2015-09-02

rpmockblog:

My theme sucks? Impossible, you might say. After all, I spent hours on it. However, any sane web designer knows exactly why your theme sucks. Here’s a list of reasons addressing the terrible trends that so many people have fallen prey to and what you can do to fix them.

1) Your color scheme sucks:
You might be thinking to yourself that dark colors combined with colors that are ever so slightly lighter than the aforementioned colors is a combination that pleases the aesthetic gods. The trouble being that you’re completely wrong. In fact, when you use low contrasting colors, or even colors that contrast too much, you are inadvertently ruining everything. Not everyone has Superman’s visual abilities. For those who have visual impairments, and even some who do not, you are rendering your theme virtually unreadable.

“But RPMockBlog,” you might be saying, “I can read it just fine. My superior vision triumphs over all.” Well, thanks, you’ve just proved you’re a dickwad and a dickwad who has no web design skills at that. Any good web designer will tell you that you absolutely must contrast dark and light foreground and background colors. Additionally, according to Lighthouse International, “Don’t assume the lightness you perceive will be the same lightness perceived by people with color deficits.” You must always, always account for those who may have vision problems, otherwise you’re a massive douchewaffle. Also, using colors that don’t properly contrast is a web design faux pas. You’re not cool because you use an #0D0D0D background with #171717 font color. You’re just annoying and you failed basic web design class. That’s an F, folks.

2) Your content box sucks:
Now, why would your content box suck? After all, it’s so perfectly, adorably small and all the way down at the bottom of the fucking page, right? Well, good luck to anyone who tries to read your shitty ass posts in your shitty ass content box. In order to even see what’s in there, you’ve got to CTRL + your way to a land where no one can hurt you with their poor design sensibilities. Now, the aesthetic gods may be smiling upon you, but every person who tries to read your posts on your blog is frowning immensely. So, what can you do to remedy this?

The answer is simple: use that brilliant CSS knowledge of yours to… Get this… Up the height and width of your box and center it on the page. Why? Because not only does this provide your loyal followers with the ability to read without having to scroll for five minutes just to get past a paragraph, but by centering the box, you have drawn more attention to it than you would have just leaving it at the bottom. You may have to rework your background a bit, but that’s a small price to pay for something that might enhance your theme overall.

3) Your font size sucks:
“Oh no. Not my font size. The aesthetic gods will forsake me if I have it any larger than 4px.” Well, let them forsake you because you’re forsaken basic human decency by choosing a font size that is humanly impossible to read. Not only is this awful for people who are vision impaired, but it’s a headache for just about anyone who has to go view a post on your page. Ever wonder why you never see any of these trends in modern, mainstream web design? Because they suck massive balls, that’s why. No one in their right mind uses a font for page that’s less than 11px. That’s your bare minimum.

”Forget that,” you’re probably saying, “let them eat tiny font!” Slow claps for you, fuckwizz, you’ve successfully managed to convince people that you’re a gaping asshole. Accessibility is by far the most important thing in web design, because if people can’t see your content, what the fuck are they supposed to do? You’re just making life hard for everyone around you because of your selfish need to have everything your way. Fuck off.

4) Your autoplay sucks:
Last we checked, it wasn’t 2004, so why has autoplay made a comeback from the hell that was Geocities? Who the hell knows, who the hell cares? It’s tackier than a gaudy Christmas display and twice as annoying. At least most Christmas displays don’t play Monster by Meg & Dia on a loop. It’s just common sense to at least let people choose whether or not they want to listen to your favorite dubstep remix of a Lana Del Rey song. The music you use should always be completely optional.

Why? Because you’re inadvertently jump-scaring certain people, and you’re inconveniencing many more. If someone has their headphones turned up, boom, you’ve probably caused hearing damage. If someone is startled by sudden noise, boom, you’ve wrecked their day pretty hardcore. No one wants you to wave the dick of your shitty music taste in their face. 2004 called, they want you back.

5) Your navigation sucks:
“Read my rules! Read my character’s bio!” you scream into the void. Easier said than done in your 4px font, small boxed, poor contrasting, autoplay level of hell. How do you expect people to get to your pages when your links are tiny ass x-marks that blend into your background and sit at the very bottom of the page? Not only that, but the only indication given for where your links lead is the navigation bar at the bottom of the browser. How is someone supposed to know what ‘/poop’ means just by looking at it? Is it actual shit? Is it a joke? Do I dare to click on the poop that may or may not be your rules page?

Always, always make your links highly visible because otherwise you’re just causing a massive amount of frustration for anyone who might want to roleplay with you despite your horrifyingly bad sense of graphic and web design. You simply cannot yell about people not reading your rules when you make your rules impossible to read. That’s idiotic bullshit, and you should feel bad about it.



There is no TLDR here because you need to read this article in order to improve. But all in all, you may think you’re the hottest, aesthetic-god worshiping shit on the block, but you’re not. Basically, stop, drop, and either go enroll yourself in a web design class or heed our advice and fix your shit.

Peace out!

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