Discussions

Layout

Posted by bradhart • 10/23/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: blog design, layout, media rich, wordpress

As a follow up to my earlier discussion can I get some thoughts on general layout. This blog is media intensive and not for dial-up users.

The big questions I have
How quickly does the frontpage load for you?
How easy is the navigation?
theotherblog.net/

On the blog page how do you feel about the image thumbnail and is this enough text to get you interested in the story.
theotherblog.net/blog/

(I am working on the blog sidebar at the moment so that is a known issue)

User Comments

10/23/08

dosox

My phone it takes a minute to load up.

I'll let ya know.. The other things later.

[reply]
10/23/08

gmoney

takes no time at all, maybe a second or so

[reply]
1. 10/23/08
  
  bradhart
  
  that is good to hear. What is your connection speed?
10/23/08

pumpkinlights

Haha, not for dial up users. I appreciate the warning.

[reply]
1. 10/23/08
  
  bradhart
  
  More and more sites are going to be this way. By the end of the decade 97% of the country will have access to DSL or Cable and by 2012 they hope it will be anyone with a phone line.
  
  98.9% of my visitors even before I went media rich are on high speed so there is no reason not to design with them in mind at least for the front page.
2. 10/23/08
  
  pumpkinlights
  
  Oh, I wasn't saying not to design for them. I was just saying thanks for the warning.
10/23/08

SailboaterRob

Hi Brad,

I am sitting in a sailboat using WIFI. It is raining at the moment. It took 2 mins 5 secs to load. But I get a done with error message.

This displays at the top of the page - <![endif]-->

And the Caution sign with the "Done, but with errors on the page" in the lower left corner.

The upper banner is displayed over the hyperlinks above the photos.

Edit: I had to do the code with HTML special characters... Had to jog my memory there.

[reply]
1. 10/23/08
  
  bradhart
  
  alright there seems to be an internet explorer issue thanks.
10/23/08

pointlessbanter

It was very slow to load on mine... Firefox Browers... Max OSX

Cable connection

[reply]
10/23/08

AngieSS

Took a really long time on mine as well--Firefox. And the first thing I was blasted with was one of those blinky "go crazy" advertisements. It made me just jump right back off. From what I did see, looked like an interesting layout.

[reply]
1. 10/23/08
  
  bradhart
  
  you shouldn't be getting that on the home page, thanks for letting me know.
10/23/08

Xight

It took like 20 seconds or more to load. If i were stumbling the site I would have thumbed it down as broken.

[reply]
10/23/08

bradhart

Thanks everyone for looking at this. i just did a fresh install of wordpress on a new db and the problems with internet explorer seem to be fixed with the install of wp 2.6.3 I would appreciate it if anyone with something other than IE 8 and FF 3 on their computer could take a look though.

[reply]
1. 10/23/08
  
  SailboaterRob
  
  Hi Brad,
  
  I just clicked on the above link for your page. I am running IE7.
  
  The page initially loaded in just a few seconds. All the photos took about 50 secs to load 100%. No errors noted. I am using long distance WIFI.
  
  Rob
2. 10/24/08
  
  bradhart
  
  Thanks. I need to speed up how quickly the slide show loads but that is more of a plugin issue than the size of the images it loads.