Posts Jul 092010
I’ve been on holidays, so I fiddled about with making Suffusion the theme for this blog.
I used the Featured Content option. In the Reading option in Settings, I set the home page to be a page that uses the Magazine template.
Of course, I am wondering whether the home page is a bit overdone. If you have an opinion about any of the questions below, please let me know.
- Do you think the rotating content is a bit too much?
- The refresh rate too fast?
- The blog a little too slow to load now?
- Does it look less friendly and like a place to have a chat?
- Do you notice the RSS feed options and do they take up too much screen real estate?
- Would you prefer the output of a search in the search box to be a list of blog post titles, or the little excerpt boxes as appear on the front page at the moment?
I love the clean look and feel of this design! It’s really stunning.
Regarding the the rotating content: do you have many options about its layout? It would be nice if it were about half as tall (it’s a pretty big block of text/image that goes swimming by). Also, can you tinker with the color and placement of the “[click to read more...]” message at the end of each abbreviated blog post? It seems like this message should jump out at you a bit more. I found the posts going by about 5 seconds too fast for me, as well. Can they be slowed down a tad?
It would be interesting to see what the site looks like without the rotating content and instead just the “Latest Posts” boxes that appear below. Maybe having both elements on the page is too much of a belts and suspenders approach; it would be easier to make an opinion, though, if it were possible to see the site without the rotating section (maybe via a screenshot you could make and share here?)
I didn’t notice the feed options right away. Maybe I’m just too well trained to look for the RSS icon instead. What if you swapped the location of the “Follow Libsmatter on Twitter” option and the feed options? If you did move that Twitter option at the top, you’d need the Twitter icon and the phrase “Follow Libsmatter on Twitter” and could leave out the latest tweet.
I think the search results as just a list of titles is fine for now.
I like the rotating content, although it seems to be moving just a little too fast to be able to read all of the summary information comfortably.
Blog loaded fine for me and although I’m on broadband, its not the fastest around either.
I wouldn’t say less friendly, I would say more professional. However, with the slides, it encourages you to see more than just the most recent blog post, so in that way it could encourage more conversation. Also, as many people get the RSS feed, if they do follow it back to the source, it will take them to the actual post and not to the blog mainpage. So maybe its a different audience that would see this.
Took me a bit to find the RSS options – think I was looking for the RSS logo. So instead of taking up too much space, I would say they are not prominent enough.
I like the excerpt boxes, as titles often aren’t descriptive enough (or at all sometimes).
Overall I like the concept and what you have done with it. Its fresh, new, informative and encourages you to delve further. Nice work!
I like it, however, the rotating content does go by very fast. Also it is too big for my screen I don’t get to see it all at once. Yes I know I should just get a bigger screen but for the time being, that’s what I have. It used to shrink to fit, but now it doesn’t.
By the way, congratulations on getting the job at Curtin, luckily I’m not scheduled to do the units you are running or it could get tricky.
Jenny
Looks great. Love the slide layout below so u can see a range of posts. The rotating content is way too fast. Not any slower. Perhaps I shall play with mine now ….
Congrats on wrangling Suffusion. In spite it’s gentle suggestion to hang in there and not to worry, I’ve given up on using it several times in the past. The fact that you’ve pulled through makes me want to return to all its options, though!
Finally, I like that you’ve chosen to use the magazine-style rotating content, but it may move too quick to effectively capture the user’s attention *and* allow her to click through..
i LOVE it.
Did you already change the rotation? I know I have become a speed reader, but it seems fine to me now.
This is a terrific template. I would like to see it used for a lit site, though I guess if I did that, I’d try to lose the sidebar – can that be done?
Thanks for the feedback. I have changed the speed, shrunk the featured post box and diddled about a bit with the wrapper background. Looks better.
Yes, genevieve, the theme has 6 sidebars (or widget areas) that you can place – on RHS of header, on LHS of header, below header, above footer, RHS, LHS or all of them at once. It’s very flexible with a few limitations that will iron out when it is further developed. I have loved working with it so far.
thanks for that information! I must have a look sometime.