Help Us Out With Some FeedBack?
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It’s been a while since we last asked for some feedback about who you are and what you think of the site. If you could spare two minutes to answer the polls below, it would really help us make Pro Blog Design even better!
There is also a reward for anyone answering the question at the end! Absar from ShopHTML is offering 20% off their PSD to HTML services to anyone who does!
On top of that, I will choose one random winner from the list and give them a free design review, published here on Pro Blog Design. That means you get all the feedback on your website of course, but also a good bit of publicity as well!
Poll Questions
Competition Question
ShopHTML do PSD to xHTML conversions, but also to systems like WordPress as well. To receive 20% off your next shopHTML order, all you have to do is answer the following question:
“If you could change one thing about Pro Blog Design, what would it be?”
Leave your answer in a comment on this post, and Absar will get email you soon with your discount code! (If you’d rather not, just say in the comment and I won’t pass on the email address).
You’ll also be entered in the competition to have your site reviewed here on Pro Blog Design. One winner will get a full design critique published here.
Thank you for taking the time to answer the polls and the question. We really appreciate it and you’re helping us to build a much better website!
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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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If there is one thing I would improve about Pro Blog Design than it is to reduce the amount of lists of things and increase the amount of original content, but that’s not a big complaint anyhow.
Keep up the good work
Thanks for the feedback. We really have been publishing a lot of lists recently, I’ll be more careful with how many we do in future. Glad someone pointed that out, I wasn’t sure if we’d gone over the top or not yet!
I’d like to see some review/comparison posts. A lot of sites have design showcases which are great for inspiration, but I’d like to see some breakdowns of what sites do right and wrong. For example, I’ve seen pretty and/or popular sites that don’t pass validation, or have usability issues. It would be great to have an experienced person provide examples where various blog design issues are solved correctly/incorrectly.
Hey Michael,
I’m definitely up for that. We currently do reviews every now and then, always in this form: http://www.problogdesign.com/tag/reviews/
Is that the sort of review you meant, or would it be more specific and say, focus on a particular mistake found across several websites?
Or even to take a website, highlight some flaws, and then demonstrate the entire solution?
I’m kind of interested in trying both now :D
The design is pretty good – I’d love to see more in-depth posts.
Hey Andrea,
I think you’re right about that. A year ago you’d barely have found a list post on the site, but now it’s the other way around. Time for a redirection there perhaps!
Frequency of posting^^ It feels like the blog’s updated rather rarely, in else, everything is good.
Hey Gargon,
Thanks for the comment, I’ll definitely work on that. I had a schedule for a few months there, but it’s fallen apart over the past month or so. I guess that’s showing!
I’ll try to get that fixed again.
Commented with my nickname instead of my real name by habit. ^^ People always miss the second ‘r’ in Gargron before I point at it, orz.
A month for a blog appears far longer than for a paper magazine or other real-life stuff, so that explains why I had got that feeling.
Damn, sorry about the name! I always thought I was quite good at getting names right (Because a lot of people call me Martin instead of Michael :D ), but I guess not!
Sorry GargRon!
But yep, I think you’re right about that. A month online makes something old news. Everything just flies so much faster than in print :(
Yeah a bit more posting, the font for the post title and drop all those sidebar’s links (rss, twitter…) that are already on top of the site to add more informations like “the best of pro blog design”.
Thanks for the suggestions Kevin. When I first redesigned, that title font was a big issue. I’m not sure why it got sidelined in my priorities but now it’s back up there again.
Can’t guarantee when exactly, but that font is definitely changing! (And other aspects of the design as well most likely :D )
hey hey, u changed the font :D
lol – Yep! That should be one down on your list! What do you think? An improvement? :D
One thing I’d change – make the text replacement text load with the page :P.
Really enjoyed Alex Cragg’s post a couple of weeks ago – more of that area – advanced WordPress development.
lol Alex – I’d love to pull that one off! I’m using Cufon at the minute for my text-replacement, but the fact you can’t select the text easily and it won’t let me use my logo font is convincing me to try a different script…
I’ll look for something that will let me load in the text first as well! :)
What about @font-face? In theory that’s cross browser if you do it right, no?
