Design Review: Dillydesigns.com
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Dillydesigns.com is a blog run by Evelester, and it has nothing to do with design. The blog hosted here is actually called Confessions of a Housewife and is her personal advice blog, with a very distinct style.
What Has Been Done Well?
- Cartoon drawing. Easily the most memorable aspect of this blog’s design is the cartoon housewife fixed in the background. The smiling housewife, hard at work with the house chores is a great design, and a uniquely memorable feature. You won’t forget her in a hurry.
- First post given special attention. The homepage is for the most part, a 3 column layout with post excerpts in the center column. However, instead of allowing the sidebar to take precedent over the content, Evelester has used a theme which places the first post above the sidebars, allowing her content to be the first thing a reader sees when visiting the site.
- Tabbed navigation. The tabbed navigation system here is using a lovely effect. When you highlight a tab, the tab physically stands in front of the others. The only small annoyance is that the “Articles” text tends to jump around a little.
- Fancy font post titles. Typography is an art, and Evelester seems well aware of that. Each of her post titles is in a unique font, which suits the style of the design perfectly, and more importantly, adds a lot of personality to the blog.
What Could be Changed?
- Sidebar text link effects. The text links in the sidebar look good, and fit in with the site well. However, when you hover over a link, the darkening effect is so subtle as to be hardly noticeable. A more obvious effect, such as a greater color change or a background change, may be more useful.
- “What is my blog worth?” widget. This is a pet peeve of mine, but the blog value widget is little more than a bit of fun. It grossly overestimates the value of every blog entered, and is of no benefit to your readers. Is it really worth having it take up space in one of the most valuable areas of your site?
- Search bar. The search bar disappears on single post pages, but is there on the home page. Regular users may know about it being there, but most others won’t, and even the nuisance of having to return to the home page to search is off putting. Furthermore, it would be nice to have the default “search” text automatically hide when clicked on.
All in all, I love the Confessions of a Housewife design. It is so unique and so full of character! Out of the thousands of home advice blogs out there, this one is one that you will remember.
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About the Author
Michael Martin
Michael Martin is the founder of Pro Blog Design. He works as a freelance web designer, loves WordPress, and has an unhealthy addiction to smilies.
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Thanks for all of the great advice, I actually took the ‘blog worth’ buttons off of my sites yesterday when I cleaned the sidebars up some.
Great tips on everything, I will be implementing them ASAP! Thanks for the great review!
No problem eve. Thanks for letting me write the review! :)
It would be good to check this web site with IE 7.
(It is strongly recommended for reviews)
The layout is completely messed up.
Truden – Good point. I only assessed it in Firefox (They’re design reviews, not accessibility reviews, so I’ve never looked at the coding/compatibility etc.).
I’ll try to make a point in future to at least test out the different browsers at least. It’s definitely a flaw worth mentioning! Thanks Truden. :)
I won’t argue, Michael :)
You definitely know more than I do, but for me the design includes accessibility.
What is the point of good design if it doesn’t serve the readers.
Reader means – human with browser ;)
Truden – True. Web design is a blanket term which covers a lot of different things, and because of that we need words for the different aspects of design (accessibility, usability, etc.)
The “design” I mentioned was a word to describe the looks aspect. It probably wasn’t the best word to use though, perhaps aesthetics would have been better? :)
“The layout is completely messed up.”
Mostly caused by a single flaw of having the width set too much and by the looks of it the right navigation and center being placed in one div. Didn’t check the source so not completely sure, but quite easily fixable if that’s the case.
Taking 1 pixel off the width usually already helps, but it definitely shows yet again that designers should slack off and not be bothered to check in other browsers.
Main browsers to keep in mind these days are of course firefox, ie7 and opera. Along with that we recently got safari available as well to check with, but if it works in those first 3 safari shouldn’t be an issue.
One thing which I personally never like that much in multi column designs though is when the multi column aspect ends, although that’s a personal preference and there’s quite a bunch of designers in return prefer not to use javascript or nearly impossible CSS hacks to fix it.
