now active, Thanks for the codes...
Why dont you put it in as a plugin for WP... or have you already?

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the code belongs to the WP theme I use (the code is not mine)

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I like your blog, and in general I think the rest of the people who replied here talked about the most things you need to change.

The only next thing I mention is the way that you display the dates. I don't really like this box that they appear in. Maybe you should just put them as is without borders.

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Oh and the permanent urls. Maybe you should change them to something like this

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Oh and the permanent urls. Maybe you should change them to something like this

yes absolutely, don't forget to rewrite old URL's if you change the links now

[Update]

Thanks for the Tips and feedback guys... Keep it coming...

Update
- Have the permalink up... there is actually no linkages I have as of yet that needs updating so its all good...


- Date look changed...

- Lime Colour Gone...

- h2 on title tags...

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So any other suggestions? and btw, have a nice day!

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Just Notice one problem today, when I got the permalink thing for WP to work, my feeds returns errors. . Anyone have an idea for a fix?

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Just Notice one problem today, when I got the permalink thing for WP to work, my feeds returns errors. . Anyone have an idea for a fix?

what is the code you have entered in the WP admin panel, what kind of error?

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