Under Construction!
I’ll be working on getting a new theme in place for a while…your comments and opinions matter.
Let me know in the comments…we haven’t decided on one for sure.
I’ll be working on getting a new theme in place for a while…your comments and opinions matter.
Let me know in the comments…we haven’t decided on one for sure.
Any thoughts? I think this is the one.
Kind of like coming home and finding the furniture rearranged. LOL
That said, it is very classy looking …. very suiting an episcopalian ?
I like it…but we want it to work for everyone. Looks real good on mobile and tablets…
I thought it looked sharp, and as you said good on mobile.
I like it. Sharp and snappy!
Michael
Cool, clear and sharp…
One drawback of the current theme, where you get a few sentences of preview of the post. You are requiring your readers to click through on each post in order to read it all. ??? (reading this logged out on a laptop browser — not mobile). It will take more work for your readers to view everything. The ability to scroll down on a single page and read the last several posts (in their entirety) is A Good Thing.
WordPress themes sometimes come with customizeable settings. Check to see if there is a setting for the home page / blog preview page to (best option) show the entire post, or to (better option) show more text than is currently being shown.
OTF,
I chose to do it this way so that we could feature more articles on the front page. I’ll take your concern under advisement and we’ll see if others concur.
I just checked…this theme doesn’t allow for the whole post on the front page…odd…
The images take too much vertical real estate (imo).
I like it.
Slow to load on mobile for me.
For a large screen, the pictures take a lot of space so more scrolling is required. We also see less of each post on the front page. Neither of those are biggies. The number of comments on a post is also not shown on here, which on other sites I regard as a disadvantage.
i’m on the big computer now… i think i like this format… is it possible for one to scroll to the comments as well as the post when opening the complete post? ?
ooops… never mind
i see that the comments do display when post is opened (blush)
The new logo reminds me of Jägermeister, not that I would know, THAT other guy (whoever is our boogeyman nowadays), HE told me!
: )
I like how it looks. The one thing that bothers me is that the number of comments on an article doesn’t show up on the main page. You have to actually click through before you see if and how many people have commented. I like to be able to easily see which articles have resulted in a lot of discussion.
Also, it looks like the way it’s set up now doesn’t allow commenters to link their name/gravatar to a personal website. That’s not a huge deal to me or anything, but it is nice sometimes to be able to check out what other people are doing.
Thanks for the feedback.
I love the look,but I’m running into some significant backend issues…
looks cool, but I agree with OTF, it would be nicer to be able to see the whole article instead of having to scroll and pick…but it still looks cool.
I wonder if a cream-colored background would be more cheery?
Not a fan of the gray. Too gloomy.
Although there is a lot to be gloomy about….
On second thought, keep it.
I’m going to respectfully disagree with OTF above and agree with the choice to show excerpts, and it happens that this theme only offers that option.
That said, I would like to see a lighter shade of grey for the page background. Maybe split the different between this color and pure white as a test/starting point? This is a bit too dark for me. But that’s just me.
I’m probably going to have to change once again.
I’ve probably set up 50 different themes over the last few weeks…bought a bunch of them.
About to lose what’s left of my mind…
We do have a very nice logo now, though…Duane did that!
Love my bird…
Very nice. Clear and sharp. However, you cannot please everyone. I vote that you keep it!
I like the excerpted opening format as it allows a quick scan of topics on my little pad, i like the grey, would agree that a talley of comments would help finding the posts drawing the most interest…. even God can’t satisfy all of us, tho ?
Hi Michael,
Quite a surprise, but reinvention is good.
A suggestion from your friendly neighborhood production artist who makes graphics for social media, viewing from my computer, your masthead logo, text and tagline are fuzzy. You’re using a JPG with a 144dpi resolution. Try a 300dpi resolution, PNG format, white bckground. If that doesn’t work consider increasing the size of the (awesome) logo in 10% increments and increase the font point size. Experiment with using a .25 or .5 point outline around the font text.
jo
Thanks. I sent it to Michael in Hi-Res format, but it came up fuzzy! I’ll send the 300 dpi in png…
Duane,
If the font needs tweaking and you’re comfortable with kerning & tracking tweaks that’s how I have had success overcoming such challenges.