Three tiny little things though which could be altered:
Under my blogs it says HomeBizBlogg, on selecting it though you can see the er going over onto the picture. On the actually site though you use Home Biz Blogger with spaces as title, so if you’re not using a true standard in the name whether it is spaces or not you could enter the spaces so it doesn’t go over the picture.
In the bottom part of the right navigation bar the disclosure policy is aligned directly onto the edge, I’d suggest giving it a right padding of 3~5 pixels or something like that so it doesn’t give that much of a feeling of being pushed against the side.
When I hover the navigation bar the word “Articles” keeps jumping from position, moving forwards and backwards a bit. It does the exact same thing on home biz blogger for that matter.
Asides from the bunch of little flaws it looks quite nice though, especially loving the background image. As Michael mentioned, something you won’t easily forget.
what a small world.
1. I know that housewife image :) It was from istock- heather at girly blog designz that I do work with also used it for a blog called, “little cooks in the kitchen”.
I really like the way that Eve creatively used it though. In the background of the page and slightly covered by the post, that is unique.
2. eve just sold her wordpress re-worked site to a woman named Ponn :) I just talked to Ponn about working with the site. And just when the internet world seemed so large it became small again.
I had looked at the blog yesterday because of the job thing… I noticed the java script headings and thought of your post the other day! :)
nevermind about the illustration. It is the same exact face as the other one used, but the other one was cooking :) Must be the same illustrator! :)
I really like the way the first post is set apart.
I was wondering about her sidebar. Rather than having a striking color change, perhaps a small bullet image on hover could be placed beside the sidebar link. It would make it more obvious that your over a link, but be more subtle than big color changes.
wow- thanks for letting me know it was messed up in IE! I had no idea, off to try to fix that now!
And yes, the image was from IStock Photo, there were alot of other ‘women’ to choose from
Slevi – Thanks for taking the time to add to the review. You’ve made a few good points. :)
Mommy Zabs – It really is a small internet! I hadn’t recognised the image, but I suppose a few will then. It does seem that the few $ at istockphoto were well worth it though. :D
Dave – That’s an interesting idea. You can’t judge these things until you actually see them on the site, so experimenting with your idea could work out very well as well.
eve – Good luck! As Slevi said, it’s almost certainly just a problem with column widths. Either the columns themselves are too wide, or something within them (like an image) is wider than the column should be. :)
I think that the IE 7 problem in this theme is:
#post-latest {float: left;
Fix the float for #post-latest
stinks i can’t look at themes in IE7. I’m an apple girl. we have 3 of those in this house. No IE we just have safari and foxfire. But I know I need to probably check the work I do on IE. Does anyone have a solution for that.
Eve. Isn’t istockphoto awesome? I love it and get a good deal of inspiration there. I used images from it a lot. I have a couple lower budget extended liscense places i go to for premade themes to sell, but i love iphoto for the custom stuff :) Especially illustration as I am not a good illustrator!!
Michael. Istockphotos are well worth the price. you are right.
Sorry Mommy Zabs – I’ve never used a Mac, and knowing MS, there probably isn’t an easy way of getting IE on the mac (I can’t even get IE6 on Vista!)
This tool would be a start. It takes screenshots of whatever URL you give it, in Internet Explorer. It’s very slow to use though. :(
OK, the problem is not in #post-latest, but in #col-main, where you have float: left;
If you take this line off the css it will align the div in the middle, but you still have to fix your other div’s. Taking two closing div’s from the line before
and placing them right after the same div, will fix the problem with the main column, but you still have to place the right column in the right place.It could be a lot simpler than I think, but this is what I see in my brief check.
This might help for mac users.
Thanks for sharing milo. I’m sure it will be useful for a few. :)
Pleasure, Michael, as I know by experience it’s not that easy to find GOOD and valuable examples and tutorials.
It could be a lot simpler than I think, but this is what I see in my brief check.
I agree that you have said that it have a good comment form because I like its comment form like how
I also like the design. Nice article.
I think that this blog is really good and the design is a lot more original that some blogs that I have seen. The more hand rendered look is something that I really like and think works well with certain websites/ blogs. I think that this is a good place to use it. I think the exterior of the blog ie the background the illustration and typography are all really nice but the actual layout of the blog and content iself I feel needs a bit of attention.