Major blog re-design!

Yep that’s right, as you can see the blog has had a MAJOR revamp!! Whilst the core principles of the site have remained in tact, the look, feel, navigation and features have all been refreshed to give the site a much more pleasing viewing and browsing experience. I hope you like the new look and enjoy exploring around…so what’s changed…

New Features
The first thing you’ll notice is the very different home page. We now have a featured article box (more on that in a second) as well as a summary of the latest articles, along with a teaser of what is in other sections of the blog, at the bottom of the page. I’ve also tried to style the top navigation so it ties in a little more with the look of my main PORTFOLIO SITE.

The three main new features of the blog re-design however, are:

FEATURED ARTICLES BOX:
On the blog home page now, above the Latest Articles area you will see this new addition. Here you will find teasers to articles on the blog I think you, the visitor, might like to read. It’s a great little feature and will automatically scroll through the articles (plus there are buttons to scroll manually). Want to read one of them? Simply click the picture and you’ll be sent straight to your article of choice!

STAY CONNECTED:
The old blog really wasn’t set up very well for making it easy for visitors to find my RSS, EMAIL and social sharing accounts…well, now you have access to everything in one neat little section that you can use from wherever you are on the site.
**Remember to check your spam if you subscribe via email, as Gmail especially has recently taken to marking Feedburner emails as junk…even though Feedburner is powered by Google…!**

See something you like? Share it! I’ve now included a plugin that lets you tell others about what you have read that’s easier than ever. Simply mouse over the ‘share/save’ button and a menu pops up that automatically  knows what sharing sites you like and puts them at the top of the list for quick access. You can even bookmark or email from it too!

Like it? Share it!

COMMENTS AND COMMUNITY BUILDING:
With this new version of the blog comes a feature that I hope will help build a sense of community amongst it’s readers. Now, not only can you reply directly to someones comments on an article, in a threaded fashion…but you can also click a little box and be notified via email if the comment you have posted is replied to! This will come in handy for those that ask me questions directly on the blog as now you will know when I answer you and it means I can answer for all to see rather than by sending emails, which is what I used to do a lot to make sure the reply was read. There is also a ‘recent comments’ box on the side of the blog now so you can see what others are saying, at a glance.

New threaded comments and notifications

Overall Design and Layout
So as you will notice the site in general now has a much cleaner and more solid feel to it with separate sections on the sidebar in their own boxes and a few little icons here and there to give some more visual impact…the old blog looks very plain and bare in comparison! I’ve also re-worked the navigation a little, now having most of it done from the top navigation menu. Of course although I wanted the site to be updated, I still didn’t want to push it too far – instead keeping things simple and fairly understated so that the content was still the main part of the site to draw your attention, so all the colours and tones are quite soft so the content is now hopefully much more accessible, readable and easier to browse. There are a few other new additions dotted around as well but I’ll leave them for you to find!

FEEDBACK
This is where you come in…like the new look? Are there things I should change? Would you prefer a categories list down the side of the page rather than in a drop down menu? Or, have you found a broken link or a glitch? Or alignment of display issues? PLEASE PLEASE let me know your thoughts or any problems you get whilst browsing so I can look in to any issues!

Other than that, I hope you like the new look blog…enjoy

Oh and for those that want one last look at the old design to compare some of the visual changes…

The old look blog

Some thanks
Just a quick word to say thank you to all those who helped over at the Studiopress support forum and also The WordPress Chick. They all helped big time and without that help, I’d have never got this thing done!!