Comments on: Traffic . . .

By: EDF

EDF — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:26:24 +0000

I agree with jrnbj: [quoted] text _is_ very dim.

By: ADB

ADB — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 23:13:06 +0000

Great new site.
1. Top tabs excellent…especially access to great BP Cafe. Will that increase 1.2 avg pages views??
2. Masthead eye candy…roll over it…where does it go?
3. Dividing each posting with links and longer material “beneath the fold” excellent
4. Don’t be afraid to sell your services. The insights I gleam from just reading the blog have helped me be >>100% ROI in ‘08. I’ve signed up for F-IQ. Just need to wrap my brain around it now…haha!

Has any one caught Martin Wolf’’s FT Wed quote “”Charles Bean, deputy governor of the Bank of England for monetary policy, describes what is happening as “possibly the largest financial crisis of its kind in human history”.”?

Seriously great work!

By: jrnbj

jrnbj — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 17:36:51 +0000

On Safari the text in many of the posted excerpts is very dim…..hurts my aged eyes!!!!

By: Kristjan

Kristjan — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:27:49 +0000

Hi Barry!

I really like the new design, but agree with others on the header – it’s a bit too big. Otherwise it’s all good. The new design makes it much easier to read and browse through the site. Congrats on choosing WP! I use it too and couldn’t be more satisfied with it. The best thing about the new site is that if you want to comment, you have to sign in with your own username.

Keep up the good work, Barry!

By: RangerTurtle

RangerTurtle — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:55:35 +0000

Thanks for your blog Barry!

BTW, Charlie Gasparino made the news again; seems he appeared drunk/stoned or something on CNBC yesterday afternoon. That’ll teach him to stop arguing with you

By: KJ Foehr

KJ Foehr — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:37:19 +0000

It’s not just the header; its all the stuff at the top. At 1280 x 1024 on my 19 inch screen, I have 4 ½ inches of stuff that I will rarely ever use. The header has too much black space (1/2”) above the top row of buttons. The buttons themselves are too big at ½” tall. The header pics are too big at nearly 1 inch. Then there is another row of buttons “About”, etc, that are also too tall at 5/8”. Then there is yet another row of seldom used stuff (Subscribe, Search, etc) that is nearly 5/8” tall. Altogether that is 4 ½ inches of stuff most regular visitors will rarely use.

This is a pet peeve of mine as most software and web pages these days waste too much space with extra / rarely used stuff, while the workspace or meat of the page is regulated to less than ½ of the total screen area. In your case 45% of the main screen is comprised of this stuff. Then there is another white space about 1” tall (for Ads I think), which makes it 55%! That leaves only 4 ½” (45%) from the title of your post to the bottom of the screen.

Then when you subtract the side buttons, 3 ¾” on my screen and the empty space on both sides of the screen, 1 ¼” times 2 = 2 ½”. Altogether that leaves much less than 45% of the page to display your post — the main thing I and others came to see.

And if you include the browser bars at the top and the Windows bar at the bottom of the screen, it is even less space displaying the relevant / active info.

Of course scrolling is easy, but I always seems ridiculous to me that the main, important part of a web page is less then ½ of the screen, so that I must immediately start scrolling to read the new / important information.

Good luck with the new site. I’m certain it will be a big success.

By: seobook

seobook — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:49:31 +0000

Hi Barry
I love your work, and this is a rare opportunity for me to be able to give back/help support it.

2 Wordpress tips…

I spent half of last week cleaning up hacked Wordpress blogs Most of the updates are security related, so make sure you keep your blog updated with the latest version (currently it is not)…and you may want to have database backups sent to an email.

your page titles do not put the relevant parts at the beginning…try adding a plug in like this one
netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin/
to make the page titles have the most relevant parts at the beginning of the page title.

By: Pat G.

Pat G. — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:47:17 +0000

Dashboard, huh? I had no idea that I’d already posted 6700 comments. Guess I’ve been jawing with you meatheads for awhile now! LOL Site looks good. Can we change the password so its more user friendly. Hell, I have a hard time remembering my name some days.

By: constantnormal

constantnormal — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:34:01 +0000

It seems oddly strange to see a stat on your blog that is not accompanied by the historical context provided by a chart …

270,969 page views yesterday … so what was it last month? last year?

By: mhm

mhm — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:02:20 +0000

It is visually better than the last site but I have a few critiques:
- the top of a page is prime real state: use it to inform; the cute flash must shrink or present value.
- your content (which is great) does not depend on fixed layout; let it flow with percentage width, maybe set a max value.

- there’s too much white space; reading a line looks like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:White-out_hg.jpg

Other than that, keep up the good!