January 14 2008: Review: Rinato
Please note that I am writing this as a guest reviewer for Rhiannon as she has an insane number of people waiting for a review. Help a girl out!
Reviewing: Melinda of Rinato
First Impressions
Now, this is a huge improvement over the default WordPress theme you had before! I love the colours you’ve chosen for this theme, and the little aesthetic details you’ve placed around the theme as well, to dress it up a bit. Aesthetically, your site is beautiful. From a functionality point of view however, the font size leaves a lot to be desired. Call me Ms. Semi-Blind, but the tiny font really does detract from what would otherwise be a lovely layout. But fret not! This can be easily rectified with some simple twiddling of your stylesheet.
As for your content, there’s not much to speak of as Rinato is primarily a blog. That’s cool with me, as my own site is exactly the same. However, it does mean that I will be examining the few pages there are with a magnifying glass, pointing out each illogical thought progression, each spelling and grammatical error, each irregular turn of phrase. You have been warned!
In fact, when I think about it, this review will most likely be largely positive. I’m predispositioned to liking you - I love finding fellow Melbournians, especially if they link to me! So, like I’ve said many times before to other reviewees, it’ll be the small niggly details that I’ll pick up on - the kind of detail that will turn a site from a B to a B+, from a B+ to an A.
Layout
There’s a number of small awry details with the theme that need to be corrected, or, bettered. A quick list of them, so that I have a guide to follow while writing this section of the review!:
- Miniscule font size
- Visual imbalance of main navigation on hover
- Sidebar link padding/margin
- Distinguish links (on hover as well)
- Distinguish blog meta information
- Right-alignment of certain text elements
- Title attributes on links
Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to convince you into tripling your font size to something outlandishly large - merely into enlarging it to a more readable size. First things first - you need to move away from using px values to size your font, to the more browser-friendly ems and percentages. From there, I generally recommend a minimum of 76% font sizing, but you could probably get away with 72% or 73%. That would give you text that’s larger than your current font size, but which isn’t outlandishly large, yet still readable. Best of both worlds! (Oh, and just a note - you can use percentages to size other elements like line height, widths, etc.)
Okay, the following two points refer to the screencap above. Firstly, the imbalance of padding of the navigation upon hovering over it is…jolting. Increase the padding on the top or decrease the padding on the bottom - take your pick. Or, alternatively, instead of get rid of the grey background on hover, and use an image background instead. Take that swirly brush you’re using for your header, and use a smaller version as an ‘underline’ to the navigational links. As usual though…take your pick! Just try something, anything, that corrects the current problem.
Secondly when it comes to that screencap, you need to decrease the amount of padding that’s currently between your header and the beginning of your content. You can easily take off 20px, 30px, even 40px or 50px off the margin-top of your sidebar and content divs, and still have sufficient space between the header and the two divs. The large amount of space there currently is simply makes the layout too ‘divided’, almost as there’s two different layouts, rather than the one united layout.
Okay, the margin/padding of the sidebar links. Like the navigational links, there’s an imbalance in the top and bottom padding. Try this:
#sidebar li a {
display: block;
margin: 0 0 2px -35px;
padding: 0 0 0 7px;
}
Add the font and colour styling to suit, but the margin and padding of the styling above will make the links properly ‘balanced’.
Now, the problem with your links, and the way they’re displayed. To someone with Tritanope colour vision, your links are virtually indistinguishable from regular text. Obviously…this is a problem. The general rule of thumb for making sure that links are properly distinguished from the regular text, is by use of two of the following four options: using another colour, bolding, underlining, or italicising. I’ve found that using another colour and bolding, with an underline upon hover works best for myself, but of course, you can come up with your own combination.
Blog meta information! The “Date Posted”, the “Filed Under”, the “# of Comments” needs to be better displayed, to its best potential. I seem to say this every time, in every single review I write, so I’ll just copy and paste it:
the blog entry meta information needs more ‘effects’ in order to distinguish it better from the content/normal font. The “Date by Author” text, and “Posted in Category | Comments” text needs to look different from the regular text. I’ve been reading a book on blogging by Jonathan Yang (The Rough Guide To Blogging), and it actually suggests that the date and time of a blog entry should be displayed just as prominently (or even more so) then that of the post title. The theory is that new visitors to blogs look immediately for the ‘last updated’ date of the site - and by displaying the last entry date prominently, you’re reassuring them that, yes, you do update frequently, and yes, they really should stick around and keep visiting to read new things you have to say.
The theory makes sense to me, which is why I’ve personally changed my post titles to “Date of Entry: Post Title”. There are other combinations of course that you could look into: “Post Title (on Date Of Entry)”, etc. It leaves only the “Posted in Category | Comments” text to be altered in some way. You could make it smaller, make it larger, use a border, add a background, use a different font, centre it…in large, just do something that differentiates it from regular text.
