Web 2.0 Wordpress Website

First, I love to find sites with resources like this. But to answer your questions...

No, it doesn't look modern and professional. It looks very 1999. It isn't eye appealing, at least to me. If I'm looking for design resources, I want to find a clean, open, light, uncluttered site. And no, I don't find it user friendly. Now, part of this might be the fact that it's a dark, dark, dark site, and your placeholder image is of a neon burning cross.

But it seems like that's the look you're going for, with iiNTENSE web as the name of the blog feed. It is intense, that's for sure. I think you could accomplish the same feel, but make it more open and friendly. I've got nothing against an industrial feel, and I like the textures. It just needs to open up and be more inviting. I hope that's helpful - industrial yes, dark and foreboding and intense, no.

Hey Bryant, I like what you have done, stuff like this is always interesting to me.

here are some things you should work on.

• The navigation(logo mainly) could be bigger, Not super-overwhelmingly huge-big, but bigger.

• I think the featured area should go all the way accross and have more vertical and horizontal padding-

• the header bg for the words "all articles" could use some vertical padding as well.-

• What are those cirlces for at the post ending? they dont have much of a purpose, unless they are some read more button or something. If they are, make them all cool and buttony-

• For things you want to pop make them orange, since its in contrast to the blue-ish purple you used, it will make things you want to stand out.. well.. stand out.-

• also, the sidebar could be narrower.-

Btw - Your reviews could use some work.

People dont like one-liners.

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with everyone here. I like your design objective, and I think you have executed it well. I don't think it's too boring or too grey, because the objective you set for yourself was to create an app style template. Mission accomplished.

However, I gave you a 1 in "purpose", because this style should not be applied to just some random wordpress website. This style would work as the front end for an actual web application, or tool. For example, if you applied this look and feel to grooveshark.com, it would work splendidly. Or for a blog specifically ABOUT iphone / ipad apps.

It looks like a lot of the design elements don't actually serve a purpose, and they are just that way because it looks nice. If this is an experiment, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

In short: The template and style you've created is great, but I don't think the content shown in this mockup is the appropriate context for it.

A few things need polishing, which I've made notes indicating. To see some of the best UI designers in action, checkout www.dribbble.com ... it is a community of the best of the best. I'm sure you will appreciate their pixel perfect executions.

I agree with the first guy its been well put together and individual elements have great design quality and finish but over all it doesn't appeal to me, its too in your face and dark. I don't think you get enough information from the article posts and i think the way the have be put together is is a little different.

Immediately it doesn't strike me to have much visual hierarchy and there is no differentiation through color just very dark and gloomy try adding a accent color in there to guide the eye

The internal page is a bit of a let down from the first page the body of it lacks that refine and finish that you have achieved on the first page and again the Grey just dominates the look and feel

I love it dude. Honestly my first thought when I saw it was "this dude belongs on dribbble."

You've created a very clean, modern aesthetic, and your graphics are pixel perfect. It is a very dark design, but if that is your goal then it's excellent. It is a little hard to tell what the purpose of the site is for, and this reminds me a little more of a dashboard than a blog landing page, but again since I'm not quite certain of the purpose I can't really criticize that, so you'll have to decide if the "dashboard interface" feel is appropriate for the content.

Here's some nitpicky points and other thoughts.....(see notes)

...One final thought...

I'm not sure how much front-end development you actually do yourself (are you both designing this mug in Ps and going to be the one writting the HTML and CSS for it??) but I could see some potential challenges with the design from an HTML/CSS perspective. Honestly they're not big challenges, just as long as you style with progressive enhancement in mind. (ie - instead of making everything as background-images, use as much CSS3 styles as possible to achive your design like background gradients, text-shadows, border-radius, box-shadow, etc.)

Kudos dude!!

If you're going for a webapp look & feel then this is perfect. Well done. The darker colors are appropriate and the layout gives that 'app' look.

Nobody can put you down for originality here - I've been working with Wordpress for a long time and I've never seen a theme come close to this.

I'm not sure how much an app-style design is needed, especially as you have designed it in a way that seems to be for full size screens. Perhaps you should be aiming this towards the ever expanding mobile market.

I think the criticism of your colours is unfair and based on trend. The fact is, dark and light are like two opposing horses on a carousel. One is in fashion one minute, but a few minuets later, the other is in fashion.

It's just the same with everything, in the 1970s and 80s hi-fi was all silver aluminium, which went out of fashion and was replaced with black plastic. Then the plastic went out, the silver came back, and in recent years there's been something of a resurgence of the black plastic with things like Playstations and BluRay players.

I actually don't think your use of colours is bad at all. I think, having a lot of colour come from the images is a sensible choice. It's also difficult for anyone to say this is too grey and not enough colour because a lot of the time the colour comes in the highlights, when we hover on links and buttons etc. For all we know, those entire sections illuminate when we hover on them.

I do agree that there does need to be this element of colour apparent. Perhaps you should design it with several different schemes, allowing end users to choose. That would almost make the colours a non-issue anyway.

I would also suggest designing an accompanying theme that DOES use a light colour scheme, to satisfy all the trendy white-lovers.

I'm not sure about the layout if I'm honest, even with blog designs that don't display full posts I'd still like to see some content there, just a list of headings is not very inspiring.

The quality of the graphics here, is high and the use of typography very good, though I'm not a big fan of that "sunken" etched look, a lot of computers have difficulty rendering this well. On one of my screens it looks terrible and blurry.

That's basically all my thoughts for the moment. Good luck!

The main content area looks very cluttered and repetitive.

However, I do like the use of text shadows and the high quality images that are used on the site. Makes it look very slick.

I feel that the main section is too cluttered, and really doesn't separate the articles. I think you could add a little more color to some of the aspects, or remove the gray and use a different color. Black is good, but black and gray is just dull.

my motherlanguge in not german - soory for poor englih .

for a modern design it need more space and not so many hard looking boardes. for example the logo top left . if you want only this space for the top line . the logo should not so (big and laut ) . the position of the meancontaint pictures under "all articals" position should be more to right in one line with the firt big picture above .

if you ask me look it graphic professional ? I think no professional webdeveloper should do this kind of work 2 for me it is the structure clean

1. i think it is userfriendly but to really nkow this i need to test this in real.

Hello Bryant,

I like this concept. It looks pretty and neat for which you have received many kudo's here.

I would like to take a step back and ask some questions - see if they are relevant

1) How does this look on different screen sizes/resolutions? square monitor, wide screen monitor, 13 inch laptop, 15 inch screen, 23 inch screen, 46 inch TV (couch potatoes who like to browse on their TV - i am not talking abt me ) ?

2) important question - How does the prominent UI emphasize the content ?