I'm blogging. Opinions please?

[Nathaniel Bell]

After a tortuous learning curve I got the thing working.

I'm still tweaking, but it's up. The idea of course is to build brand recognition and sell my new novel.

Your valued opinions please on my layout, content, what you would do different, functionality, pizazz, whatever. Every step is an experiment.

http://anthonyfagiani.com

Thanks for your input.

[mephet]

The first thing that I noticed was that your header-thingy (it's called a <header> in HTML, but I'm not sure what to call it here) is empty. I'm talking about the little bar that appears for your site on the top of the browser window if you've got multiple tabs open (Firefox). Sites will usually have their name in there, but you only have a "-". Also, at the bottom of the page, the twitter widget is giving me a fatal error.
But that's all boring technical stuff As for the blog itself: looks good! The visual image is clean and clear. Personally not a huge fan of the fonts in the header (using the word to mean the top image now ), but that's just a matter of personal taste. A few more thoughts on the visuals:
- Is the header's background colour supposed to be a slightly different white than the site's background?
- Have you thought of having the links in the same red that you use in your header image? It might tie the site together more.
- The ad under "Read Bloodlines of Cain" is, well... an ad, meaning I can't see it by default (I use adblock). Maybe you could add some text describing your novel and linking to it below the amazon widget? This way those that have blocked ads will still be able to get your novel.
Other than that, your blog looks good! I haven't been able to really dig into the articles yet (brains are mushy from being sick ), but I'll check them out later.

[randi.lee]

I wanted to follow you but couldn't find a place to join your site or follow via e-mail. I'd add a widget in there somewhere that allows your readers to recieve updates when you post something new- or if there is one, make it easier to find.

[Nathaniel Bell]

Originally Posted by mephet

The first thing that I noticed was that your header-thingy (it's called a <header> in HTML, but I'm not sure what to call it here) is empty. I'm talking about the little bar that appears for your site on the top of the browser window if you've got multiple tabs open (Firefox). Sites will usually have their name in there, but you only have a "-". Also, at the bottom of the page, the twitter widget is giving me a fatal error.
But that's all boring technical stuff As for the blog itself: looks good! The visual image is clean and clear. Personally not a huge fan of the fonts in the header (using the word to mean the top image now ), but that's just a matter of personal taste. A few more thoughts on the visuals:
- Is the header's background colour supposed to be a slightly different white than the site's background?
- Have you thought of having the links in the same red that you use in your header image? It might tie the site together more.
- The ad under "Read Bloodlines of Cain" is, well... an ad, meaning I can't see it by default (I use adblock). Maybe you could add some text describing your novel and linking to it below the amazon widget? This way those that have blocked ads will still be able to get your novel.
Other than that, your blog looks good! I haven't been able to really dig into the articles yet (brains are mushy from being sick ), but I'll check them out later.

Thanks mephet, Your suggestions are being implemented. These are needed tweaks.

[Nathaniel Bell]

Originally Posted by randi.lee

I wanted to follow you but couldn't find a place to join your site or follow via e-mail. I'd add a widget in there somewhere that allows your readers to recieve updates when you post something new- or if there is one, make it easier to find.

Yup. You're right and I'm wrong. Do you know of a Youtube that shows how to configure RSS?

[BigWords]

I'm sure that there is a Wordpress plug-in you can use for people to follow via e-mail and such, or there's Feedblitz - which should have a step-by-step walkthrough somewhere. It's been a while since I added a feed.