17 replies to this topic

[jasonant]

Im a little late to the party here, but I have to give a shout out to Alex and the MD theme.

Its bad ass.

Just did a few minor updates to EvenMinds and I'd love to get everyone's feedback:

http://evenminds.com

Thanks -

Jason

(btw - welcome, Sean! Glad to see you here)

[Sean Davis]

Thanks, Jason!

I think your install looks nice and clean. The background you're using is one of my favorites. SubtlePatterns.com?

My one and only suggestion would be to somehow break up the area between your header and feature box. Right now, I feel like it's incomplete because of the solid dark color. Are you considering using the main menu at all? Or perhaps some formation on the feature box?

Either way, your site is clean!

[Alex Mangini]

Long time no see

I agree with Sean, I'd try making the colors in the header and feature box different.

[jasonant]

@Sean yes, subtle patterns has some great patterns! Haven't put much thought into using the menu, but definitely been wanting to change up the header and feature box colors.. Any thoughts, suggestions?

Wondering if getting rid of the grey all together would work, or keeping it in one area only...


@Alex yes, it's been a minute. Ive been fortunate enough to collaborate on some great sites and writing projects over the pas month or two. Great job here, man. Will be reaching out to you soon, too!

[Sean Davis]

Honestly, I don't think the gray is that bad if you have a menu in there. Remember that there are plenty of built-in colors for the menu itself so that may be all you need.

The feature box has a lot of dead space so I think that's making it worse. I looked at your source code and saw some random <br> tags in the h1 headline. Is that to push the content further down so it doesn't sit so high? You can add this to your custom.css to shape things up a little better:

.custom #feature_box h1 {
	padding-top: .5em;
}

.custom #feature_box > p {
	font-size: 1.1em;
}

.custom #feature_box .format_text ul li {
	margin-bottom: .7em;
	font-size:  1.1em;
}

[jasonant]

Thanks for the code, Sean! That def tightened up the feature box - this is my first stab at any type of coding so it is greatly appreciated.

I was looking around in the dashboard and could not see the menu options (is it a Thesis option or an MD?), outside of that, I only have single post pages, and 3 resources pages and I'm not sure its enough to warrant a whole menu, if you know what Im getting at... perhaps a border, or even internal background graphic (similar to my resources buttons) pop out more?

[jasonant]

scratch that, looks like adding that code didn't make a change to the feature box.. I'm missing something, somewhere.

[Sean Davis]

Where did you add the code? Dashboard => Thesis => Custom File Editor... right? That definitely should have worked. I don't see that CSS in your custom.css file right now.

I don't think you'd have to get too extreme to separate the header from the rest of the content. Maybe just a thicker border at the bottom of it? Try this in your custom.css file:

.custom #header_area.full_width {
    border-bottom: 4px solid #F1F1F1;
}

Let me know if you need help getting it all in place. Both codes should work fine.

[Sean Davis]

Oh and the menus are created through Dashboard => Appearance => Menu. You'd need to create a new manu called "Main Menu" and then assign it to the main menu location. That's the one that will show up beneath the header. If you wanted to give that a shot (I do agree with you on not having enough stuff to warrant the use of another menu), you wouldn't need the CSS directly above this post.

[jasonant]

Yes, I added it to Custom File Editor and it appears nothing changed.. just dropped in that border code and that worked/showed up immediately for me. Wonder if there is conflicting code by any chance for the feature box?

[Sean Davis]

That's definitely possible. But I'm looking at your CSS file right now and I see:

.custom #feature_box h1 {
}
.custom #feature_box > p {
}
.custom #feature_box .format_text ul li {
}

What's up with that? What happened to the properties and values?

[jasonant]

crazy! no idea, the properties show in my editor just like you had.. i did cut and paste though, let me try to enter manually..

[jasonant]

Ok, looks like after I entered by typing it in, it took Not sure why pasting it didnt take in the editor.

It does help with the spacing, thats for sure - thank you man.

[Sean Davis]

One last thing... part of your code was still copied/typed wrong.

You have:

.custom #feature_box .format_tex ul li {
    font-size: 1.1em;
    margin-bottom: 0.7em;
}

You're missing the "t" at the end of ".format_text" That will add the finishing touch for you!

[jasonant]

wow, what an amazing difference that made - ah, the wonderful world of coding (that I have completely no idea about, haha) You rock, Sean!

[Sean Davis]

Thanks, man!

[jasonant]

anytime! I actually ended up tweaking the color on the header border to match the dark red portion of the logo and i think it looks pretty sharp and crisp now..

[Sean Davis]

I saw that. I cracked a little smile and shook my head in approval. "Nice."