Is it ok to leave the widget "header Right" blank?

[Gordy]

Hi All,

I used Landscape theme for the site here : http://mag.afroscandic.com/ and I would appreciate your views on the followings :

A. I have not placed anything in the widget ”Header Right”  and “Secondary sidebar” Do you think that visitors will be able to see this empty spaces showing the messages “This is the widget area in the header”  and “This is the secondary sidebar if you are using a three column site layout option” on my site ?

 

B. Is there any other thing that visitor could easily see that could make them think that the site is not professional enough?

 

C. Inaddition, I would appreciate your suggestions that could make this work better.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Gary Jones]

A) No, they won't be able to see that. What you listed is the widget description (info for you, the developer), not the default content. If you leave the header widget area empty, then Genesis is clever enough not to add redundant (empty) markup either.

B) No, it looks good!
(Actually, ensure that All Rights Reserved, if you actually do need it under Danish copyright laws, uses capitals.)

C) To me, the site isn't immediately obvious what it is, or who it's for. Having glanced the Denmark address in the corner, and mentally broken down the site name, I can guess that it's for members of the African community in Scandinavia. Others might not spot that though, so a site description / tagline (WP Admin -> Settings->General) that appears under the the title would summarise it immediately. I've now just seen that your home page document title has words to that effect, but as my tab only just shows "Celebratin...", I couldn't spot it.

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WordPress Engineer, and key contributor the Genesis Framework | @GaryJ

[Gordy]

Many thanks Gary. I really appreciate your assessment and suggestions.

On the last point. You are very right that it deserves a tagline and you actually guessed right that it is meant for African community in the Scandinavia.

My main is actually to have it as a child website for the parent site ; http://www.afroscandic.com, where we celebrate and connect Africa and Scandinavia by providing vital pieces of information that can enhance the lives and socio-economic experience of Africans and Scandinavians. Be a learning place, a reference guide and a directory for Africans and Scandinavians. And this child website; http://www.mag.afroscndic.com would be focusing on birthdays, weddings and other celebrations to preserve life's precious moments with photos and videos.
The child website is directly linked with Afroscadic.com and we have placed a "News flash message" on Afroscadic.com that would notify people of this new child website.
But
Some people have opinion that is it better to have all these stories, both the more official content like interviewing government official, business representatives and the personal stories, like the weddings etc on same site. They argued that it will help to advertise Afroscandic very well since we are still canvassing for publicity.

On the other hand, some have an opinion that it is good to separate them so that there would be specialization and a personal wedding event should not be mixed up with an interview with an Ambassador, government official, director of businesses, report from schools and university, etc..

What is your opinion?

Thanks ahead.
 

 

 

 

 

[Gary Jones]

I guess it really depends on your target audience. You've clearly already gotten some feedback, and how much you listen to them really depends on the exact wording of the questions you asked.

If all is equal between the two camps, consider some points:

- if it's a relatively new site, splitting it up over a root site and subdomain may mean you not hitting the critical mass of traffic to make the site / community work.
- splitting up the site may make it harder for BuddyPress and other community plugins to work as well.
- Posts can always be assigned to categories, which clearly delineate between official interviews, and personal events. You could even create custom post types which handle something similar.
- You can always split up a site later on if you feel that staying with one site wasn't working.
- Managing / administrating a single site is easier than a main site and subdomain site.

Depending on your actual content format, I think a mix of official and personal content provides a nice mix - stops all of it feeling "dry", or just an overly fun social site.

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WordPress Engineer, and key contributor the Genesis Framework | @GaryJ

[Gordy]

Thanks. Could you please give me a link to know more about creating custom post types.

 

Thanks

[Gary Jones]

Start with http://codex.wordpress.org/Post_Types to get a little bit of background information.

You might then like to try http://www.blazersix.com/wordpress-code-generators/ which is a wizard for creating CPT code.

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WordPress Engineer, and key contributor the Genesis Framework | @GaryJ

[Gordy]

@GaryJ thanks.

I have cheked the links. I am a non-techie guy and it looks complicated for me to set the custom post up.  Won't it be ok if I install "Genesis Featured Widget Amlified"  to be able to occasionally hide some posts that I might not want on the home page?

[Gary Jones]

Yes - but you'd need to have widget areas on the home page (your theme might already have that).

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WordPress Engineer, and key contributor the Genesis Framework | @GaryJ

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