New Eureka Site Theme!!! Please Leave Feedback


Smart Pixel Design

Last month I ordered a new custom theme for Connected Internet.

I had to fire the first designers as they were rubbish, and I then hired SmartPixelDesign who are doing a much better job.

It’s taking a bit longer than I hoped, and we’re up to the fourth mockup which is starting to look like what I had in my head, and I think is good enough to share with you to see what you think and to get some feedback. I’m really keen to hear what you think whilst we are still designing the theme and can make changes, so if you have anything to say then please leave a comment.

Ok, Here’s the lastest mockup for the new ‘Eureka‘ WordPress Theme:

Connected Internet New Design

We are going to mess around more with the colours, tidy up font sizes and add in the missing sections, when we actually start coding. Here are the things that I think are missing/explanations for why I’ve done certain things:

  1. The fonts throughout the site will be bigger, as the fonts in the current theme are too small
  2. There was a quite nice logo to the left of the site name which my designer removed in this mockup, as he misunderstood what I meant (he’s Russian)
  3. The top navigation needs to be aligned to the left not the right (again communication problem). I also want to make it stand out a bit more - I’ve asked the designer to be creative
  4. I also want the header to take up less space - I think the site name can be smaller. I want the header to be as slim as possible, because I want to keep my fold as high as possible
  5. The ‘Topics’ link in the top navigation will have a drop-down which will list the WordPress categories. I decided to move the key navigation here rather than the traditional long list (read why I think too many blog categories is bad) in the sidebar so that all the key navigation is in one place instead of two
  6. The ‘Subscribe’ link in the header will have drop-down to choose ‘RSS’ or ‘Email’
  7. The search entry field needs to be bigger
  8. The ‘Subscribe’ section in the sidebar needs some work. Basically, I want it to stand out/look a bit different. Below is how I think I want it to look:
  9. Subscribe

  10. The ‘Editors Pick’ section is an attempt to try and highlight the best posts on the site. One of the issues I have with nearly all blog designs is that they are designed for sequential reading, and it is hard to highlight old work e.g. even posts written only a week ago can ‘disappear’ and are never seen by newer readers. What I intend to do with this section is to serve random posts from each editor, and I think I will even be able to use OpenAds to display a different post each time from each editor, and to show the more popular posts (i.e. more clicks) more often
  11. The ‘Top Posts’ section will work like the current top posts section, with the ‘more top posts’ link pointing to a page with even more top posts
  12. The ‘Sponsors’ section is my attempt to tidy up my sidebar banners, as well as increasing the number of slots available
  13. Items missing from the sidebar in the mockup that are in the current sidebar are ‘Useful Links’ and ‘Editors’ - they will be there when go live
  14. A new sidebar element will be ‘Money Makers’ - the mockup below is self-explanatory:
  15. Money Makers

  16. I want to experiment with adding a tag cloud to the sidebar - not sure if will have space
  17. I have moved ‘Latest Posts’ and ‘New Comments’ to the footer. I’m convinced that only regular readers of the site will find ‘Latest Posts’ useful, as they are the only ones who probably read all posts, so will know where to find these links (or will be reading via RSS). Ditto with New Comments - I think these have no use to new readers to the site, and thus the focus on ‘Editors Picks’ and ‘Top Posts’ in the sidebar
  18. I’ve moved the Tribal Fusion banner to the footer to hide it away as it’s only there for CPM purposes
  19. Ditto with’Roll of Honour’ as it’s there to reward regular commenters/friends, who probably just want the backlinks
  20. The bouncy thing in the left sidebar won’t be there in the final theme
  21. Chris Kline pointed out that I need to list my cats on my page somewhere as I will lose the SEO benefit with how things stand now - I think I’ll squeeze these into the footer somewhere.

That’s it for now. If you have any comments, ideas, suggestions on how the next iteration can be better then please leave a comment - I really want this to be collaborative project. I’ll have a screenshot for the single post page soon, as I’ve moved some things around on there as well.

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About the Author

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Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University, and currently runs the Portal and online operations for one of the largest ISPs in the UK. He also writes for Windows 7 News.

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There Are 30 Responses So Far. »

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  1. #30

    It’s good to have a big button. More people notice it, and then subscribe. Actually it should be bigger.

  2. #29

    Yes Micah - the next stage will be to code the page as I think we’ve done enough mockups

  3. #28

    [...] me know if you have any comments on the latest theme screenshot - read this post to learn what I’m trying to achieve with this theme.  The things I want to continue working [...]

  4. #27

    I agree, it’d be fun to see it in action. Will you be doing a test page? If so let us know.

  5. #26

    I’m wondering- has this new theme already been tested on Wordpress 2.3?

    Last weekend saw me setting up a test blog with WP2.3 and trying existing adsense-friendly themes with it. Many didn’t work, like my fave made by sapiensbryan.com

  6. #25

    yes, I’ll be releasing it

  7. #24

    I think that overall, this new theme is coming along really nicely, it has a good clean look to it, but looks very professional and suits the subject and tone of the site much better!

    Looking forward to seeing the finished version here and also having chance to play around with some customisation of it for my site assuming you’ll be releasing it as a theme.

  8. #23

    The theme looks good but would like to see it in action.The TOP Post and New comments looks quite nice.And yes JS Framework will be quite nice to explore further possibilities
    Cheers
    Abhishek

  9. #22

    I like the theme, looks like a big step up from what is currently on the site and I think it fits the site’s theme really well. It’s still a bit plain for my tastes, but I think it certainly has the room to dress it up later if circumstances call for it. Can’t wait to see it in action!

  10. #21

    The RSS logo is a little too large for my tastes, but each to their own. Otherwise nothing to fault

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