Pub WordPress Theme (Available)

dude, get some sleep. this is a rock solid design.

Hey Noel,

This is a great design! I love all the subtleties that are present here... The "Join Us" sign, the chalkboard textures, the logo... everything ties together very well and it makes for a strong piece.

If you're thinking of setting the footer section apart from the rest of the design, you could darken the background behind the footer, or use a crisp line to separate it. Whatever you decide to do, I would keep it as simple as possible and don't over-think it.

Great job on this!

Hi Noel,

I think this version looks much better than the last. I like how you added the leather strip behind your navigation links. I like the added borders around the small pictures; it really made a difference.

I have just a few suggestions that you may want to consider.

I think the dates under "Join Us!" would benefit if the numbers were all the same size. it seems like the numbers go from smaller to bigger "1-6" I can't tell for sure if it is purposeful or due to the font. I would consider a different typeface due to that reason and the fact that January is hard to read in that font as well. Even though the numbers look neat in a phone number it just throws things off balance a bit, making it look like a mistake rather than fanciful. After the font is changed I think it will make a noticeable difference in the right direction for your subtitles "Useful Information", "snapshots From Our Guests" and "Subscribe to Our Newsletter" as well.

Then as I believe was previously mentioned about forcing your text to align on the right as well as the left under "Useful information". The problem with doing that on a small amount of text is the gaps it creates between words. These gaps disturb the flow of reading and draws attention away from what is written. The gaps create rivers, and hyphens are more present as words are cut in half to the next line. This type of alignment only really works on larger text blocks and if one is willing to manually go in and scooch each word closer to each other and reword things so it doesn't cause gaps and hyphens. If your willing to reword and push words together and do the same to all your text blocks (for consistency) than all is well.

Once again, under "Join Us" I would consider lining up the dates to the text below it, rather than to the dashes. I say this because the text is the stronger alignment point and it's just what I was taught.

Overall, I think your heading in the right direction and I love the background pattern and leather behind the navigation.

Noel, amazing work. Everything flows extremely well, even the social media icons in the footer. The only small piece I would add is another listing for the navigation horizontally with just text and bold/underline for the current page. All I can offer is that small piece of usability, your design is flawless. Cheers.

...and many comments, so I´ll be writing about the footer only. I think the reason you feel the footer is not right, is that the elements on that have more contrast than the elements on the body area. So ... you could try making the text darker, making the lines around the snapshots less visible or removing them all together and changing the social icon to more rugged ones, so they would fit the overall theme of your page.

Maybe you could also move the ornament that is now in the bottom part of the body area lower, to separate the footer from the rest of the page.

I really like the engaging nature of this design. Everything is quite well considered. I left comments about things i might change.

I like the "join us button" and the way that you integrate green colour with other shades in this design - it's sayed that using green colour is very difficult, it often comes out too "pure" like from the tube, or looks dirty. So I like it here!

I think that there is too much in this menu pattern. Idea is nice, looks like leather, realistic and natural, but you already have many realistic and natural looking things here, and this one just makes it too busy. I would use a solid colour behind this menu and make the pattern 50% transparent (or more). Not sure how it would look, but maybe it's a way.

Footer looks a little bit separated from the rest, you can merge it using yet another natural wood or leather pattern, or make it intentionally different - so that people see that it's something else than the top. Which is not bad, because if we look at the footer, we usually search for different kind of information, than on the top of the website. Good luck!

the black background makes the page look flat, maybe an image with each section having a nice semi transparent background

This is a GREAT concept! Everything just fits into place on this.

Great design, would be great to see live.

Noel, fantastic job! The expanded panel works much better now and I love the "grungy" look, it is not over-the-top, just right. Makes me thirsty for dark ale! Congrats, very good work indeed.

Don't change a thing!