Another thing, the rounded corners on the navbar – it goes rounded on hover – that a glitch or a feature? Can’t quite decide :P
Yep, @font-face is another option, but it relies on the browser’s text rendering, so with large font sizes on older versions of IE, it may not be too impressive. :(
Still, I suppose it would beat what I currently have…
I think I’ll try out your idea Alex and see how it goes :D
About the rounded corners on the navbar, which bit do you mean? If you mean the bottom right part of the Services tab when you hover over it, it’s kind of both! It’s a glitch in that it looks bad, but a feature in that I didn’t think it was worth adding another image to download just to fix it! xD
Screencasts ftw- it does this in Chrome, Vista: http://screenr.com/ebN
Ah, that screencast was pretty cool :D
Yep, they’re meant to be rounded. Chrome and Safari have an animation on them so they’re going from square to rounded on you. I’ll try them without that animation and see if it looks better :) (I use FireFox normally so I hadn’t noticed that before, will load up Chrome now though!)
I would really like to see more wordpress coding tutorials, such as cool tricks you can do within the wordpress loop.
Sounds good to me. WordPress should always be the core topic of this site :D
Be proud and start a revolution! Ditch posts that start with numbers “10 amazing…,” “23 rules…,” or “50 logo…” It’s not hard to read the same post similar elsewhere.
I think you’re right about this one Liam, I’ve let the number of list posts go over the top lately!
You’ll start seeing more article-style posts and in-depth discussions in the future now :D
Hurrah! That’s a good step in the right direction. It’s becoming a bit tiring to read them really, not that I disprove of them but it’s nice to read those kinds of posts few and far between.
Articles are the way forward for blogs :)
I can agree with you there. When I see a great list post, I bookmark it for future use and might come back to it when I need whatever resource its listing.
But in terms of actually reading them when I first find them…
I suppose if I wouldn’t do it, I can’t expect anyone else to! Thanks for opening my eyes to that :)
Absolutely! I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of creating these “round up” posts” simply because it is easy. They almost always tend to be bookmarked, usually, that’s where they stay!
Personally I don’t mind if a site isn’t updated in weeks if the next post has some weight to pack that punch you know. A meaty story, interesting plot twists and what have you!
Looking forward to catching up with what a somewhat new and improved Pro Blog Design has to offer :)
lol – Hope it doesn’t disappoint! :D
I’d like to see more posts about design theory and the process of designing a website. This topic has just seemed to be neglected by other blogs of late, and I miss reading about it. The infamous “246 awesome…” posts are taking over again, and more and more design/development blogs keep posting what are pretty much the same roundups of “useful WordPress code snippets.” :)
I think you’re right about that Matt. It used to be that I rarely wrote list articles, but now they’re just constant. Definitely going to change that now, too many people have mentioned it here! :)
Done and Done! I fancy a good Strategy, Approach and reasoning behind design. Not too many good articles on this. Thanks
Thanks for the idea Brian, I’ll have to give it a go! :D
Design is above average, but I would like to see more good content.
Thanks for the complement, will do :)
I don’t know if this has already been suggested but looking at your website under Google Chrome I notice javascript effects that are currently not turned on for other browsers. I’d like that to happen, at least for Firefox and IE would be nice.
Those effects are actually being done with CSS3 (Might have to write a post about them now :D ).
Unfortunately Chrome and Safari are the only browsers to support it at the minute. FireFox supports a fair bit of CSS3 so hopefully it will work there soon enough as well, but IE will most likely be a while away :(
I might use JS to recreate the effects elsewhere, but I’m always wary of adding JS when it’s not essential. :(
Michael, I generally find the content useful when it’s not over my head. I’m not a developer so I don’t have high technical expectations or needs. Instead, I enjoy the list posts of ‘key’ elements that teach me something more about blogging and about general design principles. These posts are usually very useful.
