Elbows Music Blog Community

I like the featured content section, is that a widget? It's great your on hypem, how recently were you added? Shuffle button is cool, too. Only thing...You really should just buy a domain name.

@metropolitanjolt yeah the featured content slider is a widget. (Link here: http://www.blogger-help.com/2010/05/simple-jquery-featured-content-slider.html). Also, we actually aren't on hypem, its just a link to an account we made with hypem ... unfortunately. Finally, I agree with you about the domain name completely. I'll look into that soon.

@saamFG I like your idea about a content slider with 5 posts. It'll draw the reader more that way. The only problem is trying to find an aesthetically appealing slider like that with the proper coding for blogspot. Putting the featured content slider that I have now on my site took quite some time. It's just a hassle, but nonetheless, I like your thinking. I'll keep researching into other sliders. Also, I was just testing out the footer sections. I just put them their last night as a tester for a couple days to try to feel it out. I agree with you, sidebar is better. I changed it back.

Thanks, for the critique so far. I really appreciate getting feedback. It's nice to hear whether it's good or bad. I take everything with a grain of salt and everything is constructive, so again, thanks.

Daniel

The only negative criticism I might offer is that white text on a dark background can be difficult to read for very long periods. The minute I look away from the screen I get horizontal stripe vision for a few minutes.

Overall, very impressive considering it is blogspot. While I like minimalist designs, OMR is decently aesthetically pleasing.
That said, I concur with the light text/dark background criticism (it made it a little hard to read) as well as the comment about italic titles. Furthermore, I'd consider refining the blogroll images, as they don't really fit with your theme all too much.

I really like your floating 'follow us' button - it'll certainly get some use when you start getting more popular.

I'd argue, though, that this is close to as good as it may get for a blogspot blog. I'd get your own domain and have it redirect to the blogspot for a while and maybe secretly build up a wordpress.com/.org blog (depending on financial constraints) and switch it over if you're really concerned about aesthetics.

As far as the font goes, things look pretty decent to me right now - the limey color works. I can't speak for the others, but I was suggesting that the font should change if you wanted to do a major overhaul and make the background not so dark. Alternatively, you could make the post area a light color and leave the dark background so that you could have a dark text color, but I'm not sure how well that would work on blogspot.

Transferring to wordpress.com won't allow you much leeway in terms of theming - you can more or less start with their preset themes, and then purchase an upgrade to allow you to mess with the CSS if you want to modify it. You can't upload your own themes or those others have created so it is still slightly limited, but there are some nice looking options out there for free.

The real freedom comes from getting your own wordpress.org installation. For this, you need to purchase not only a domain name but also hosting from a company like bluehost or hostgator. It isn't the cheapest thing, but deals can be had that will get things down to about $35 a year on some sites if you're really cash strapped. At this point, you can start constructing your own themes or modifying those others make - there is a much larger library and the option of uploading zips. I remember seeing some tool that acted like dreamweaver but allowed you to dynamically retheme wordpress graphically as opposed to through code but I can't find it right now. To get an idea of how wordpress themes work: http://mashable.com/2011/01/11/how-wordpress-themes-actually-work-infographic/ (trending on twitter right now ahahah).

Personally, I'd purchase a domain from some sort of registrar - GoDaddy is the most widely used one. I made the choice to do it through wordpress.com for some reason, but its up to you. To change from blogspot to wordpress you'd have to modify the DNS settings - google it, as I haven't actually done it on blogspot.

With all that said, its a big project. I don't think it is absolutely necessary to take the plunge all at once - right now, the theme looks great for a blogspot blog and if you're not worried about DMCAs and such, there is no rush to switch to wordpress.com.

OMR, you're giving me a little too much credit. I've just spent far too many hours tinkering around with these things - just a few months ago, my site looked like this: http://malleusincus.wordpress.com/. Pretty bland if I do say so myself.

Just to be clear, the 35$ is what the hosting company would charge you for storing the wordpress installation, photos, mp3s, handling all the bandwidth usage of your site, etc. As far as I know, blogger doesn't give the option to self host, the charge that you're looking into is just the domain name, which you could probably get cheaper from GoDaddy.

On wordpress.com, you can still use your own domain name (purchase for like 10$ a year or something around there), so you could be using 'onmyradar.com' with their free service. Wordpress.com and wordpress.org are two separate services - wordpress.com hosts for you and limits features, while wordpress.org opens a lot more up but requires you to use a hosting service. Here is an explanation that is probably a lot clearer than me: http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org.

As far as the blogroll images, check out http://welistenforyou.com/ for an idea of something that might be a little more appealing. My biggest problem with your current ones isn't the color scheme, but instead that they look a little sloppy. Indieshuffle isn't centered in the img, Fat Berri's seems to be compressed width-wise, the Jesusdied4dubstep one isn't really legible. The way you've presented them, they're meant to be read before they're clicked (whereas on WLFY, clicking is half the fun), but they're hard to read and a little jarring. Personally I got lazy and just went with text links, so I commend the effort but they're just a little distracting while scrolling down the site.

@metropolitanjolt Thanks! I really appreciate that. I'll get in contact whenever I get stuck which I'm sure will happen at some point.

@malleus&incus Well, I found out that blogspot actually is affiliated with godaddy so if I decide to purchase a domain name it'll actually be through godaddy which is a plus. I did a little research and it appeared godaddy is a little cheaper than most other sites ... again which is also a plus. I actually think I'm going to do that for the time being. It's only $10 for the year. And like you said, I won't be self-hosting through blogspot. I think they don't even give you that option. Again, I'll keep plugging and "tinkering" away at wordpress and whenever I'm finished I'll switch from blogspot to wordpress. I want the wordpress.com version of my site to look perfect and be 100% ready before I make the switch. I really only want something cheap for now just because I am a student and I don't really have a lot of financial resources for wordpress.org hosting services etc. But, this is something that I am definitely looking forward to doing in the future.

BTW, I don't think I'm giving you too much credit. You're the first person who has actually pointed something like this (which I mean, custom domain names and web hosting) out to me and actually helped me out with understanding how wordpress.com/wordpress.org actually work. You've been a huge help.