It's a great design, love how you've incorporated all the pub-like elements in there. One thing you might want to try is see if you can get the leather strap look like it's folded around the edge of the header like you see in some of the ribbon designs here http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/04/showcase-of-modern-navigation-design-trends/

I think you've done a great job with this! I still think you need to add more options for people styles wise in the contend area. I like what you've done so far, but you'll have to address pictures (will they have borders? styles for captions?) Sub titles, quotes, text styles (bold, italic). Things to help the content stand out.

I'm not sure if this will be fixed later, but you have "read the rest here" but you don't have enough space for the second article under this one. I think you should show the full article or fewer lines of this article so you can have at least two showing and no blank space under this one.

I really like what you've done and the progress you've made! You should be really proud of this design!

I'm sure there are many pubs around the world that would be honored to have such a fine looking website.

I simply love it. no ideas on how to improve it.

Great Design, easy on the eye, well structured and important sections.

Nice job, you really reached the purpose!

I reviewed the design before this one and this one is better by leaps and bounds. The only thing I see a bit off is the social media icons. You've already gone and put a lot of attention to the details in the rest of the design why not with those. I'd say make your own or find another set that is better suited for your design.

I think it is very good. Design in accord with theme. Natural old irish element are in modern vision and all element looks completed. Congratulations - its very good work!

Great use of texture! I really like the Join Us chalkboard.

The one thing I would add is a simple text-based navigation to the footer.

Absolutely beautiful. One little thing thats nagging me is the JOIN US sign 'nailed' to the timber frame. I think it would look more effective parallel to the top frame ie nailed at the center.. love what you did with the facebook/twitter logos - very effective. for someone who claims to work in Excel all day, you sure know what you're doing!

cheers mate, and good luck with it

katsie

Really good design, love the chalkboard thing on the right, which is often found in pubs, with deals and stuff. I would try to put a glass of beer somewhere to get people thirsty. I would also try to keep more space for the picture and less for the logo, but that's just me. Good warm design overall!

Nicely done. Clean, could use a little more of the Celtic graphics to get across the Irish pub theme

Looks great! I like it a lot.

For sure a few things I would tweak:

1) Make the body text more legible. I'm not sure what you're using but it is hard to read. Go for something easy on the eyes and everyone will love you remember. Legibility first. Design second.

2) The 'Join Us' button......is that a button? It feels like a button....... never mind i get it now, its for the chalkboard below. I just want to click it really bad. For sure if you make it clickable, it should go to the Events page.

3) The social media icons don't match the rest of the design. keep looking! Other than that it looks pretty solid

4) Maybe a tiny bit more contrast on the menu background. Make that leather like 10% darker

I love it, great job!

Wow, you just made what I considered a good design great. I love the new nav and the sidebar header - nice touch.

Now that you moved the social links to the footer (which was great), I personally am feeling something lacking in the top right of the design. I would suggest either 1) filling up the space again with some links or text, or 2) removing the "Random St. 20, Sometown..." text entirely (maybe moving it elsewhere) and moving the entire design up so that the wood in the header starts right at the top of the window. If you did that second option, I would suggest removing the rounded corners on top of the wood so that it looks like it is one continuous strip of wood coming from the top of the design.

But besides that, the only thing I would change is maybe making the ropes holding the "Join Us!" sign spread a bit farther apart (i.e. give them more of a curve into the sign so they are more identifiable as ropes).

Great design dude!

Really, I love going to pubs and this website makes me excited about visiting that pub. I loved the "Join us" button! An idea that might give an extra "casual" feel to this (and make it more pubbish-look, if you know what I mean) would be to turn the pad where the logo is a few degrees. Just an idea though... The rest looks great!

Noel,

Very nice. I have not read the comments from anyone else, because it would take more than an hour. So if this is a duplication, consider this as yet more valuable informationAs with all Word Press themes, I am sure that you can move stuff around in the sidebar. However, if there is one action I think that you want visitors to take is to sign up for the newsletter, right?

In that case I would move above the fold to top right.

