But I don’t just hate it for me, I really hate it for you too!
If you currently don’t have the huge header, you may still want to read this just in case you may think about it someday. I have noticed that some of the most popular wordpress themes these days come with the absolutely huge header areas. Sure, there is no argument that it looks cool, but why take up so much of your important screen space?
I was thinking about this, and I came up with what I think to be, a very good analogy. If you were a land developer, that sold land and properties to people, would you build a sign that took up half the property that you are trying to sell? That sign hides all of what you are trying to sell below it. Sure, you know people would definitely see your sign every single time they come by, no doubts there, but would they necessarily see the properties you trying to sell below it?
I personally think a header can be shrunk in height, width, or both and still be designed to look great! Just as long as it is placed right. Even if you are just extending one of your sidebars to shift your items up, I think that is a huge accomplishment. That original screen that you see which requires no scrolling is seen more than any other on your site. It is important to have content there that you want to be seen every time.
I personally have not monetized my site much as of yet, far too new. But what I have done is tried to give credit to the participants and commentators of my site. The community that is starting to form here. As you can see I have them all very high in my sidebar. Everybody who stops by here is sure to see everybody else that is participating. I like giving credit to all of them in that way.
Someday I may monetize my site even more, which is why I will always keep my header as small as possible to maximize the possibility of return and viewings.
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ReformatThis is a Sole Proprietorship Company owned and operated by RJ Matthis. This website is the personal blog of RJ Matthis and will contain a wide range of rambling thoughts. Everything from technical php tips to posts full of RJ's creative nonsense.
I agree. My header’s huge cuz it comes with the theme and I haven’t had the chance to redo it. Sucks to rely on other people’s themes cuz you don’t know how to make one yourself
Kelly, really…yours isn’t that bad. In my honest opinion it could be smaller because the clouds aren’t really adding anything to the blog. However, it’s not a larger header, and would be a fine size for a custom designed header.
If you guys want to see a BIG header, go to a blog I randomly came across one day - blogpaul.com
Haha awesome article man! You are absolutely right. People are wasting their “above the fold” space with those gigantic headers. Also, the analogy is very good. hehe I would also like to add that I love your template. It’s very clean. =]
So many compliments! Thank you!
[…] So as you can see by that example picture above, the left side is what this theme looks like by default and after all the image and css changes, what I have made it look like. All and all it was about 45 minutes worth of work to “Reformat” it to my liking. For such a drastic color change there were quite a lot of image adjustments and edits that I had to perform as well as quite a bit of standard css edits. Really not a big deal though. Even though it was already a great design to start from, I do like it much better now! One of the things I just had to do right away was clean up that HUGE HEADER! […]