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General Discussion

Website Critique

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a website for my WordPress plugin the last few weeks and would appreciate some genuine feedback and a few suggestions on how to improve it. Now design isn't usually my bag but I've been trying to brush up on my skills and this project has been enjoyable practise.

So, a few details. The site is a custom WordPress theme and fully responsive (I hope). The logo was designed by a friend of mine and the icons are from picons.me. There's still a few things to finish such as the homepage text and to convert the images to a sprite sheet, but for the most part I feel it's nearly there.

Anyway, thanks for reading and any feedback would be appreciated.

http://delightfulwp.com

Ashley

4 Answers

Stone Preston
Stone Preston
42,016 Points

Very cool! The design looks really good and the header animation is awesome. Im not really a fan of the animated appearance of the delightful downloads section, I would prefer it be static like the rest.

Thanks Stone!

I really like the design, very easy to navigate. It responded well to the Window Resizer. I agree with Stone Preston on the delightful downloads animation. On its own I like the Delightful WP logo, but when viewed with the rest of the page it doesn't appear to compliment the font you've chosen. Though my opinion should be heavily weighted, I just barely started to really pay attention to these things.

I know what you mean about the animation. The problem is when you learn these techniques you try to put them everywhere, and I really had to hold back on some of the ideas I had. Someone quoted somewhere else that "With great power comes great responsibility" and I think this really holds true in terms of CSS and animation.

I may try a few font variations the weekend. Open Sans is very clean and like you said maybe doesn't work well with the logo or the more fluffy appearance of the site.

Thanks for the feedback so far.

Tom Mertz
Tom Mertz
15,254 Points

Hey Ashley,

Great job, it looks really nice! I'm going to have to disagree with the rest. I'm a big fan of that pop out animation menu under delightful downloads (unless you fixed it already.) The animation on the next page after the click doesn't bother me, either.

I agree the title is a little weird looking in context of the rest of the page. The font is beautiful, but a tad hard to read. And I think since your title is one of the most important things, it should be more accessible to the eye. I don't know I'm not a designer, though.

Other notes:

  • I thought that the icons that zoomed in under values where links and I tried clicking them a couple of times. That was a bit unclear at first.
  • The social media links at the bottom blended in and I didn't notice them at first. Maybe bring them up in a line instead of snuggling them into the nooks, but again preference.
  • I might be crazy again, but as a first impression, I wasn't sure that your links to the blogs on your footer at the left were actually links. (Quite possibly because they were in a different language). I think starting them underlined would get rid of any confusion.

I hope this helps. For every one of these things, you have 5 that are super great. You colors are great. Icons are cool. Buttons are satisfying. Fonts are crisp.

Very good looking site, keep it up!

Tom, thanks for such a detailed response.

I think the type is something I need to play with and try and find the right balance. I really like the logo and I know what you are saying about readability but I think it portrays the brand image well, and it's about finding the other fonts to complement it. I'm currently using Google Fonts but have just setup an account with Typekit to give me more options.

Totally agree about the links in the footer. They need to be underlined to improve usability.

Again with the social icons, I wanted them to be a part of the design but still be visible. Before I create the sprite sheet I think I'll experiment with color/positioning and see how to make them more noticeable.

Thanks again for the feedback.