Make sense,

Frank Dobner

Nice work you removed the social buttons from the header which is great and the new ones are good ,i think there is really nothing you can change now but you might try to fill in the space under the subscription buttons and also try to decrease the width of the wood border on the right sidebar that might give more space for the content which is better from usability point of view

I already liked the first version - I think this one has very strong improvements.

LOVE what you did with the navigation - it stands out much more and is more attractive. VERY NICE.

Also very much approve of the move of the RSS, facebook, and other social media links to the bottom.

Overall I think this version is a VERY STRONG design and I'm sure if you're going to sell this somewhere like themeforest you should get plenty of takers.

My only suggestion on this one was to make the nav background tile horizontally to fit the whole width of the screen.

I'm liking where this is going now. Here are a few things that need to change:

1. Take off the "join us" tag. Feels a bit odd there.
2. Don't have such a hard line on the dark green content box. For instance, maybe curl the leather around the bog a bit. It feels like it was accidentally cut off.
3. Obviously the content area feels a bit unfinished. I would add some more content in there and make it interesting by adding columns, dividers and such.

It's looking good. Keep focusing on getting the dark, rich pub feeling. Good work so far.

Has all the Irish elements one would think about and is very pub -like! Clean and yet cozy. This is great!

I think the page peel should be moved to the bottom right. The current placement is creating a focal point in the wrong part of the page.

I'd also change the navigation text color to the light tan found in the page paper rather than that yellow.

I think you have nailed this it looks really nice!

The background works really well, with the header and the leather look!

I would only look at one change and that would be to make the navigation text darker, remove the dotted lines from underneath!

Other than that Great jo!

Hey Noel,

I really like the design. It's real awesome work.

1. What I would change are the social media icons, that don't really fit the design. I would go for icons with a vintage look, tears and dents like the rest of the page.
2. I would be real interested how you handle inside pages and pagination for news, etc.
3. I would also remove unsubscribe and handle it in the e-mail itself. People unsubscribe when reading the mail not on the site. Also I would use a different wording for subscribe, like "Sign me up now" make it more personal.
4. What would be useful information all about? It seems to me that you're just filling that space right now. If you have no use for it remove it. Design with content in mind, don't mold your content on the design.

Cheers, Zeno.

Pros:

1. Colors and wood textures are great

2. Perfect usage of fonts and spacing

3. Big space for branding

Cons:

Nothing... really

Final initiative is to clean up the style of the blog type.

I miss that green background depth divider too.

Outstanding design, Noel! I love the photorealistic effects you've used for this concept. The rustic, wooden feel is totally reminiscent of an old pub and the warm yet muted browns and greens are very inviting and they inject a lot of life into the whole piece. The cohesion just feels so great.

I'm concerned about more technical issues, though. For example, upon further inspection, I notice you have a lot of serif fonts (and just about no sans-serifs). From experience, I know they can look impressive when putting together a concept initially but once you go live with it, they tend to be pretty messy when used in body copy, especially at smaller sizes. I would consider utilising some sans-serifs for the smaller text.

The only other teeny tiny issues I have with it are with some of the headings, i.e. I like the "Stay Informed" heading (it really jumps out at you, as its so different from the others) but I don't know if I like it within the chalkboard, closed off from the actual newsletter box and separate from the social networking icons under "Useful Information". Seems to me that they should all be grouped together, don't you think?

Once again, amazing design!!!

nothing to change !!

This is a very engaging design Noel, it's not easy to stand out among restaurant/pub wordpress themes and you really nailed it here. Great use of textures and I really dig the subtle design touches throughout.

As far as the footer, I would try some color variants and/or play with the type on the headlines. Oh yeah, the coaster behind the logo is brilliant, nice job all around.

Always i wanted to design something like this.... I love this site

Hey this is my first rewey ! You have made a really nice design ! I prefer this one, to your old one, a really nice improvement!

I do agree with the review Amy Feger concerning the pannel under 'join us" with the dates...

Really nice design anyway, not much more to improve... ;-)

Have a nice day!