www.jaankanellis.com re-design

**incrediblehelp** · #1 (**permalink**) 05-01-2007, 12:47 AM

Hey folks, just re-designed www.jaankanellis.com.

I haven't got into making it better "looking" yet, wanted to get into functionality, ease of joining and commenting first. Let me know what else could be better, plugins, etc...

THANKS!

bj · #2 (**permalink**) 05-02-2007, 06:26 PM

Source ordered. Very good.

With your horizontal menu up top when people have it set to larger text sizes, the links are wrapping in the middle, which is weird, especially with the hover effect. Add whitespace: nowrap; to the a in that section to fix that. You might have to name the unnamed div that surrounds that menu and do something like:

Code:

div.topmenu a {
  whitespace: nowrap;
  text-align: center;
}

And then you can remove the align="center" in that div tag. BTW, divs are block level elements and cannot be used inside p tags.

This is just my opinion based on my taste but this site seems not to reflect your personality. You aren't a plain vanilla person (you're a GREEN person ;) and this is rather a plainjane layout. Nice enough, certainly functional, but I'd like to see a little pizazz, at least in the header area or something, and you can do some sort of image in background while still having the title render in text for SEO goodness.

You might also wanna poke, I think there's a plugin for embedding flash video in a compliant way. That youtube code is awful. Also, there's an opened p tag that isn't closed right around that section.

jxw · #3 (**permalink**) 05-02-2007, 08:06 PM

Hate to admit it but this is the first time I have visited jaankanellis.com. Here are a few thoughts (while watching the evening news):
1) We all know who incrediblehelp is but others may not. When you say "written by incrediblehelp ...," new visitors may not know incrediblehelp is Jaan Kanellis.

2) About Jaan Kanellis and Jaan Search Bio appear to be the same or at least extremely similar. Maybe a small part of your bio could be on the home page to make the connection between Jaan Kanellis and incrediblehelp.

3) After checking a few links about Google and search in general, returning to your home page was not obvious. I figured it out quickly but I always like ease of navigation.

4) There were a couple of editorial changes that could be made. "Interview" should be "interviewed" on the lead article and somewhere else "meet" should be "met." All I had time to note.

Your blog is a great reference source. Needless to say, I bookmarked it. Won't be the last time I visit.

**incrediblehelp** · #4 (**permalink**) 05-02-2007, 08:22 PM

Thanks for the feedback thus far. I will work on the recommendations thus far.

noel_x99 · #5 (**permalink**) 05-02-2007, 11:35 PM

Even if you keep the layout simple, a custom header could really help dress it up.

It looks nice, but I'm with BJ...I'd rather it was green.

mantawebsolutions · #6 (**permalink**) 05-03-2007, 03:33 AM

Hi Jaan, it looks great. Green would have probably set the tone just right :)

Seriously, I love the simplicity in design, especially the white, blue and grey color combinations. Looks clean, simple to read.

I have three comments:

1. About your top nav: why do you have "About Jaan Kanellis" and "Jaan Search Bio" linking to the same page ?

2. It's just a personal opinion, but I do not use the register option on my blog which makes it easy for visitors to make comments. In your case a user has to register and then wait for the email with password. It may take a few minutes and by then the user may be disinterested to post what they had in mind.

3. Again, a personal comment. I would move the "blog categories" and "monthly archives" to the top above SEO Resources and help. That way they can easily select a topic like, say, link building, and read the relevant articles.

Otherwise, I love it

**incrediblehelp** · #7 (**permalink**) 05-03-2007, 03:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mantawebsolutions

1. About your top nav: why do you have "About Jaan Kanellis" and "Jaan Search Bio" linking to the same page ?

2. It's just a personal opinion, but I do not use the register option on my blog which makes it easy for visitors to make comments. In your case a user has to register and then wait for the email with password. It may take a few minutes and by then the user may be disinterested to post what they had in mind.

3. Again, a personal comment. I would move the "blog categories" and "monthly archives" to the top above SEO Resources and help. That way they can easily select a topic like, say, link building, and read the relevant articles.

Thanks for the ideas. I am working on two new seprate "about me" and "bio" page until then they link to that generic one.

mantawebsolutions · #8 (**permalink**) 05-04-2007, 02:37 AM

Fantastic, will read up on those when you're done.

Just another question. I posted two comments (as you've probably noticed) and saw that in the comment section my avatar is not showing. Instead it shows the following:

"MyAvatars 0.2 _mantasolutions"

"MyAvatars 0.2" clicks to http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/co_redir.php?t=

Has something gone wrong in my profile, or how does it actually pick up my mybloglog profile?

Webnauts · #9 (**permalink**) 05-05-2007, 09:41 PM

1. You have two meta descriptions:
<meta name="description" content="Jaan’s Search Marketing Blog - Toledo, Ohio"/>

<meta name="description" content="Rants and Raves about the Search Marketing World in…Toledo, Ohio"/>

That is 100% spam! I am sure you just didn't noticed that, as it must have been generated from a blog plugin.

2. You have some markup errors, which can be fixed on the fly: http://validator.w3.org/check?verbos...anellis.com%2F

3. I would replace this <div id="header">Jaan’s Search Marketing Blog - Toledo, Ohio</div> with <h1>Jaan’s Search Marketing Blog - Toledo, Ohio</h1>

4. This heading <h1>More From Adam Lasnik on Paid Links Via Eric Enge</h1> and the following topic heading should be <h2>s.

5. Why do you have the Google Analytics 3 times within the body of your page? Why don't you add that in the header of the pages and only once? Or are you trying to trick Google that you have 3 times more visitors as you really do?

6. Replace all your <h3> headings with <h2> headings.

That is all I can tell on the fly.

If you need some help with fixes, you know how to contact me. LOL

After all, do you want to play with me backgammon? :)

Webnauts · #10 (**permalink**) 05-07-2007, 09:59 AM

Hey Jaan, great job so far. I am impressed! :)

Excellent Semantical Structure so far!