My Tutorial Blog

Zenax

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Hey,

The website is nice clean and simple. I have however come across this theme before ... But I am a big fan of it, simply because it is nice and clean + simple!

As for the content of the website, I think a tutorial blog is a great idea. As long as all the content is all custom to you and you write the tutorials, then I don't see a problem with the website. There are all too many tutorial sites that just copy off each other and you just find the same content over and over again just on different websites.

The skip to content link at the top of the website is a bit pointless in my oppinion. All it does is just point to the content which is just a little scroll down lol!

Apart from that the website is nice ... and basically wicked!!

Peace!
 

bhupendra2895

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Its theme is quite heavy, but very nice. Content is good too_Only drawback is that it redirects to another domain (From .tk to .co.cc .).
 

dnis_mp

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Hey,

The website is nice clean and simple. I have however come across this theme before ... But I am a big fan of it, simply because it is nice and clean + simple!

As for the content of the website, I think a tutorial blog is a great idea. As long as all the content is all custom to you and you write the tutorials, then I don't see a problem with the website. There are all too many tutorial sites that just copy off each other and you just find the same content over and over again just on different websites.

The skip to content link at the top of the website is a bit pointless in my oppinion. All it does is just point to the content which is just a little scroll down lol!

Apart from that the website is nice ... and basically wicked!!

Peace!

Hi! Thanks for the very constructive comments. Well, yeah, I haven't really gotten to customizing my theme yet. I've yet to remove the unnecessary features :D :D..Yeah, that's what I've noticed about tutorial sites nowadays. So, what I'm trying to do is create tutorials on things that they seem to miss, just to make my tutorials a bit different.

Thanks again very much!

---------- Post added at 04:53 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:51 AM ----------

Its theme is quite heavy, but very nice. Content is good too_Only drawback is that it redirects to another domain (From .tk to .co.cc .).

Sorry about that, lol. My main website is actually co.cc. I just created a tk domain to point it directly to my blog pages. If you visit the main domain (http://denniserodriguez.co.cc), it contains information about me, and a few links and resources. I just wanted a direct link to my blog which is easier to remember.
 
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alixain

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Very Nice Keep it up! And Also remove that re direct pages!!!
 
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farscapeone

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There's one major design problem with your theme. You articles are not visually separated. Although article titles are bold and have bigger font size (in this case) that's not enough to make them "stand out" from the rest of the content, and article titles have to stand out. Try using another color (different from the rest of the content with as much contrast as possible). You can achieve contrast in many ways (hue, saturation, size, font width and even typeface) but you have to choose the best one. If you don't know what's the best thing to do juts experiment ;)

There's not enough space between articles making it hard to understand what is what. To separate two articles you can use numerous techniques one of witch is to add more space between them.

As for the content, I don't believe in "tutorials about anything". Every subject you can think of can be enough to make a tutorial site about it. "All in one" tutorial site means there's a small amount of tutorials per subject and that's not good. When people are searching for tutorials they are interested in one specific subject. When they stumble upon the site with only few article that interest them they won't sick around to long. You have to offer them a lot of tutorials in one topic if you want them to stay witch leads us to why I don't believe in "tutorials about anything". You just can't make enough goods tutorials about "anything". Just my opinion.
 

dnis_mp

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There's one major design problem with your theme. You articles are not visually separated. Although article titles are bold and have bigger font size (in this case) that's not enough to make them "stand out" from the rest of the content, and article titles have to stand out. Try using another color (different from the rest of the content with as much contrast as possible). You can achieve contrast in many ways (hue, saturation, size, font width and even typeface) but you have to choose the best one. If you don't know what's the best thing to do juts experiment ;)

There's not enough space between articles making it hard to understand what is what. To separate two articles you can use numerous techniques one of witch is to add more space between them.

As for the content, I don't believe in "tutorials about anything". Every subject you can think of can be enough to make a tutorial site about it. "All in one" tutorial site means there's a small amount of tutorials per subject and that's not good. When people are searching for tutorials they are interested in one specific subject. When they stumble upon the site with only few article that interest them they won't sick around to long. You have to offer them a lot of tutorials in one topic if you want them to stay witch leads us to why I don't believe in "tutorials about anything". You just can't make enough goods tutorials about "anything". Just my opinion.

geee..thanks a lot! I really appreciate it..

yeah, i've been really having problems with the article separation. I was really waiting for someone to notice it, since I thought it was just me. I'll try and fix that up. Also, great point about the title. I'll change it then. Also, I've been doing some changes to the CSS to make the layout better.

