Drive-By-Shooting Sunday: From the Living Room
It was moonless, the waning sliver of silver moon disappearing slowly into nonexistence to leave inky blackness. The cloudy sky of the night eliminated all twinkling traces of stars.
They were invisible. Dressed head to toe in black clothing, the two men slipped through the barren streets of the city, hugging the walls and hiding in the shadows of alleys each time the headlights of a lone car passed by.
The wind picked up a scrap of paper, and it skittered down the lonely, quiet street. It reminded the men of last week’s hit, only this night was far more ominous than peaceful.
A cat out wandering froze when the two men moved to the next building, staring at them with glowing green eyes for a moment before scurrying away.
“Run, little kitty,” James whispered with a grin. “The boogieman’s gonna get you.” He watched the glowing green blob of cat hurry under the porch. With the night-vision goggles they wore, nothing could hide.
Nothing.
“Aw, don’t pick on the cat,” Harry chided James, adjusting his own goggles. “He’s just out roaming his territory. You scared him.”
“I didn’t scare him,” James checked both ways, then snuck over to the other side of the street to stand near a dumpster. “Why do I always get blamed?”
“Because it’s usually your fault,” Harry crouched and jogged over to Jamie’s side. He edged a peek around the corner of the building and held up a hand for quiet. “There it is. Can you see?”
“Man… “Jamie’s speechless moment spoke volumes. “What is this place?”
Today’s hit is for From the Living Room, the blog of Jenny Adamthwaite. Here’s what the site looked when we drove by:
“This is creepy.” James picked his way carefully around the dark, looming area. The green lines and vague sense of Silence of the Lambs presence made him feel uneasy.
“No kidding,” Harry answered just as softly, feeling like a loud noise might cause some creature to leap out at them.
The black background and the green color theme is a huge mistake. The ominous sense it creates doesn’t set anyone at ease at all. It’s extremely difficult to read the white content and the neon links only add to the strangeness of the theme. Considering the name of the site is “From the Living Room”, the dark theme is rather startling.
People don’t like being uncomfortable. Invariably, they will always choose to linger where they feel good or welcome. The color selection currently going on, unfortunately, sets of some pretty psychological warning signals and the first emotional impact the site conveys is, “Tread softly and carry a big stick.”
We’d suggest completely ditching the color scheme and going with something far more welcoming. You can keep the black and green if you wish, but use them only as color accents on a white background – and use them sparingly.
The banner is rather large and over-present for the theme, and it’s quite sparse. After you ditch that color selection, try to find an image that represents home comfort and tie in that living room theme. Make the design relaxing and welcoming, as if inviting friends to come in, kick back and sink into something soft.
There’s plenty you can do with a “living room and writing” theme, too. Nothing says comfy more than the sofa and a good book. You could even aim for hot chocolate and a log cabin theme by using a banner with brown hues, green for forest and a touch of orange for a fire.
“Speaking of orange,” James stepped away from the gas stove and tapped a small sign on the wall. “It’s a Blogger blog. But that’s alright, because it’s a personal blog more than one geared to finding business.”
“Yeah,” Harry picked his way over to the other side of the room. “It drives me nuts to see freelancers looking for work on those freebie blogs, but when it’s for pleasure and fun, there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Not sure why she didn’t call it From the Living Room if that’s her blog name,” Jamie peered at the sign over the door. “That name sure is hard to spell… plus it’s not really clear that it *is* a name, actually.”
“Did you see this?” Harry pointed to the About Me text in the right sidebar that poked out beyond the frame. “There’s some layout and construction issues happening.”
James strode over and examined the sidebar, running a hand down the framing. “All the way to the bottom, too. That needs to be repaired. Look at this side,” he went to the left-hand sidebar and pointed. “That’s running off the screen too.”
On a large monitor, the layout fits fine. Harry has a 28-inch monitor, which allows him to open browser windows larger than most people can. But on James’ monitor, which is a 19 inch and more common these days, the left and right sides run off the screen, giving the blog a sloppy, poorly made look.
Choose a theme that is 960 pixels wide or make sure that your theme fits in that width to prevent the run-off from happening.
“I’m not sure I enjoy the post in the middle,” James stood back, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Do we look left? Or right? Or straight on? It’s hard to know where to focus.”
“The colors are doing that,” Harry mentioned, mirroring James’ position as he examined the layout. “Everything’s the same, so your eyes and brain can’t figure out where to look. Tell me what stands out the most,” he prompted.
