Wednesday, April 1, 2009

What You Think?

I'm working on updating the site. It was feeling like 2002 rather than 2009. It's not quite there yet, but almost. I'm planning to purge some of the ancient posts because really, who needs another recipe for tomato sauce? I'll also start working on the Categories links as well. I haven't been as diligent about organizing my posts. Maybe I can figure out how to get a proper widget install instead of the hack solution I've got going.

Any suggestions? I'm open to constructive feedback.

11 comments:

Wandering Chopsticks said...

Much more soothing to my eyes than the vivid green. :)

dp said...

WC, I know, right? But the idea of making changes to the template was so daunting. I have to use html since I'm not hosted at blogspot. Every time I change something I'm always afraid I'm going to completely and utterly screw something up.

But now I'm thinking the beige is too bleh. I want soemthing vibrant but not annoying. I may be test driving some other colors soon. We'll see.

QGIRL said...

I'm not quite the person to give advice on this kind of stuff, I mean look at my blog..I use free templates from the internet or blogspot. I have slowly taught myself some html, but barely enough to keep from destroying my blog.
I loved your blog and thought it was great looking and functional.
Looking forward to your new and improved site!
p.s. I think I'd prefer a photo of one of your creations on the top of the banner, something more warm and delicious. ie one of your noodle dishes. The japanese eggplant? or is it tomatillos? is a tad too cold and monochromatic for me. just my humble opinion. :)

Mary Bergfeld said...

I'm liking what I see. Take your time, don't settle. What can be changed can be changed over and over again. Just remember to backup what you do have.

Dee said...

qgirl, I also use the free templates from blogger, but since I don't use blogspot to host, I have a small selection and have to make the template changes using HTML. And I thought I was locked into the templates, but turns out they can be modified! Took me 2 years to learn that :-)

I agree with you about the banner photo. It turned out to be a compromise. Originally I wanted a finished dish as well, something with reds and blues too, but when I started cropping photos, the look wasn't right. I tried cropping one of the noodle dishes and it just looked like a mess of worms or something. I also tried cropping the picture of my wok and my mortar, but those ended up being just bands of black or brown. Truthfully, the Thai eggplant looked best. As I acquire more photos, I'll have more possibilities to play around with the banner.

Thanks for your input.

Paula said...

Oh lordy, I am so not up to speed on this type of thing. I actually like your blog set up, and your new banner is very eye catching. One thing that I like on all blogs is a no-clutter approach. When backgrounds are full of paisley designs, and there are flashing/spinning/rotating thingees, and the side bars sport vertical stripes, it becomes too distracting. But that's just me. I like cleaner lines. No matter what you do, though, I'll keep visiting for the great recipes and fun filled banter! :-)

Dee said...

Paula, I agree that too much stuff in the sidebar is distracting. I'm trying to clean that up. I need to figure out how to collapse my Archives because if I end up blogging for years, I can't have it just add on each month. And i just realized the bottom half of my pages are the wrong color, but only when people click the permalinks. I have no idea how that happened. Now that is distracting!

pam said...

I think it looks great! I like the colors.

TS of eatingclub vancouver said...

What a daunting task! I'm clueless in terms of these things. Too lazy! I'll learn from what you do, hehe. =) I like the green you currently have.

Dee said...

ts, you definitely don't want to learn from me. I deleted something I shouldn't have and hubby had to help me fix it. There was no way I would have figured it out myself.

Manggy said...

Unfortunately, 2009 for many people means clutter galore on the sidebar. I dunno if you'd wanna take advice from my humble blog, but just have an idea on how you want it to look, then everything else will fall into place (if it doesn't, it's not meant to be). Sort of the reverse of the form-follows-function thing, especially since there's such a compulsion to add too many things if you're thinking about function first.