[Theros]

Hey all! Finally finished implementing my blog into wordpress using the design I posted here awhile back. Here it is... The spiffed up and polished version complete with accompaning Wordpress CMS. Whew, the design is the same, however the coding of it was a ***** to be frank. Coding the (x)html/css before converting it to PHP was easy, but inplementing it into wordpress was a pain in the neck and confusing. However I eventually beat all the problems with some help. I've tested everything I think and I've found everything to work, so if you want try to break the page, and add comments, etc....

The one complaint I have is that it can't follow my original design down to the alignment becuase of the different browsers parsing the PHP and CSS differently however I tried to make it close enough for both FF and IE. Finally, I need testing in Safari. I don't want to use browsershots and things like it becuase it never happens, the lines for those services are incredible!

Okay, comments are really appreciated. Thanks guys!

http://blog.thedragonlives.com

[lukasarts]

First thing you want to do- optimise that image in your header. 236k is a bit on the obese side, took a while to pop up on a 512 connection

[Theros]

Are you serious? Its 236K? damn... sorry dial-up... never realized that it was such a large file, yesh I'll compress it down to a gif or something.

[dec0ded]

Yeah, I was going to say as above, it was pretty slow to load. Other than that I like it.

[datahound]

Not a gif for a photo..no no no. Keep to jpg, will look crap as gif.

Much improved on the original, tidy, lost the clashing colours. Nice.

Only thing I would change, but is a personal thing, I wouldn't try to fill the whole page. I would center it or left it and keep down to 800 - 1000 px max.

Maybe give yourself some right margin on the blog article text, is stting up against the scrollbar.

[Theros]

Yeah, I noticed I have a slight problem in IE on that. However with the design I have the two left bars are 400px total... so I'd would have to redesign that whole part. Not to mention that the rock picture would look kinda strange out there alone?

[datahound]

I have to say that when you size the window down the stones pic disappears gracefully up to half its width which is neat. On my big res screen though just looks too much. Don't change it though on my account, see what else is said. Concentrate on content. This is key!!

[Theros]

Yeah, I figured out with display: block; you can set min-width which is cool... However it doesn't stop the breakage from happenening above like 1300x16000 or below 800x600

[stylin328]

Originally Posted by datahound

Not a gif for a photo..no no no. Keep to jpg, will look crap as gif.

I would center it or left it and keep down to 800 - 1000 px max.

I like it alot but would suggest the above. Nice job

[Theros]

Do you guys have any suggestions on how I would keep the page structured? Should I add a border around the whole thing maybe? Or a dropshadow, cuz I can't keep the rocks picture there floating around by itself

[pinksage]

I like that yuou used an original layout. I would say the move it to the left a bit more. Make the colums where bollroll and arcive is a bit smaller.

[datahound]

Just resrict the width of the third (post) column to 500px, then set cols 1 and 2 to 200-250px?

The top does not look oversized I just don't like wide cols of text for reading. Try the above so we can have a look?

[Theros]

are you saying:
1) Use max-width?
2) Fixed width? No More liquid?

For #1 I thought IE doesn't obey max-width...

[Theros]

Also, datahound, the left two columns are 200px each...

[mgpwr]

I like your site - I also have a word press blog / how did you go about getting it to display like you have - I’m having real trouble re-designing my blog / however I have very little php knowledge

Mark

[Theros]

mgpwr, I also have very little of PHP knowledge. The easiest way to do it is first code the normal site in XHTML/CSS then convert it into wordpress theme, by using this method:
http://www.andrewstrojny.com/web-des...-to-wordpress/

Then just fiddle with the Wordpress commands till you get it just right

[Theros]

Datahound,
On my to-do list is to rearrange the content a bit. So I'll address the width issue at the same time.

[Limbo]

Like it for the main part, but I think you need more definition to your grid - It's a tricky thing to do on a liquid site but at the mo everything seems out of kilter.

+ I like verdana as much as the next man but maybe a something different for the the main headers? sIFR or img replacement? I'm guessing you use the cleartype setting - try turning it off to see what it looks like to 'straight out of the box' windows users.

added: love the 'contact me' page - nice transition. Javascript?

[Theros]

Yes, Javascript I decided to add a little pizaz to that part since it was a pesonal site and I wanted to have a bit of fun with it. I'm currently deciding whether and where I should put the two sidebar, on th e right side or keep them on the left.. Actually I didn't know what cleartype was until I just looked it up... How do I turn it off?

[Theros]

Okay, I added several changes to the page

1) I changed the order of the rock picture, it's now on the right and the bio box is on the left
2) The two side columns are now 185px wide each
3) Changed the padding on the left for the text, looks better now
4) Added several fail-safe measures for the page Including
- Anything smaller than the 800x600 threshold the page will stop decreasing and eventually break, nothing I tried will stop that, however it is more graceful then before
-Anything widescreen monitor/resolution bigger then 1600px, the page will now stop increasing. However if this is too big of a stoppage point I might consider lowering it for the 1300pxs.

Any comments on the changes? BTW, It all works in IE also thanks to an obscure code