“That feather,” James pointed to the corner where the About Us information was located. “I like that.”
“Because it’s different. See? Draws the eye. It stands out amongst this… ” He flipped up the goggles and squinted. The view wasn’t much better. “… whatever this is,” he snapped them back down. “Are you taking notes, by the way?”
“Notes? Yeah, right,” James whipped out a small pad with a bit of a guilty look. “Got them right here… ”
Looking at the right sidebar, now…
The About Us isn’t in a bad location, but it may be better on the left-hand side so that you could put your RSS feed signup on the right where people usually expect to see it. As it is, the RSS feed signup isn’t visible.
Whoops… hold on, where *is* your RSS feed? All you have is the email subscription version down low in the sidebar, which only offers half the goods to people. Email only will also definitely turn off all those people who are trying to clean up their inbox of junk mail.
Recent comments is nice, but I think I’d prefer to see Categories there instead and Recent Comments below. You can ditch the Archive, even, or put it below Recent Comments.
The Technorati widget is okay, though that should be below your RSS to make it visible and encourage click throughs.
The Blog of the Day award could go on the left sidebar below your About Us.
“What’s this for?” James poked at the lonely book on the shelf. “It’s just sitting there.” The book took up space on the left and didn’t seem to have a purpose. “Am I supposed to pick it up? Did someone forget it here?”
“Don’t touch anything,” Harry strode over to cuff Jamie’s curious fingers away. “You’re going to leave fingerprints all over and then we’ll be in trouble.”
“There won’t be anything left by the time we’re done with this place,” James shrugged and picked up the book to see what it was.
Ahhh, you have a book to sell. Unfortunately, only the curious will know that, because there is no sales copy, not a word at all that indicates people can buy your book. Clearly indicate that there is something to buy on your site and do some promotion. A small widget that says, “Buy my Book” is even better than nothing at all.
Move those “Links to Yourself” down and push your book up. Put it right below the About Me for increased visibility.
Alternatively, move off Blogger completely and get your blog to the next phase by having navigation with multiple pages for the About Us, Your Book, Your Guest Posts (if that’s what they are; ‘links to me’ is unclear). You’ll have a better, more professional design and you can do more to come across as an author instead of someone tinkering around with words.
“I’m getting a headache.” James pulled off the night-vision goggles. He couldn’t see a thing, but that was better than the green and black contrast and rested his eyes. “Do you have it ready?”
“Yeah, catch.” Harry tossed the small, heavy ball at James. “Be careful.”
He caught it easily, the metal smacking into his hand. “I will. Get ready to run.” James slipped his goggles back on, got ready to pull the pin and glanced at Harry as he started to walk backwards. “On the count of three?”
Just a few seconds later, the door burst open and both men scrambled out of the building, high-tailing it down the street. The grenade exploded behind them with a muffled boom, sending debris into the air.
A second explosion lit up the night, the gas-fueled pillar rising up into a mushrooming fireball before settling back into crackling red flames. Nothing beat a good fire for deflecting attention away from any black-clothed men who might’ve run past just minutes earlier.
And the cat under the porch would never tell.
Want more? You got it. Check out the lineup of upcoming hit jobs:
July 27 – McAWilliams Photoblog
August 3 – Prin’s Links
August 10 – Abundance Blog
August 17 – Your Writing Cure
August 24 – Yes to Me
August 31 – LitGuides
September 7 – Miramar Mike 2.0
September 14 – Green Plan(t)
September 21 – Fawnskin Flyer
Want your blog shot down? Sign up in the comment section for your free drive-by, and we’ll schedule you in.
Or hit us up for a private drive-by via email. It’s only $30, and you’ll get your shoot-out within a week.
Come on. You know you wanna.
31 Responses to “Drive-By-Shooting Sunday: From the Living Room”
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I really like and enjoy your way of writing these site reviews and would like to sign up for a free drive-by-shooting.
Bengt’s last blog post..My WordPress plugins, an update
You don’t call it a drive by shooting for nothing do you?! Thank you though – it’s good to know what people think… especially that what looks great on my computer doesn’t necessarily translate to larger/smaller screens. I didn’t realise that, and I’m not quite sure how to change it!
Erm… RSS feed? What is it and why should it be there?! I think I probably got rid of it because I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I’m a trial and error kind of a blogger, and as you can probably tell, I haven’t actually got a clue what I’m doing! I have been thinking of moving from blogger at some point… I’m just worried that I don’t know enough about design to do so successfully. Maybe that’s a holiday project.