Really, thanks a lot! I appreciate it :biggrin::biggrin:
 

farscapeone

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I see you changed titles and I have to say they are looking much better now but I found another design problem and it's about consistency. You see, consistency is one of the main rules of web design and probably the most important one. Design relies on visual perception and if it's not consistent viewers can easily get confused. If you want to confuse your visitors then it's OK, otherwise you should stick to consistency as much as you can.

In this case I'm talking about links. Links are, by function and meaning, different then regular text, right? The purpose of design is to make that differences visible. If you have white font color for regular content and the same color without any other effect (link underline or whatever) for your links how do you expect your visitors to know what is a link and what is not? You can't. That's why you have to visually separate links from regular text content, just like you have to visually separate all the things on your website that have separate function or meaning (like navigation, footer, ...).

Let's look at your website now. You have about four different link styles:
1) Article title (witch is also a link) is orange with blue hover effect
2) Links inside articles and "(continue reading…)" link are white and underlined with orange and underlined hover effect
3) RSS link on the right is orange underlined with blue and underlined hover effect
4) Links in "Recent Posts" and "Browse by tags" areas are white (the same as your regular text!) with blue and underlined hover effect

What about consistency? You have to decide what style and effect you want to use for links and stick to! Visitors have to understand your design in first few second of looking at it or they'll become confused and, most likely, leave. That's what design is all about. Making people understand what you are presenting to them.

I hope I was not too boring with this "lecture" about design :) I just hope you'll learn something form it.

One more thing though, I noticed that you have two different rating systems witch is completely unnecessary. Actually the entire article bottom area is a bit chaotic. Sharing link section is indent, below it (without any "breathing space") are two different rating systems where the first one have two lines (star icons and rating statistics) and second one in a single line (both thumb icons and rating statistics in the same line). Do I hear consistency? Below all of that you have well designed "Leave a Comment", tags and "more..." buttons. Try sorting out this mess a little bit. It gets even worse when it gets bigger then the actual article text. Just look at the article "Free Photoshop Spherical Fractal Brushes" (the first one right know). It has barely four lines of text and five lines of footer plus a line of buttons. Content is more important then article footer and you have to design it that way.

P.S. And don't make your visitors scroll for the search box ;)
 
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dnis_mp

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I see you changed titles and I have to say they are looking much better now but I found another design problem and it's about consistency. You see, consistency is one of the main rules of web design and probably the most important one. Design relies on visual perception and if it's not consistent viewers can easily get confused. If you want to confuse your visitors then it's OK, otherwise you should stick to consistency as much as you can.

In this case I'm talking about links. Links are, by function and meaning, different then regular text, right? The purpose of design is to make that differences visible. If you have white font color for regular content and the same color without any other effect (link underline or whatever) for your links how do you expect your visitors to know what is a link and what is not? You can't. That's why you have to visually separate links from regular text content, just like you have to visually separate all the things on your website that have separate function or meaning (like navigation, footer, ...).

Let's look at your website now. You have about four different link styles:
1) Article title (witch is also a link) is orange with blue hover effect
2) Links inside articles and "(continue reading…)" link are white and underlined with orange and underlined hover effect
3) RSS link on the right is orange underlined with blue and underlined hover effect
4) Links in "Recent Posts" and "Browse by tags" areas are white (the same as your regular text!) with blue and underlined hover effect

What about consistency? You have to decide what style and effect you want to use for links and stick to! Visitors have to understand your design in first few second of looking at it or they'll become confused and, most likely, leave. That's what design is all about. Making people understand what you are presenting to them.

I hope I was not too boring with this "lecture" about design :) I just hope you'll learn something form it.

One more thing though, I noticed that you have two different rating systems witch is completely unnecessary. Actually the entire article bottom area is a bit chaotic. Sharing link section is indent, below it (without any "breathing space") are two different rating systems where the first one have two lines (star icons and rating statistics) and second one in a single line (both thumb icons and rating statistics in the same line). Do I hear consistency? Below all of that you have well designed "Leave a Comment", tags and "more..." buttons. Try sorting out this mess a little bit. It gets even worse when it gets bigger then the actual article text. Just look at the article "Free Photoshop Spherical Fractal Brushes" (the first one right know). It has barely four lines of text and five lines of footer plus a line of buttons. Content is more important then article footer and you have to design it that way.

P.S. And don't make your visitors scroll for the search box ;)

This is really great 'cause you see the same problems I see. We may have the same wavelength, just that you're better at this than me, obviously. lol. Yeah, I've been trying to sort out the CSS on my site these days. It's my first time using Wordpress btw, so much to learn. :D

Maybe I should remove the "Thumbs up thingy." Again, thanks for all the constructive comments!
 
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