One tiger to kill the bots

I’ve been making some changes around here on WayneJohn.com.  Popped a logo on top, themed out my install of Thesis a bit and just recently upgraded my comment form a bit.  It’s taken me quite a bit of time to get it all done, but I’m really happy with the results so far.  There is still plenty to do, but I wanted to just put out a little update on where I am with things and explain a few decisions I made.  Perhaps you’ll find some ideas or inspiration from my own perspiration.

First off, the logo.  It was designed by CPRWraps.com a while back for my business cards and letterhead.  Actually, it started off as John Enterprises and I was going to have a different domain name for my business side, but over time it became apparent that opening a second site just for the professional side of my life just doesn’t make any sense.  Why create a second site when I have this one right here?  John Enterprises is Wayne John…why confuse it more than it needs to be.  My name is already a bit confusing to some people, so why make it worse?

The colors in the logo helped direct the colors used in the theme.  I wanted something a little more off-beat, different.  I also wanted something that was more in my personal tastes rather than just good looking and unrelated.  My blog is a reflection of who I am in many respects now.  My love for the early days of green screens and amber monitors, fused with the Tron-like glow around a dull, motherboard-color green, with everything sitting atop a nice cooling system vent…ah, speaks right to my love for technology and programming.

Yes, that’s actually a cooling vent allowing fresh oxygen to fill the room.  Ah, refreshing isn’t it? The fresh air is proudly provided by Twitter.

You’ll notice the floating bar on the left there.  I’ve always liked how the social icons remain in view of the reader.  I feel it’s unobtrusive enough there on the side, and hell, it would be nice to get more action on the social networks too, right?  If you provide the opportunity to share, it might be shared.  While I enjoy the simplicity of the social sharing icons at the end of each post, as a passive promoter of my site, it makes sense to keep these icons in view of the reader if you want to better your opportunity to create more buzz.

If you’re reading this on an older version of IE, like 6 or 7, please, for the love of all that is holy, migrate to a different browser!  That said, if you’re using a more modern browser other than Microsoft’s IE, you should be getting the full effects I’ve added to the site.  Rounded corners and shadows can be seen in a few different areas.  Thankfully everything degrades nicely in older browsers…from what I’ve been able to tell.  According to my results at BrowserShots.org, everything seems to be degrading fine.

I’ve also taken time to pick out fonts, choose matching colors using the color scheme designer.  Hopefully the color blend is easy on your eyes, yet still easy enough to read and understand what’s being said.  I mean really, if I need an eye test, I need to know these things. 

The one thing I like the most so far

The comments form.  For the longest time I’ve always looked at the comments form as a pretty stale part of WordPress.  Not a lot of people really take a look at their comment form and critique it, and maybe spruce it up a bit.  It’s always an eyesore to me to see a bunch of plugins that were added with their front-end interfaces just mish-mashed together on the comment form with no real thought placed behind them as to how they look.  Are you doing this?

And speaking of those plugins, you know the ones:  CommentLuv, KeywordLuv, TwitterLink, GASP and Subscribe to comments.  Ok, well maybe you don’t know all those, but there are the links to them if you want to dig into them a bit more.  I use all of them, and only a few really look good on the screen right out of the box.  I’ve had to do a little CSS, a Thesis hook or two to get the controls where I really want them. They’re in an order that I feel they make the most sense to be in now.  You can see that below.

There’s one more annoyance about all these controls though, they aren’t necessarily intuitive for new commentators to know or learn how to use without a little guidance.  This led me to create what you see there now.  Each time you put the focus on a control in the comment form, the side changes to share a few thoughts about that particular control.  It’s pretty raw right now with only the immediate brain-dumping of text and ideas within it.  I’m going to refine it a bit as time permits.

I thought about the possibility of making this a control with specific content that can be placed into it, not necessarily based on the control that has focus, but maybe in a different manner altogether.  Don’t know.  If you have some thoughts, please share.

For now though, I’m quite happy providing a few tips to maybe help those that aren’t aware of all the features I’m trying to pack into the comment form.

Forward to the future

While the future will always be the future, it isn’t until you take steps towards a goal that it might one day become realized in some today of the future.  This post pretty much sums up about 2 months of “as I can” effort with two weekend marathons thrown in there.  I’m a long way from done, and you’ll continue to see little tweaks here and there as time passes.  The next major implementation I’m going to work toward is the homepage.   There’s a complete overhaul coming, and a surprise site that I’ve been slowly building on the side.  A little bit each day is all you need to build a site, and lose weight.  That’s all I’m saying about that for now.  Maybe a few of you more curious types can find it before I take it live? (Yeah, that’s a challenge right there in case you’re sailing on the good ship oblivious)

Oh, are you wondering about the title of this post?  WTH is with the title?  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s an indication of something you’re about to encounter, and you don’t even know it yet.

To be honest, I wanted to make a more generic title rather than try to dress it up for a more “professional” post.  This is easy going stuff here…not something I’m going to get all SEO on, know what I mean.

Be careful of big eyed tigers. This is your last warning.

Wayne  (531 Posts)

Wayne John is a health coach for people that want to lose weight, gain weight, improve athletic performance, or simply maintain a healthy lifestyle. Wayne has lost over 55 pounds and improves his current health every day by using simple, straight-forward techniques that anyone can integrate into their lives to achieve the same. Contact Wayne today to realize your own health and fitness goals, or get started now by completing and submitting the free Wellness Profile. He also has been developing websites since 1995 and programming solutions for clients even longer. He'd rather be outside having fun in the sun though.