Hmm. The yellow gets lost in the light background in the middle of the image, making it harder to read.

At least, it does for me. ;)

I'm with Scott. Try making an image on the same color background as your site, this will eliminate any difficulty in seeing the text.

The text is difficult to read against the gradient. Also, the graphic bars in the midst of what is largely a text-based design look a bit out of place.

Try making the graphics smaller (particularly on the side bar) as well as putting the text against a black blurred layer to aid readability. Either that, or ditch the gradient altogether. Gradients are pretty, but they are not easy to read.

I'd agree with the other commentors-- the sidebar (subheadings) are nearly as large as the main heading. I think they should be about the same width as the image, not twice the width of it (as they are now).

The gradient does make it hard to read as well. If you are doing these in photoshop have the gradient on a separate layer, it would be a simple matter to adjust the white point down to increase the contrast while keeping the gradient in place for style.

Thanks everyone for your input - I have no design abilities whatsoever :-). I tried to adjust the contrast and brightness down in PaintShop Pro (I don't have Photoshop) but it really didn't work. This font (Viner Hand ITC) in this colour (#CE9C31) seems to just die on anything other than a pure black background, so I've gone with that. I could have done it with CSS but I doubt very many people have that font on their systems :-) and I want that sort of "dynamic" look to the font

I would only suggest you make the black the same width. It looks nice, but the varying length on the black bars is a little distracting...

Other than that, it looks great!

THanks for pointing that out Vinny - it turns out htat I hadn't paid enough attention to the CSS file that drives this site. I've not looked at too closely as frankly CSS intimidates me though I am becoming more comfortable with it. I didn't see how many places in the MT template needed it's own background colour :-) So I got the main body changed earlier but not everything else. The original colour #333 is what I left as the background to the posts, everythiong else is now pure black #000000. I like the contrast.

If you hadn't brought that to my attention I wouldn't have cranked up the contrast on my monitor and seen iot :-)