Thanks for leaving your feedback. I’ll remember what you said. A few people have talked about leaving the list style posts behind, but so long as some people are still enjoying them, I’ll make sure not to leave them completely. :)
Um, you forgot to list “Inhouse Web Designer” in the “Are you a…” poll. I’m sick of the freelancers getting all the cred :)
lol – Sorry about that Craig! I’ll be more careful next time, I think I must have left out quite a few people there now! :(
Oh, and don’t forget “student web designer,” “hobbyist web designer,” and “newbie know-it-all web designer from a print background.” ;)
lol Matt – I’m going to have to start writing these all down! xD
When looking at the list of posts, if you hover over the text of the post title, the area is clickable, bit the white space between the text is not clickable!
No big deal but please Make the white space between text, in the post titles, clickable.
Will do Keith. It’s a limitation of the script I’m using there, but by the sounds of it, it’s time to swap to a different script!
I have done with my feedback, i will be the winner. hehehe
I need to apologize that i did not see the description written right after the poll and commented for the poll, but now i want to an other comment because i need to answer the question, hope no one mind it. If i will be to choose one option to change something right from this blog is the writting format of “Problogdesign” next to the logo because it seems too old and did not make a pair with the all over design of this blog which is attractive and full of eye-catching colors. Thats it. Thanks
Thanks for the reply Muqtada. I quite like the font, but I always have my eye open for new fonts and if something better turns up, I won’t hesitate to replace it!
I voted! I think unfortunately there’s still too less interest in Usability/Accessibility. Such an underrated subject…
Isn’t there already enough info about wordpress and photoshop available?
True, there really is a tonne of information on WordPress and Photoshop. That shows the scale of the topics to a certain extent though, there really is so much to say about them.
Accessibility has been undercovered here though, so I”m glad to see people voting for it to be honest. :D
The one thing that i havent seen on this website or any other is a tutorial on how to make a comment script and use a myspl database with it there is not to many websites that post this sort of thing and its one of the most important things to a blog writer / reader communication if you guys would be able to post something like this i believe it would be a great help to everyone. Thanks for everything like always your posts are the best i’ve seen
That’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure it’s something I would cover here. Creating your own commenting system would assume that you are creating a home-made CMS/blogging script.
Users here are using a ready-made CMS, and expanding on it (like WordPress), which would already have the comments system set up.
I think a guide on how to create your own one would be more suited to a PHP/programming blog (I know such a site would have some overlap with PBD, but there’s a thin line in there somewhere :) )
When this commenting will over and we will see a difference that you need from us to make by giving our suggestions afterward. I m very curious to know that whose feedback be gonna focus for this blog and what kind of a change you like to do here.
Hey i had a question and a comment I was wondering I know you guys are the ones that developed slashfilms website design (which by the way is one of my favorite sites LOL ) but any way i was wondering did you guys use wordpress for the design and also i kinda see a little bit of a resemblance between slashfilm and this website both are beautifully designed and great use of colors was just wondering>I’m really not that familiar with wordpress but i was just wondering thanks
Hey Tino. Sorry, didn’t spot the comment until now!
Glad to hear that you liked Slashfilm, they write some great content! And yep, everything there is done on WordPress. :)
This is my first time here and i see Beautiful Blog here.
Very EXCELLENT Design, you must a Great Designer right?
Anyway, nice to meet you
Here is my another belated suggestion: Please put a link about the number of comments on the post below the author bio. Presently I am just confused about the total number if I miss the number in the title of the post. Thanks.
I find it hard to navigate through the pages with just << Older Posts ! I prefer seeing something like a menu with page numbers below that looks something like this:
[Page 1 out of 20] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] …. [10] [20] [30] […] [Next] [Last]
Would be much easier for people to find the articles they are looking for!
This blog is really good and in this blog nice question about voting.
Thanks for share it and this information is really useful for us.
Hm shophtml is a great site, when I try to convert my psd to html! I wish I knew more about html, so I can make wordpress themes :)
Good stuff, have you published the results anywhere??