Web Site Review #1 - Ledger Pad

What's Below the Surface? They say that only one ninth of an iceberg is above the surface.
Such is the case with Ledger Pad.

So far, I have received seven submissions so far for my free web site reviews. Honestly, at first, nothing caught my eye. Though most of the sites have potential, nothing seemed exceptional. (Though I shall be looking into them further soon.) That is, until I looked closely at Ledger Pad.
Though Ledger Pad may be nothing to look at, upon closer inspection - it’s a blog you don’t want to miss.

Why?
Many reasons.
Let me explain in two words.
Content and Vision.

Content

Dan Cole, the man behind Ledger Pad, has quite a bit inside his head. He is a freshman in college and has experience with web servers, PHP, Perl, MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, web design, and more.
It shows.
All of Dan’s work and writing is top notch.

I don’t quite know how to explain it, so go check it out yourself.

Vision

This is kind of hard to explain - but I’ll give it a whirl.
Dan simply has a unique way of looking at things.
He looks at design, the internet, etc in a way that most don’t.

He also brings to the table new ways of doing things.
For example, his current theme project (still in Beta version), the Dan Cole Theme, brings new elements to the table.
It is designed to be easy, fast, and clean.
Ok, so that isn’t new. But, you can edit the top menu, sidebar, and footer’s background and text colors, link colors, etc all from the Wordpress dashboard without any HTML/CSS knowledge.
That is something I have not seen before.

Ok, the Design

What do I think of it?
…
I think it’s nice.
But could use some improvement.
The general layout is quite nice. It’s ordered and logical.

Thing’s I’d change:
1: Get a better logo. Dan is currently working on it, so I won’t get on his case too much. That alone will greatly improve the blog.
2: Add a border to the right and left of the content. It doesn’t seem complete as it is.
3: Give the sidebar a little substance. It seems to run into the content. Making it more ’solid’ will help. Possibly give it a border, background color, or something else to anchor it down.
4: Fix the footer. The categories are in the footer and sidebar. Also, he should remove the meta links. We don’t need them, so that valuable space should be used for something else.
5: Change the ‘Subscribe by Email.’ It is important to have that option, but make it a link. Sometimes visitors will get the two mixed up. I still do that to this day over at Pro Blog Design and I’ve been a subscriber and regular visitor there for months.
6: Finally, I’d change the main navigation. I’d lessen the margin or decrease the font size. The navigation and the site title mix together a tad too much.

So there you have it.

My first web site review.
If you are interested in getting your web site/blog reviewed for free, head over to my free reviews page and shoot your submission my way.

Thoughts? Comments?

Full URL: http://ledgerpad.ath.cx/
Topics: Web and Personal Development
Author: Dan Cole (Learn More)
Site Age: Seven Months
Site Extras:Free WP Theme - Forum
One Notable Post:Two Seconds to Convince

 

8 Responses to “Web Site Review #1 - Ledger Pad”

  • i like what you’re doing here. great review. look forward to seeing more of these reviews in the future!

     

  • Turtie!
    It’s been a while since you’ve commented. I’m glad you’re still around!
    :-)

    Thank you!
    I hope to see your blog show up in my inbox when you get that new layout. ;-)
    If you want any help, let me know and I’ll be more than happy to help you out any way I can!

     

  • Thanks for the review. I’ll be sure to make changes to my site eventually. You’ve also given me some ideas on things I could do to improve the layout of me site.

     

  • Good review Brian. The thing that really stood out to me is that the forum is very well blended into the design. A lot of sites don’t take that extra effort. :)

    About the email bar; you could have a point there. It’s something I’ve been wondering about as well, though I do prefer the idea of having the form on the page. I think one way to combat the confusion is to have text in the form itself. I have “Search…” in my search bar, but nothing in my email one. Ledger Pad has it in both though, which might help. :)

    I’m redesigning the sidebar though, and the new design shows a lot more strongly that the email form is a part of the subscribe section, not just the regular sidebar. :)

     

  • Agreed.
    Ledger Pad did a nice job with the forum.
    :-)

    The thing about yours is the email stands out more.
    The search is blended in, which is nice. But the eye is drawn towards that long white box with looks like all search boxes look like.
    I always go there first and sometimes I catch myself.
    Don’t get me wrong, I love you’re design all the way ’round - except for that.
    I’m looking forward to the new design!
    Best of luck!

     

  • Brian,
    I think you’re right here. The email bar is definitely the more noticeable of the 2.

    I can’t promise that that’s not true in the new design though. I very purposefully relegated the importance of the search bar. It’s just not used that often… :(

     

  • Michael,
    Your sidebar is messed up…

    Have you tried Crazy Egg? CrazyEgg.com
    They track all of the clicks on any given page.
    I have found it very useful in learning about positioning, click through, etc.

     

  • [...] Brian Purkiss recently pointed out, people can get the search and email subscribe bars mixed up. This is particularly true in my case [...]

     

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