Earlier this week I launched a site I built for a very special person – my wife: Lucky Mom. Thanks to a wide selection of family and friends, it has already been generating some decent traffic as well as positive feedback from visitors.
Somehow it even garnered a mention on Entrepreneur’s Journey, which led to an interesting discussion in the comments on the importance of blog design, especially when it comes to monetizing your site.
I’d say I was reasonably happy with the design – then again, who is ever completely happy with the finished product?
There’s still work to be done in terms of finishing touches and various tweaks.
I am pleased, though, with the implementation of a four column layout – that turned out to be easier than I expected although it did have me banging my head a few times (thanks Internet Explorer).
The Art of Compromise
On another note, the project was very much an exercise in the art of compromise, and a sometimes challenging one at that. There’s definitely something to the aphorism about working with family members.
Our discussions about aspects of the site certainly got quite heated at times! For example, don’t talk to me about color schemes!
It’s funny, because I feel that I gave up a lot of design decisions to Kristine, and I know she feels the same way too. Of course, at the end of the day, we were both able to see the big picture: despite our individual quibbles, overall the site looks fine.
This does raise the question: given that on the web (blogs in particular) content is king, why do we throw heart and soul into what are ultimately fairly unimportant design decisions? Who cares what shade of red the footer is – does a visitor?
Help Me With a Problem?
I have encountered one significant problem that I haven’t been able to fix yet. I am using Alessandro Fulciniti’s Nifty Corners script to create some rounded boxes (navbar and featured product area).
However, the script doesn’t work on individual entry pages. I’ve narrowed this issue down to the fact that these pages have a body onload event which Nifty Corners appears to be conflicting with.
I’ve emailed Alessandro to see if he has a fix, but in case I don’t hear anything back, does anyone else have a suggestion?
I have a few suggestions for your JavaScript problem. (Maybe you’ve already tried them, but I thought I’d suggest them just in case…)
1. Try adding a semi-colon to the end of your onload statement.
2. Try using an event listener instead of the onload attribute to execute the individualArchivesOnLoad function. It’s a little bit more work, but it avoids the conflicts that often happen when two or more functions need to be triggered by a single event. If you don’t know how to do this, let me know and I can send some sample code.
The problem is the onload event is geared up only to do one thing: individualArchivesOnLoad(commenter_name)
You need to change the onload attribute to read (something like)
body onload=’individualArchivesOnLoad(commenter_name); NiftyCorners()’
Alternatively, check out Simons excellent script for doing multiple things during the onload event: http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2004/05/26/addLoadEvent
Try this:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/javascript-from-scratch/2
Nice site! I have thought of doing the same thing for my wife on occasion, but she’s not into blogging. Just a tip — you should hide the affiliate links behind a PHP redirect so search engines don’t penalize you for having them.
*Javascript experts* – thanks a lot for the ideas! I’ll give them a try tonight.
*Rick* – I wasn’t aware that search engines penalized these types of links. Why would they? Can you elaborate?
I’m not keen to hide links (even affiliate ones) because I prefer to be as transparent as possible.
In addition, this would be a lot of work as these products are going to change regularly and my wife will be making the updates – so I’m not sure that would be practical.
I haven’t looked at this in detail but the new version of Nifty Corners has a fix for multiple onload events – see http://pro.html.it/niftycube/
*Clive* – I noticed the update today too. I’ve been trying to get it to work on this page but with no success, so I’m this close to giving up.
I’ve also noticed another problem with the new version of NiftyCorners. If you’re using the faux columns technique to produce your column backgrounds, NiftyCorners won’t be able to tell what background to use so your rounded corners won’t work properly.
Because you can no longer set the foreground and background colors manually, you’re pretty stuck – oops!
Indeed, I’d consider it service if Rick could amplify that affilate links comment … I see alot of pretty extensively monetized sites with their affilate links showing … perhaps I am just being dense?
Christian, kudos on the site design work and especially Kristine’s site. Some very easy on the eyes work.
Nice release, and I must say, a terribly useful site for women.
Good work, kudos to you and your wife. 🙂
Great design, I have enjoyed reading it, too!