Watermark

its exelent as a first website designed and it is easy to navagate so

I really like the design on sbpoet 'This page cannot be displayed' Sorry - couldn't help that. As for the other one, I really like the design, but the front page is like 2 miles long!

If you’re going to hide text behind an image you should make it the same color as the background that way it won’t be visible while the image is loading.

Where's this, poppy?

I think Lord Poppycock was referring to the phrase "Poems & other writings by Sharon Brogan: large poems; small poems; free verse; syllabic verse; haiku; and sonnets" that is hidden under the picture on the home page.

Actually there is no reason at all to hide that text. Bring it out into the body where it can be seen. I would fix it up so that it read as a sentence though.

A couple quick suggestions...
Instead of having font-family:"Times New Roman" you may want to use font-family: Verdana and if you can font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif is the best for smaller text. Times looks great in print, but much too choppy (even on a mac) on the web.

I'm also not sure what < ? zeugfreunde # > is. It looks like you're trying to pull up a php code here. You might want to double check that.

Are you changing your navigation? I noticed that there were some different pages in the navigation on your pages "Snapshot Poems" and "Watermark".
I actually liked the look of the navigation on these pages the best.
You also need to add your navigation to your "Solstice Letter" and "Links" pages.

Other than that I think you have some terrific poetry and nice pages here.
My preference would be to have the template for all the pages be like the "Watermark" page. You do need to have them all consistant though.

I really enjoyed quite of few of your poems. Thank you!

Thanks for all the suggestions. The hidden text is a consequence of my initial shyness; Oratory was the first site, and I had no "about" page -- in fact, I had my name nowhere on the site. The hidden text was for Goggle, so folks who know me by name could find me.

Watermark, the weblog, came later. I tried to make the designs somewhat consistent with each other, but they are hosted separately and made with different software. I haven't figured out how to move Oratory over to Watermark and keep the alphabetical listing for the poems.

'zeugfreunde' is a poetry ring -- I'll check it, thanks.

'Links' is, in fact, a separate weblog that links to both sites.

I am really appreciating the feedback here!

Keep up the good work! (I'm sure that's a trademark)

OK, after some serious thinking, I've done a redesign (testing) of the website, Oratory. I've begun to move it into TypePad, even though it's not a blog.

Here it is: http://sb.typepad.com/oratory/

This is preliminary -- to see if it would resolve some of the issues mentioned above.

Let me know what you think.

Nice clean sites, both of them. The 2nd is a bit long for my taste, but I am lazy.

I did hit both sites with my spider, and came back blanks.. as far as Meta Tag description. keywords.

I like your color choices and the fossile graphic.. representing time (my guess)

Best of Luck

Umm mm -- the second one being?

Yes, I never think of meta tags when I post -- must start doing that.

He means sbpoet.com

Rather than "

" I'd just use "" that way everything would be closer together, but that’s just what I would do. Other than that it looks good.

Quote: Rather than "

" I'd just use "" that way everything would be closer together

Huh?

Son't do HTML tags hey sbmontana?

(looks at avatar) So your brains under 15k?

12.26 Kb

HTML, well, only the basics. Actually, I think you are referring to the sidebar, which is done with WYSIWYG TypePad software. I have a choice of wide/normal/tight, and have chosen tight. I have a 'pro' account, and could make all my templates 'advanced', but am not ready to tackle that learning curve just now.

Hi Karen,

Thanks for the feedback. I did go back in and made the 'About' page three columns; no reason not to, and I don't know why I didn't do it that way to begin with.

Heh, I liked the "George Bush Eats Kittens" items, too. I try to avoid politics on my blog, but this just slipped past me somehow. . .

I know the sites are still long. Oratory, of course, has to be as long as the poem index.

Watermark, on the other hand -- I'm reluctant to go to three columns here for technical reasons: originally, this site had the sidebar on the left. The left column loads first (and I can't control that) and since I have so much stuff on the sidebar, the site could take a long time. With the main column on the left, it doesn't really matter if the sidebar takes time to load.

Now, I know that website design folks say the front page should be as short as possible, to avoid scrolling. I think blogs are different. In fact, I am annoyed when I go to a blog that shows only one entry on the front page, and I have to click and click to get to other entries, to links, etc. I like blogs that are treasure chests, you open it up and get lots of stuff -- content, ideas, links, pictures, etc. I want the first page to give me a good sense of what this blog is about.

But I'm not an expert. What do the rest of you think?

The first site is very nice. Its easy to find what you want... But the shell is showed to amny times. Besides that its a great site!

Good luck!