How’s my new blog template?

It’s up!  What do you think?

I especially like the sidebar layout, with the featured item on top and the double sidebars below.  I think I’m going to put all my promotional stuff (books, social networks) on the right sidebar, with all the blog stuff (tags, archives, recent comments, blogroll, etc) on the left.

I’m not so sure about the Current Projects bar, though.  Does it look good on the left, or should I put it on the right, above my books?  I don’t want the sidebar to look too busy, but at the same time I don’t want to push my books too far down from the top.

I made a few tweaks to the color scheme, though there will probably be a few more kinks to work out in that area.  The black text on white is a radical departure from the previous template, which is going to take a while for me to get used to.  However, now that my blogging goals have shifted from personal to more professional, I think it’s a move in the right direction.

Things I’d like to change but don’t know how:

  • The blog header font.  I’d like to go back to Courier New small caps, like the old one.  Every time I try to tweak the CSS stylesheet, though, nothing I do seems to work.
  • Font size for pages and categories (pages are above the blog header, categories are below). Jerle pointed out that they could be larger, and I agree with him.
  • Background color for the child category pages.  They blend in too much with the current shade of gray.
  • The favicon.  I don’t want the generic WordPress logo, I want to make something unique to this site (like the eye).

That’s about all I can think of right now, but I’m definitely open to any of your suggestions.  My goal is to turn this blog into a home site for my writing career, where readers can connect with me and easily find my stuff.

Also, if you have any cool ideas for my Error! 404 page, please let me know.  Those are always fun.

By Joe Vasicek

Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.

5 comments

  1. The black on white is a lot easier on the eyes! Thanks for that!

    I would put a san-serif font as the title and serif in the body text, just for easier reading.

    I like the change in the header–the meld into the stars is cool.

    I’d be interested in seeing how having one sidebar on either side of the text would look instead of the two together on the right, but it works as is.

  2. Overall I like it, but I feel there’s a bit too much crammed in here. I kind of feel like the background color on the right side of the page ought to just be the background color for the left side as well.
    Perhaps the white bg feels jarring next to the dark picture of space behind it.

    I might agree with Charlie on trying out one column on each side.
    I’d also like the top of the page to meld together with the starry background. The banner being half Arabic design dealie and half stars is also a bit odd to me. Everything’s so busy, I guess is the main feeling I’m getting.

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