Thanks for your review guys. As ever, really nicely written and really useful… but I’m going to go and nurse my wounds now!
J Adamthwaite’s last blog post..Our Place in Time
James,
I know y’all love it when I come by and do a Mac test for you, so I’ll tell you that on my 15″ laptop, the CSS is not breaking. I could not figure out what you were talking about! The theme lies beautifully.
The rest of the hit was great. I like Jenny’s content. She’ll show it off so much better with a light theme.
(Jenny—the Men have discussed RSS here—type it into their search form—or type “what is RSS” into Google. I don’t use it for my reading but I offer it on my blog because most people do; you’ll probably find your readers will increase if you offer it!)
Regards,
Kelly
Kelly’s last blog post..Tip of the Week: Sex and Maximum Customer Experience
Thank you Kelly. I will investigate. I’m plotting a lighter theme as we speak, but I’m waiting for the summer holidays to implement anything!
J Adamthwaite’s last blog post..I got Shot!
Jenny,
That’s a strategy that worked for me (waiting until summer holidays).
Good luck with your tweaking!
Regards,
Kelly
Kelly’s last blog post..Tip of the Week: Sex and Maximum Customer Experience
As always, a nice review. This series is quickly becoming my favorite read on Sunday morning.
I feel the same way about black background. Sometimes when there are lots of visuals, it sort of makes sense as it shows off the colors nicely, but still, the text is usually hard to read — unless the font style and size are carefully chosen.
Akemi – Yes to Me’s last blog post..Gratitude Friday, Week 6, Gratitude And 10 Things That Make Me Happy
@ Akemi – Black backgrounds tend to work best for photography, because then the colors stand out much more and create impact. But for text, it’s just hard to read.
@ Kelly – Ah, trust you to come and debate with me
That’s the problem with so many browsers and screen sizes – finding a layout that fits them all is damned tough sometimes. (Down with IE, by the way.)
@ Bengt – Your slot is September 28. Cheers!
@ Victim
– We’re not harsh. We’re tell it like it is, which is something that it seems most people appreciate in this world of “good job!” Sometimes people need that reality bite to see the real perception. We do try to balance out the bad with good when we can, and we do always feel guilty… Sorry if we hurt your feelings.
RSS is Really Simple Syndication, which means syndicating your content so that many people can read it easily. RSS allows people to sign up with a click to receive your new blog posts in an RSS reader, where all their favorite blogs/posts are in one location. More and more people are using it every day because of its convenience.
Offering it costs you nothing, makes your readers happier and increases your readership. The more readers you have… yay!
Sounds good to me! I’ll get on the case soon. I’ve had increased hits just today from your review – so thanks!
Don’t be sorry – you didn’t hurt my feelings and I knew exactly what to expect from you. I’ll be working on some tweaks over the summer holidays.
Also, I really enjoy the way you write these reviews and I’ve never seen anything quite like it done before. I’m pleased to have been shot by you!
J Adamthwaite’s last blog post..I got Shot!
James: is a black background good only for photography? What about other content that’s typically characterized by black, like, um, gaming sites for example, and other fantasy stuff? (I’m leaving out goth and erotica and typical stuff like that on purpose.) Just curious, seriously.
Sometimes, I find white text on black actually easier on my eyes, but it does depend on the hue or tone (whatever!), the font and the size of the text as well. For me, anyway.
steph’s last blog post..And Now for Something Completely Different: Life of Steph
Hey Guys,
The link to From the living room is taking me to your 404 error page.
(http://menwithpens.ca/goto/From_the_Living_Room/1131/1)
And out of curiosity, why is it set up to open in the same window driving people away from your site? Or it would if it worked.
Strange… the link works in the RSS feed – at least the one delivered by email anyway.
I like Jenny’s writing, so it will be good when she follows your advice and gives her blog a tweak. It is a little hard on the eyes (reading wise) at the moment, which is a shame as she has some interesting things to say.
zania’s last blog post..Did The Manufactureres of Prozac Get It Wrong?
@Kevin: We just installed a new plugin and I think it’s causing some issues, I might deactivate it until I can figure out what’s going on. I’ve noticed a few links leading to 404s.
@Steph: Generally, black is great for images, it really makes them pop, but for text? Not so good. It also depends on your audience. I see nothing wrong using black for gaming or fantasy sites (we did it!), but for a business site black might set the wrong tone if you use too much of it.
damn forgot to check the notify button again.
