So at the end of the year my semi regular blogging turned into little to no blogging at all. Part of the reason I have determined was while my last wordpress theme was kind of nice, it lack some things. First off, it was slow to load. But that’s the chance you take with free themes on the internet, bloated slow coding. Second it wasn’t really conducive to photography. The main content area of the site just wasn’t large enough. So now that the new year has started I have been making some sort of self evaluations of what I want to do this year with my photography, one of them is to utilize this powerful tool that is a blog.
After talking with my friend Brian he pointed me to the new theme templates that he is using. It’s a company called ProPhoto Blogs and they specialize in creating a wordpress theme template specifically designed for photographers. What makes this theme amazing is once you install it, there is no need to go and edit the code behind it. It’s all menu driven from within your wordpress back end. There is tons of help written right into it, and an amazing online support page with video tutorials of how just about everything works. Its may seem a bit pricey at $199, but I think in the long run its going to make for a more successful experience. It sure beats doing all the coding on your own, or paying three to four thousand dollars for a completely custom blog.
That being said. I would love your feedback on what I have done so far. If any on you have visited the blog of The Big Picture that Boston.com does, I started with a similar minimalist all white theme, and then I went nuts from there, making it look more like my website with the color palette, but at the same time breathing a little life into it with the background and content from textures that I created. I am still having mixed feelings on this particular background image and how with plays with the background of the individual post backgrounds, part of me likes it part of me thinks they are fighting with one another because they are similar in texture and pattern. As you can see from my post background I have tried to make it look like a old school contact sheet.
This year I am going to try to post a lot more individual photos, some tricks I have learned over the last few years, reviews of my gear etc. Let me know what you think, it may not seem like it at times but I actually do value peoples honest opinions. I’d rather have someone tell me it stinks and have a valid reason behind the statement, then just an oh this looks amazing great job. So leave me a comment let me know your thoughts.
Jeff
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jtamagini - Right now the Archive lives in the footer of the blog. There is no plans for a sidebar, there is a categories drop down on the mail menu bar that you will be able to navigate to different topics
John Tammaro - Looks good. I guess you fixed the background already so based on that I find it easy to read. I like the design it gives your blog some punch over the normal white background.
Any plans on a side column linking specific posts or an archive. That may be helpful going forward especially if your blog is going to have various topics like reviews, tips, etc.
jtamagini - Thanks Chris I updated the post area background and lightened up the distressed areas, much better now!
Chris - Jeff, a couple of points of constructive criticism:
1. You nailed it when you speculated if your posts’ background image was fighting with the site’s main background. It is cluttering up the posts.
2. I would decrease the width of the div that contains the text in the posts (I’m assuming that is how it is laid out. I haven’t looked at Firebug). Having a narrower text container allowed easier readability. There’s a reason magazines and newspapers work in narrow columns.