I've been developing a onepage wordpress theme for a while. I'm pretty happy with the code (it's about as fast and light as I can make it) the design isn't quite right and I can't workout what's missing

 

http://onepage.aerin.co.uk/

 

I know it doesn't have the 'wow' factor but the whole idea behind the theme is you use this as a basis for developing your own layout. But if I could add a bit of bling than maybe it would keep people interested enough to download.

 

Suggestions?

I would remove the opacity that has been added to everything, it makes the site look a bit dated and washed out. The site would also benefit from having a stronger image that goes with the darker containers, something like https://unsplash.com/?photo=tME8s001BNQ. I'd also look at having a better colour than the default blue for links, and removing the lime green for the form elements to something that matches the existing colour palette.

Thanks @@Jack, tweaks tweaked.

 

Sometimes you look at something for so long the brain just gives up and goes home. A fresh pair of eyes often spots the obvious.

 

As an aside, the background image is optional - you can remove it, change it or just have a plain background.

Nothing about it is really bad, but there are a few things that could be improved upon. I'd say the main issue is the colour palette. It's a little dark and might be better with some less dark blue

I'm open to suggestions. I like the dark blue but if you have some better colours I'll give it a go.

 

Changing colours is a doddle. Wordpress has this excellent customizer function that lets you play with the colours and all sort of other features. If you want a login to the site to experiment send me a PM.

Nice work. On my phone in landscape orientation (800 px) the menu is in two rows. The two rows are too close and it is hard to access the links. In portrait mode I think the sticky menu is taking up too much of the screen. I know you do not like the hamburger icon, but some sort of toggle function would help. Also I think that mobile users are used to menu links are displayed as full width block elements. If you have short menu names like "home" mixed with longer ones like "hollyday photo of the month" next to each other it will look wierd. Also I think the headings should have a neutral colour. The red headings looks like error messages or something I should click

There is already an option to have a hamburger menu.

 

I spotted the styling problem with two lines of links yesterday, I'll fix this later. And I agree about the red - that was me just messing with things.

 

Everything you see is built in - no plugins required - which makes for a very compact theme. The whole page loads in under 500Kb and I reckon with a bit of minifying and tweaking I can get this down to under 400Kb

Red is now blue and I've set the option to display a dropdown menu rather than a hamburger.

 

It all seems to work OK.

I would change up the colour scheme to make it more exciting.

Ok. So what colour scheme do you suggest?