Having read the above post I can honestly say if you get paid to write that shit that helps no one and just allows you to vent bull shit then I applaud you for getting paid for being absolutely useless at giving feedback.
Personally as a sane member of this human race, I like it better than the old one, it is easy to use and easy to navigate, all I would change is the have the most resents on the front page.
Sorry Anthony, and more appropriately mikho, it was a long and frustrating night. I realized the harshness before clicking submit but really didn't feel like going back through in an attempt to reword. I had some other business I needed to get back to but felt there were some important points should the reader suffer through it all. I'll make an attempt to rectify that now:
I just hit the domain again this morning and some changes have already been made that are vast improvements! Just moving the recent posts to the front page completely changes the first impression upon visiting the site. The homepage definitely needs some more attention in terms of design, as it doesn't fit in well with some of the design decisions made throughout the rest of the domain.
Categorization and content discovery are the biggest issues I see. Most people aren't coming to read all of the guides from front to back, they're getting here via a search for "configure MySQL CentOS" - they need you to hold their hand through that and then they're gone. Obviously, we don't want them to leave so I'd suggest adding related guides to the end. This can be automated but I would absolutely make sure you have the ability to custom tailor the list. What do people do after MySQL? You should have a link to a guides covering Apache, nginx and Lighttpd installation right there for them to click on.
A site that does this amazingly well to me (surprisingly, given the overall poor quality of the content) is
WebDesignDev. I visit this website occasionally in search of some free design resources to use and there's just something about those 4 links, placed horizontally, with their square associated graphics that gets me stuck on this domain over and over again.
I also believe the primary navigation (top-right) is being grossly misused and that leads me into what I believe to be the overall "issue" throughout the entire domain: over-stuffing a minimalist design. The template you are using has an overall minimalistic theme to it - there's a lot of whitespace, clean lines, subtle highlights and large readable fonts. When working with a minimal design, each and every pixel you place on the screen should have a distinct and clear purpose. Your goal should not be "what can I put on this page", rather you should always consider "what can I remove from this page?" Beyond that, I think you're just excited about a new project and it could have used a bit more time in the oven before you made any announcement - not the end of the world.
I'll try and get everything into list format, so it's more easily consumable:
- Fonts: There are 5 (Arial, Oswald, Verdana, Istok Web and Rockwell for the logo, I believe). Excellent designers can make 3 look good on a page, the rest of us should stick with 2. I really like Oswald for your headers; this is the first time I've consciously noticed Istok Web so give it a consideration for your body. Other good serif choices are Lato, Open Sans, Titillium Web. Sans-serif for body text is becoming more and more popular, particularly the cleaner and more newspaper-like your style becomes. You may want to consider a font like Old Standard TT, PT Serif or Sabon. Whatever you choose, go with the smallest font-weight available to balance the heavy thick bold of Oswald (although 100 may be too light, depending on font-size). A font-size around 16-18px with a line-height near 24px (you typically want to be 1.5em) should turn out much nicer, more readable and take care of tracking issues you're currently experiencing when moving from line to line. You also need to desperately increase the margin-bottom of your p tags, right now there's no distinction between lines as opposed to between paragraphs. You want to target 55-70 characters per line for best readability.
- Main Navigation: Everything has a purpose, nothing is added to the page that does not serve that purpose, right? Delete everything out of the main navigation. Now, think of the types of guides you will write and attempt to categorize them into 4-6 categories. I was quite fond of my "Guides, Scripts, Downloads and Reviews" to be honest. If there's room we can add the social buttons back in. Why are we getting rid of the license and about? We already know what the site's about - that's redundant. The only time I've ever looked for a license was on software's site - yours is important, no doubt (we'll get to it later), but absolutely no one is looking for it. These 2 links are the mobile homes parked on Santa Monica Blvd.
- Secondary Navigation: That menu is a great way to organize content in alternative methods, beyond the "object-type" style we used earlier. You may have to get inventive with Wordpress, making this menu the canonical category and the objects up top a small, personally restricted selection of tags you've allowed yourself to use. Nevertheless, this menu is ignored. Let's move it farther up - right underneath the Search box., within the same div with the light grey background.
- Sidebar Ads: Speaking of ads, lose those and the one in the footer, especially on the front page. They are way too intrusive and seriously detract from the appearance of quality. It just looks cheap - we can get those back involved on the content pages but for now, we don't want to scare anyone off before they've even come across an article.
- Homepage Social Icons: Lose them - you either already have them in the header or you'll make room for them in the footer. No one is going to actively share an index page, they'll share individual content and then only on Twitter or Facebook. Those that want to share with LinkedIn, Email or Reddit will typically copy-paste the link themselves, regardless of how easy a button you give them.
- Main Content Area Homepage: We need to redesign this square one and encourage people to get lost in our content. First off, the title is absurdly wordy; let's change "Most recent guides in order" to "Recent Guides". Also, it should be above the orange line in Oswald like every other header on the site. Now go grab the HTML from one of your category pages - remove the date and comment count, give it some more padding up top. This is your new Recent Posts list. Experiment with including an introduction paragraph on this front page but I think a better idea is to find a Wordpress plugin that provides "upvote" functionality and let people quickly and easily show their support for an article.
- Footer: More social networking icons to lose... I'd lose the TagCloud as well - there's nothing inherently bad about it but there's nothing good either and I have something good. You're going to build a "Suggest a Topic" form in the footer that occupies the first and second columns. Encourage people to give you input on what you should write about or for them to even contact you about submitting their own articles! "Current Providers" - as someone "in the loop" I know these are paid links and/or your friends, people you associate with. But what would someone new to VPS's think? Remember they are your target audience - we know what we're doing for the most part. My first thought: "It requires 7 VPS's to run this little blog? Maybe I've made the wrong decision..." If they're paid spots I'd issue refunds. Now, we have an empty 3rd column (far right). We're going to create 2 sections, one above the other, the top being named "Subscribe" and includes a single input form for an email address and a submit button. The next section is titled "About LowEndGuide". The links listed are: "About Your Real Name" if you are comfortable in doing so, if not use "the Author", "Submit a Guide", "License & Disclaimer". Finally, kill off that white div.
In reviewing the code for this template I have a whole slew of technical suggestions as well but you have some catching up to do. If anyone has any questions, suggestions, concerns - why did I suggest this or that -etc, please feel free to ask.
And once again, I apologize for the tone of the last post. I've found harsh reality and a sharp tongue can be an excellent motivational instigator and, if done properly, can lend itself to a certain level of humor (which is always helpful in a constructive criticism scenario). Unfortunately, I failed to maintain a consistence voice and the whole thing just fell apart with no real way to pick up back up again in the time I had available. I hope this post does prove useful and you accept my apologies - not for the harshness but for the failure in communication.
