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Post by theruthlesscrafter on Nov 11, 2014 19:46:12 GMT
theruthlesscrafter.wordpress.comI'm participating in the Blog Mentoring and would love your feedback on my crafting business, The Ruthless Crafter. Thank you so much for your time!
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Post by Tracie on Nov 11, 2014 20:05:06 GMT
I theruthlesscrafter! You have a lot of cute stuff. My suggestion is to make your pictures the full width of your content space. That would probably be at least 600 across. Bigger pictures are always better!
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Post by slapdashmom on Nov 11, 2014 21:01:14 GMT
Welcome! Thanks so much for participating. The first thing I would start with, that isn't necessarily design related, is to move to WordPress.org and get your own hosting and domain (aka .com name). I think you've made great use of white space, and I love that your design is simple and clean. The sidebar, though, looks a little "sterile" to me. No color, no personality at all, until after the fold. I agree with bigger pictures. You're off to a good start!
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Post by Nile Flores on Nov 12, 2014 14:26:35 GMT
theruthlesscrafter - WordPress.com only lets you have access to so many themes, so lucky that you chose one. I disagree with Sadie. If you are doing fine with what you have, stay at WordPress.com. Sorry, but I speak at their conferences and you can build a pretty popular blog on their .com platform. However, down the line, you may want to monetize and that would definitely require moving to the self-hosted side (WordPress.org , purchasing a web hosting account)... as WordPress only offers WordAds. Also, if you decide to step into trying to accept payment, you will need to move to the self-hosted WordPress.org type site in order to be able to use an e-commerce plugin. The only thing I'm not fond of is the endless scroll. There's no point in it. Also, you've got your social share icons loading on the front page too. This is a lot of loading... but you're really lucky that WordPress.com has some load boosters to help your site. Your social icons in the sidebar cut off some text. You may want to either remove the text as I'm sure you intended it to just be the icon, right? Other than that, I wish the font size for reading was a bit bigger.
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Post by jdaniel4smom on Nov 12, 2014 23:21:37 GMT
I agree with Tracie about your pictures.
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Post by Katrina on Nov 12, 2014 23:37:14 GMT
Hello! And welcome! I agree about bigger pictures too!
I won't give too much opinion on design, since I know you're limited on wordpress.com. (Although I'm a fan of simple color schemes and instead of black menus and white text maybe think about your theme colors? Since you're a craft blogger, I'd love to see 1 or 2 colors that pop for for your navigation menus, icons, texts and links--although I did notice that when you hover on the social icons, they change color to match, so that's nice! )
Also, an About Me Widget at the top of your sidebar would be a nice addition--to see who you are (and why we should stay) right off the bat.
I'm also a fan of just showing a few posts on the main page rather than a lot of scrolling.
I wonder if there's a way to add a widget near the top or a pinned post that highlights the fact that you offer services and sell your work? I know you have the links on the navigation menu, but maybe a colorful picture example and a "Like this? Buy it!" text or button or "Custom designs just for you!" or something that catches the readers and helps sales...does that make any sense?
Nice job!
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