Great work!!
Looks good, but now the menu is missing. Check under Appearance/ Menus on your WordPress Dashboard. You’ve got some good pages that you want to have available to your readers.
This current version is much faster on mobile. Hopefully your stats give you user/device data. Seems like a mobile-first theme, which is usually a good idea unless it isn’t.
Thanks Jim.
I think we’re at about 65% mobile or tablets.
(Imagine a good Pentecostal Preacher’s voice)
“Lord deliver our brother Michael from the demons of themes, codes, fonts…”
Thanks what you do for all of us, Michael ?
Yes! Deliver Michael from the demons that live in these evil little gadgets…. Computer code is straight from the pit of hell ! ! ! !
It may be ?
I think Michael may have a victory over the website demons
Other than paging a little slow on my fire this is a fantastically agile construction and i’ve found it easy to reference today
Am i the only one finding it so?
The main page doesn’t render correctly on my iPhone, very small font all justified to the left, with correspondingly large spacing due to the small font I think. Clicking on to a particular post the second page renders just fine. FYI
Thanks for the kind words…I’m going nuts trying to get the best possible set up that will last for a few years.
AA,
I’ve looked at multiple iPhones and it’s rendered perfectly…which version do you have?
I like it. Nice work.
Thanks, JJ…
It is an awesome logo Michael.
Hats off to Duane.
I would be happy to have a shirt or baseball hat with the logo.
It would be great to represent Phoenix preacher in Texas.
Ike,
Thank you…maybe we’ll do that again.
We had coffee cups and bumper sticker once… 🙂
Love the new logo!
Thank you, Tim…so do I!
I can adapt to whatever you choose–I may be a dinosaur, but I have opposable thumbs. 🙂
Thanks, fil!
Isn’t the phoenix bird a satanic occult symbol?
Yes.
As a matter of fact, I was sacrificing a goat right before I posted this.
I hope she accepts my offering…it’s hard to find a live goat here in town…
I didn’t really sacrifice a goat…it was one of those gyros sandwiches from Arbys…same difference…
i didn’t really sacrifice the sandwich..I ate it and burned the napkin. I think that will work…because i have the symbol and all…
Aren’t we all under construction?….
Dan,
Always..whether we know it or not…
Michael,
yes! Also was making my own application..
“Let us consider that wonderful sign [of the resurrection] which takes place in Eastern lands, that is, in Arabia and the countries round about. There is a certain bird which is called a phoenix…”
I Clement, 25
Looking at it on a laptop now. Almost all of the screen real estate is going to things other than the main content. All I get from the articles is the headline of the most recent post and the top roughly 25% of the picture for it before scrolling down.
A bit more than half the space is going to the logo and then about twice as much vertical space to your standard seven links that used to be in the sidebar.
This feels like poor use of space.
I could tell (even before reading the above comments) that it is now a mobile aimed layout. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but there are mobile aimed layouts that don’t look as poorly designed on a laptop.
I know I’m about the only commenter here that uses the
Let me explain something for everyone.
We used one theme for about 9 years…and i had the skill level to do whatever i wanted to with that theme.
They stopped updating that theme which meant that the whole site was going to break someday soon.
I had to find a new theme.
I found out while looking that the tech had passed me by and I’m barely able to do what I did to get this up.
I’ve done mock ups of at least 50 themes and looked at hundreds more.
I’m trying to find one that satisfies the greatest number of folks and works properly under the load of what we do.
I’m still looking…
outdated tech is a major pain in the you-know-what. It’s my ever-constant companion. I mention the blockquote thing, above, in case it’s useful, and whoa there was an interesting rendering where it omitted the first use of it. And, because you’re so deep in it, I’ll find my own workarounds and wish you well.
I’m drowning in it…and I keep dragging Duane under with me. 🙂
Hey! I just realized I really like the Phoenix Rising logo. Very triumphant! No reason to go down the “that’s evil” path re: the logo.