Yes? Make sense? Good. Below’s one option of what your blog entry meta information could look like:
But again, that’s just one option. There’s a million and one other options open to you, all that you need to do is experiment!
Right-alignment of text (e.g. your blog titles and comments) is generally not recommended for web-based designs, for reasons of usability and readability. This article explains it further, but generally speaking, it’s a bad bad idea. BAD. Terrible for usability. Left-justified text really is the better option. (Oh, and by the way, you should note that under the contact form, your link to your comment policy is broken!)
Proper title attributes in links are my best friend. You my dear, are currently not being a very good friend. Title attributes in links provide visitors with a ‘highlight’ of where the link will take them, thus informing their choices that little bit further. Tooltips are an excellent thing. To take a current example from your site: <a href=http://eorlingas.org/ target=blank>DeeDee</a> would become <a href="http://eorlingas.org/" title="External Link: DeeDee of Eorlingas, a Lord of the Rings network">DeeDee</a> (target="blank" is visitor-unfriendly!). Fairly easy, n’est-ce pas?
You’ve certainly been very creative with your coding. Two differing doctypes and two separate <html> tags? You need to make up your mind which doctype to code to, whether it be HTML or XHTML. I’d suggest XHTML, if only because WordPress naturally outputs its code as XHTML. Jem has a fantastic guide here on how to code correctly in XHTML - and in fact, Tutorialtastic is fantastic for all tutorials that would really improve your coding. Trust me when I say this (and I’m not being purposely nasty!), but you really need to work on it!
That’s about it (well, not really, but you’re smart and can do more research into bringing your coding up to scratch yourself), so moving onto content…
Content
I must admit, the lack of a short introduction to your site throws me off a bit. Putting a question to you - if you were a first-time visitor to Rinato, what would you think your site was about? Your current blog entry (at the time of writing this review) relates to actress Katharine Moennig - would that fool someone into thinking yours was a fansite? While the category and blogroll links on the sidebar help to establish Rinato as a blog, I think it’s important for there to be a short introduction to the site on the index page - whether it be a single sentence on the top of the sidebar, or a small introduction on the index page is up to you. Something simple:
Welcome to Rinato, Melinda’s blog about XYZ.
would be more than sufficient.
As there isn’t much more to say about the structure of your blog/index page (I covered it in Layout), I’ll move straight onto the first of your few static pages…where I’m promptly confused. I presume there’s a reason why you still have the unnecessary meta information (Filed Under…, Posted on, Comments) on your pages? Does that reason begin with lazi, and end with ness? You need to edit the page.php of your theme files in your WordPress directory, to remove all the coding that’s creating that meta information to be displayed. An example of my own page.php:
<?php get_header();?>
<?php if ($posts) {
foreach($posts as $post)
{
start_wp();
?>
<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<?php the_content('Continue Reading'); ?>
<?php wp_link_pages(); ?>
<?php $sub_pages = wp_list_pages( 'sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li=&echo=0&child_of=' . $id );?>
<?php
}} // end if (posts)
else{echo '<p>Sorry, No Posts matched your criteria.</p>';}?>
<?php get_footer();?>
Feel free to edit it to your own needs.
About Me. Is the first disclaimatory paragraph really required? The fact that you’re painting yourself as a bogan (”youuuuuuse”) and putting yourself down by saying that this page is terrible is hardly going to encourage visitors to continue reading the rest of the page. You need to start off by convincing us that you’re the most fascinating and interesting person in the world, and that paragraph doesn’t do that. I’d delete it, and just jump straight into the juicy details.
As for your list of “quick facts”, I’d actually get rid of your “favourites” (place them on your “Miscellaneous” page) as your favourite songs, bands, movies, etc, aren’t as crucial to the concept of Melinda as other things. As for the birthday/age facts that you’ve listed, I’d actually recommend removing your age. It’s evident from the birthdate that you’ve provided, so there’s really no need to list it as well…and needless to say, there’s no need for the two paragraphs you dedicate to disclaiming any stereotypes that may come with your age. If you want to distance yourself from the typical teenage stereotype, then you can do so via the way you speak/write and present yourself on Rinato. It’s all about showing your maturity, not simply telling people about it!
Under “More Stuff”, the general tone of the piece is very conversational and informal. Again, you denigrate your own abilities (“I’m really bad at describing myself”, “I can’t think of anything interesting to write about me”)…so this is me boosting up your self-esteem: MELINDA, GIVE YOURSELF MORE CREDIT! Alright? Alright.
