Here is what my website looks like. I have been using Atahualpa for six or seven months and it's a great theme.

http://www.ldjackson.net

Hi L.D. Jackson,

This is only my opinion and you can tell me to jump in a lake, if you like

1. Your banner drives me nuts. It is S-T-R-ET-C-H-E-D to fit 1250 px, when in fact the picture should only be 1000px wide. The first sign of someone who does not work with graphics much. Your banner depth is only 152. If you take your banner and make it 1000px using the transform tool and crop. Then tell it to be 1250 and the banner height will be deeper. It looks much better.

2. There is A LOT going on in that page, I don't know where to look first. You are obviously a Republican Blogger, so why do you care if Walmart had a terrible first quarter or if someone eats butter not margerine? Lose the NewsMax Blog, it totally waters down your content and complicates your page.

3. Ditto Networked Blogs. If I click on Mike, I see he likes martial arts and gorillas. Do I care? Do you? Do your readers? Lose this for the same reason as number 2

4. Your blog roll is WAY too long. Have a Search by Category, or have an Archives which will show blogs by the month. Much neater that way and takes up much less space.

5. Resources and Best of The Rest in your sidebars could be stand alone pages.

6. Your first page is almost 5 monitors deep and I have a fairly large monitor at 1150px wide. Set the number of blogs to the default of 10, that way it will not be slow to load for people with older computers and if you remove the above as suggested, it should be cleaner looking, less cluttered and more inviting.

There is no way I would tell you to go jump in the lake. I will consider some of your suggestions later, but first, I want to discuss the image.

I'm not good with images and had the banner created for me. I'm not sure what you mean by making it 1000 and then cropping and telling it to be 1250. I know how to resize it using Gimp or IrfanView, but what you are suggesting escapes me. If you can explain in more detail, I will be happy to try it and see how it looks.

More later, but let's deal with the image first.

Here you go. This is 1250 x 208, you will have to reset your header image area from whatever it was..157 or something

I should have made you do it yourself, but it only took me 15 seconds, so no big deal and I don't want to torture you despite the fact that I am a Canadian socialist!

You will see that the lettering looks normal, the table and coffee cup are not stretched.

http://jacksononthemoon.com/political-realities.html

For god's sake don't look at my crap website, it is so outdated, I am ashamed, but I have had no time to update it. Soon, I promise myself!

Hope this works for you.

p.s. I hope you did not pay much for that!!!

p.p.s try http://jacksononthemoon.com/political-realities.jpg duh.

Originally Posted by SharonJ

p.s. I hope you did not pay much for that!!!

p.p.s try http://jacksononthemoon.com/political-realities.jpg duh.

No, the banner was free.

I appreciate you doing this, but I really was interested in knowing how to do it myself.

Take another look and see what you think. I changed to another banner I had, moved the blogroll to its own page, removes some of the links in the Best of the Rest, and only have 10 posts on the front page.

And seriously, I wouldn't be asking if I didn't want an honest opinion.

OK, I snipped the banner out of your page and pasted it into a new page in Photoshop. So it had a background layer of white behind it, and the banner was the next layer. I selected it, Control/T (transform) and grabbed the right hand tag, pulling it left until the text and the table looked normal. Then I cropped it to that size.

Next step: Image/Image Size set to 1250 or whatever it was, which forced the height to 250 ish.

Your new banner has exactly the same problem as the last one, but I like it better than the table and coffee cup.

Dashboard login should not be its own page, why dont you put a link underneath archives in the lower left sidebar.

<a href="http://ldjackson.net/wp-login.php">Administration</a>

I would also lose the Google search and use the search widget which will search your blog for Oklahoma or Obama rather than take you off your website altogether.

Other than that, it is much less cluttered. Good work!

Last comment, blogroll...the font on my screen for your list items is about 4 pixels and barely readable.

Okay, I have removed the Google search widget and made the text on the blogroll page larger. The Dashboard/Log In page I have left in place until I can come up with something different. I use that link to go straight to my Dashboard with one click. It also allows the couple of coauthors I have to log into the blog without having to search for the link.

The am having trouble with the image. I want to keep the height small to keep from taking up a large amount of space before the reader gets to the actual content. And I have to be honest, it doesn't appear to be stretched to me. Maybe I am just used to it?

At any rate, thanks for the advice and help.

The Image: yes, you are used to it. Believe me, it looks stretched. Here you go:
http://jacksononthemoon.com/political-realities.jpg it is only 25 px higher than the original, which is mice nuts. I did a website for a BC political blogger, he gets 1200-1300 visitors a day. His banner is about 375 px high. http://richardhughes.ca He is politically 180 degrees from you. But if your audience likes you they will find you.

Login: <a href="http://ldjackson.net/wp-login.php">Administration</a> in a text widget at the bottom of the left sidebar will bring you to the exact same place without the need of a dedicated page, which nobody else in the world does. (Tell your co-editors that the new link is in the sidebar...they will find it )

The Google Search Widget is still there. You want to replace that with the default search widget that you will find in Appearance/Widgets

Okay, I have the image that you provided loaded into the blog. The only thing I see wrong is it seems to be offset a couple of pixels on the left side.

Should the width be 1252?

I can either make the graphic 2 px bigger or you can go to atahualpa theme options and make your page 2 px narrower.

I'm not sure what is going on. Every banner image I have ever used for this design has been 1250, but it does appear a couple of pixels off. I wonder why that is?

I think I can make the image 2 pixels wider. IrfanView should be able to handle that.

I don't know why that is, unless you have inadvertently added 2 px padding to the page somehow.