Harry: Ah! Makes sense.
steph’s last blog post..And Now for Something Completely Different: Life of Steph
I love your drive-bys and look forward to future Sunday specials when everything else is pretty quiet on the blog front. I’ve only read two so far and the criticism is spot on and constructive with no prisoners taken. Also like the entertaining theatrics as if you’re walking into a brick and mortar establishment. The last two take downs have been quick and deadly at the conclusion – it’s just that critique in the middle that lingers a little bit (i.e. – makes you pause and think). Thanks again for sharing your expertise.
As a past drive by, the intial hit is hard but when you get blood wiped off you find that there are many great suggestions! It is really hard to critique your own work because it is such a labor of love! James and Harry – you guys are performing such a service here, and with such flair…:)
Tara Jacobsen’s last blog post..Tin Cup – When do you give up?
@ Tara – That’s the problem – so many people want a neutral perspective and an objective view, but they can’t afford a full consult, and they can’t ask friends or family. We try to fill that gap, and as you mentioned, we also educate others as well.
Plus, it’s fun
@ Mark – Ahh, thank you. It’s good to hear you enjoy the drive-bys. The theatrics do tend to enhance the whole fun, I’ll admit. Thanks for stopping by, and join us again!
@ Zania – Agreed. It’ll be good to see the site in a more reader-friendly version.
@ Kevin – The new plugin did conflict and was doing some odd stuff. I’ve disabled it and all links are systems go now.
As for links opening in the same window… well, that’s a great debate. Open in a new window and have people pissed off we’re controlling their browsing and user experience? You wouldn’t believe how many people get upset about that, which is why we disabled that feature and go for opening in the same window. Which sucks for us, but happy readers are reader that return, so hey.
James,
“We try to fill that gap” —Plus you never have to wonder what to post on a Sunday again.
I was not debating! Just sayin’, because I know you can’t yet see how the other 8.4% lives.
Later,
Kelly
Kelly’s last blog post..Tip of the Week: Sex and Maximum Customer Experience
@ Kelly – Is it that many already?
One day, one day…
As for predictability on weekends, that works marvelously with my erratic thoughts. Sundays are perfect.
Probably not. I made it up and I wanted my Mac peeps to sound substantial. I love my peeps.
Kelly’s last blog post..Tip of the Week: Sex and Maximum Customer Experience
I have learned a lot from your reviews and would really love some constructive criticism for my blog. Please include me for a free drive-by-shooting.
Thanks a lot
Shamelle
@ Shamelle – October 5 would be your day. Cheers!
Hi guys,
I’m signing up for my free drive-by. Boy, I am I scared…
Elaine
Elaine Luther’s last blog post..Top Ten Backgrounds NOT to use to Photograph Jewelry
@ Elaine – You’ll have plenty of time to savor the anticipation – October 10 is your date.
I am signing up for a free drive-by. I have been enjoying the series and look forward to getting a shot at (or shot-down?).
Ulla Hennig’s last blog post..Looking across the Water
Hey Ulla – good stuff. Your date is October 19.
And it’s shot at (physical), shot down (when someone insults you), or shot up (when someone puts lots of bullet holes in you). Any one works
Is Blogger really that bad? You talk about it like it has a social stigma.
For someone who can’t afford to host their own WP blog (or who’s starting out and isn’t sure if a blog is worth the money) it seems like a good choice.
Joseph Z.’s last blog post..6 Reasons You Need a Central Vacuum Cleaner
@ Joseph – Blogger in itself isn’t bad and it can help teach people how to use a blog. The problem is that people open a Blogger account and then try to establish a business… but Blogger clearly comes off as a free site and is visibly so. The potential customer perception is that the professional cuts corners and doesn’t take himself or herself seriously enough to establish a full site.
Or, people set up Blogger to learn and then allow the blog popularity to grow too high. When it’s time to switch, it becomes more of a hassle.
Lastly, people set up Blogger thinking a free option gives them better return on investment – no fees, right? But if the perception costs you clients and you could double your business or more by being self-hosted, why not set that up right away and shoot for gold?
Make sense?
Hey guys. I’ve been fiddling about obsessively since my review, trying to square your advice with my own tastes and the opinions of my readers… I tried various lighter backgrounds and various detail colours, and eventually ended back up at black and green! I have made some changes though. I wondered if you’d mind dropping in and giving me a brief opinion – is it at all improved? I’m still playing with the idea of images but I haven’t found a suitable one yet. If I don’t, I plan on changing my title, so ignore all that for now!
Thanks!
J Adamthwaite’s last blog post..Opinions Please!