You also waffle on a bit in these few paragraphs, using phrases like “er…what else…”, which are fine when you’re talking to someone face-to-face, but which simply serves to make you look like an indecisive airhead when actually written down. Try something like this on for size:
I have a state of mind that I like to call the ‘hippie complex’: I’m all about peace, love and harmony, even when it’s become outrageously out of fashion. I’m enthusiastic about being At Peace With One Another; as far as I’m concerned, only good things can come out of this! I’m pretty optimistic as well, but like everyone else I have my melancholic moments. Along the same lines, I’m pretty joke-y, and not great at taking things seriously.
I’m an animal-lover. When I was younger, I wanted to be a veterinarian so I could look after cute animals: I even had a time when I was vegetarian so I could avoid eating my future patients! My goal now is to be a forensic psychologist, but I still love all animals (except for cats!). My favourites though, are chickens, dogs, giraffes, llamas and sheep. I once wanted to live in New Zealand just so I could look at, paint and take pictures of sheep…all the time.
Some words that others have used to describe me and my personality: musical, passive aggressive, philosophical, mellow, artistic, quiet, optimistic, liberal, curious, paranoid, accepting, secretive, persistent, imaginative.
As you could probably tell from reading this, I have a bad habit of using Too! Many! Exclamation! Marks! It’s a quirky flaw.
It’s almost exactly the same sort of sentences you already have, simply put together in a more logical manner, and excluding all the waffling. Obviously this is only an example, you can re-edit to your own liking! Note how I’ve right-aligned the dog image to your paragraph about loving animals - it works a bit better doesn’t it?
Miscellaneous. Again, your introductory sentence to the “Random Facts” really isn’t needed. What is needed however, is a sub-heading of “Random Facts” under the larger umbrella heading of “Miscellaneous”. As for the facts themselves, there’s just two things that I think need altering:
- is known for it’s crazy weather = is known for its crazy weather
- a habit of over analysing the heck out of them = a habit of over-analysing them
Again, it’s just a phrasing thing. You know, that whole not being obviously a teenager thing.
There’s really not much to fault with the few paragraphs you have on your music taste. In fact, they’re just about perfect - this is the type of ‘tight’ and structured writing you need to implement throughout your blog. By the way, did you manage to see Sufjan when he came to Melbourne last week? I’d been bidding on some of his tickets on eBay (I wouldn’t buy them at full price, but if I manage to get them cheap…), but didn’t have any luck.
And a last note for this page - you need to change your Last.fm displayed tracks! The white and light blue really clashes with your current layout.
About Rinato. Short and sweet. Really the only thing I can fault with this is your need to explain the term “blog” with two following clauses. The word “blog” in itself is fairly self-explanatory these days. Wikipedia states that the first “How To Blog” manuals started being published in 2001. By 2004, many political candidates had their own blogs. All major news outlets now have online blogs that are regularly updated. There are books based on blogs. The word has been added to the dictionary.
Basically, I’m saying you don’t need to explain what a blog is! Have I convinced you?
Exits. It amuses me that you have three sections to this page - Websites, Other, and Blogroll. After all, can’t all the links on this page be defined as websites? And if they’re all websites, how could they be “Other”? I’d merge the first two sections into the one section, entitled “Network” or something similar, as they’re all websites/profiles belonging to yourself.
But really, that’s all for your content!
Final Comments
I like Rinato, I truly do. You were added to my feedreader weeks ago, and I do read every entry, though I may not always comment. It shows at least, that you’re doing something right with your blog entries, so keep up the regular blogging! You need to however, fix up your static pages so that they’re more structured and organised - something that still preserves the train-of-thought way you have of writing, but which is still logical enough to be easily understood by those who don’t know you.
But really, what did I pick on in this review? Font size, small niggly detail with the navigation? Small glitches in the coding? Nothing truly significant that would drive visitors away. However conversely, it’s something significant that’s preventing Rinato from reaching its full potential. Fix those small errors, and you’re on the home stretch, going for gold. Go for it!
Filed under Reviews
Melinda said:
Thanks a lot for the review! (I’m book marking it so I can work on the things you pointed out one by one)
Heh, I didn’t realise ‘youse’ was a bogan word! But… I do sometimes pronounce it like that nonetheless.
I’ve got to admit, I have the awful habit of not being very concerned about coding: It’s more about how it looks in varying resolutions/browsers, tweaking things here and there and not stopping to see if my coding is as offensive Britney Spears on a bad day. If anything, this made me much more aware of how important that is! So thanks :D.
Was actually a little nervous about reading this, as I thought there would be an infinite amount of errors that I haven’t seen. But I’m glad the review was mostly positive! Thanks again :).
Reply: No problem! I hope you manage to get enough out of it. :)
on Jan 14 2008 #
Rinato said:
[...] yeah, and my blogs review has finished! Amanda wrote it and you can find it here. (It links to many useful articles that are worth checking out)Filed under Art, [...]
on Jan 15 2008 #