Instigator Blog - Latest Comments in Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Ben Yoskovitz — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 00:16:47 -0000

Thanks for all the comments.

@Barb: Glad you found the blog, and you'll keep visiting!

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Barb Thornback — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 08:25:10 -0000

I have just found your blog and love all the info. I will be coming back here regularly.

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Tom At The Home Business Archi — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 05:52:09 -0000

I like the new design, very clear and easy to read.

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Tracy — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:05:16 -0000

Thanks for the look under the hood on the new design! I have been considering a new appearance on a couple of my blogs, but have been kind of stumped on how I want to handle this process. So the insight on your remodel was very helpful.

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Fatgadget — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 05:13:40 -0000

Hi Ben,

I foud your site via the article on problogger, very interesting.

The site design looks great, nice and clean and crisp.

I really like the way you have integrated your RSS feed at the top, that makes it easy to spot and will be one of the first things people notice, I have subscribed :)

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Ben Yoskovitz — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 10:18:38 -0000

Philippe - Thanks for commenting. I wanted a color palette that was less "in your face" in an effort to have the content stand out more. A blog needs a great design, but unless your blog is about design or something design-related, I don't think the design should be what stands out more than the content. So I took a more subtle approach with it.

Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age!

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Philippe K. Chrun — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 14:26:43 -0000

I think the design itself is much better. But I'm not sure that the colour palette used here is better than your old one. It's more "mature" I guess..

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Travis @ Destroy Debt Blogs — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 21:47:12 -0000

Nice design! I like the colors, easy on the eyes. Boxing gloves are a nice touch to your instigator title.

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

simon — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 23:10:21 -0000

nice design, should help bring in more viewers

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Laura Christianson — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:31:16 -0000

Loved your post on ProBlogger -- great advice, especially since I've just begun the process of redesigning my blog (how did it get so cluttered so quickly?).

Don't know why, but I'm not seeing the title header when I load your blog on Firefox. And the Recent Posts, Top Categories, etc. at the very bottom of the page threw me; I wasn't expecting that. Do you think most readers will scroll all the way to the bottom to get to that info? I did because I was looking over your entire site, but I'm not sure most first-time visitors will.

Thanks for all the good ideas!
Laura

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

voipBlogger — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 18:26:39 -0000

The new design looks great!

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Ben Yoskovitz — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:18:34 -0000

@Vernon: I've removed almost everything for now, and will be working on the sidebars over time. Still trying to figure out what goes where and why...

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Admission Essay — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:56:32 -0000

I love your nice and clean designs, which i think it's great! nice to know that you are monetizing it though, cheers!

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Kelvin Lee — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:28:16 -0000

Hi Ben,

Great post! Thanks for inspiring me to redo the look on my own blog. The instigator blog instigated a great big layout change on my part.

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Vernon Lun — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 12:22:07 -0000

Love the simplicity and design, Ben. Looking forward to the usual high quality posts.

Hey, no more widgets?

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Ben Yoskovitz — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:11:23 -0000

@Phil: I was using Problogger as a template for the picture at the bottom. And he had some positive things to say about the response he got in doing it.

I like having the picture at the top too, but that's really not much of a bio; I wanted to give people a bit more context.

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Audiomecca Webmaster — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:04:00 -0000

I visited Problogger and read your very well written post. Very informative and educative. I have, as requested by you, left a comment there too.

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Phil Gerbyshak — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:38:05 -0000

Nicely done Ben! Very clean and very easy to see. I really like that you didn't remove the My Blog Log widget. It's nice to see who else is visiting you.

Interesting that you also have stuff all the way at the bottom of your site, including a picture. That was something I didn't expect, and yet it's very pleasing to see your smiling face down at the bottom too!

All in all, great work!

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Michael Aulia — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:47:34 -0000

Great design! I know it ain't easy to redesign your own blog to something else :) I love the subscribe by RSS and email buttons there too

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Ben Yoskovitz — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:43:38 -0000

Hi Natasha - I'm sure in the future I'll write a follow-up post on the design : what's worked, what hasn't, etc. So stay tuned for that!

Using excerpts has to improve the load time because you're showing less content. And lately I've been writing some much longer posts...so I think it's the right, albeit a difficult, decision to make.

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Natasha — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:30:33 -0000

Hi Ben,

I was just reading Pam's comment on excerpts and I'm curious to know what you decide after having used it for a while. I considered using when I was designing my blog, but decided not too... Yet I'm always thinking of ways to improve the flow of my blog and may reconsider. Your site loads really quick and flows well though.. which is another thing I'm working on improving for my mine.

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

cathlawson — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 13:49:05 -0000

I love this design. And it's great how you have the boxing gloves on advertise here, as well as on the logo. It draws the eye straight to the ad spaces. Very clever.

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Josh Hall — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:55:14 -0000

Design looks good! Always nice. I implemented a template selector for my blog, so people can chose how they want it to look!

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

inspirationbit — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:13:09 -0000

Thanks for answering my questions, Ben. Wow, that's an interesting way of handling the blogroll. I should look into that, haven't been using blogroll for my blog for awhile now.

Re: Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

Ben Yoskovitz — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:04:45 -0000

Thank you to everyone for visiting and commenting.

@inspirationbit: It's done via Blogroll Links. I'm not using any plugins.

The "Recent Posts" is a fairly standard bit of WP code.

The "Most Popular Posts" and "Top Categories" in the footer are hand-picked by me.

In my blogroll I have blogroll categories that match my post categories. I add links into the blogroll associated with each category and then there's a snippet of code that grabs the proper blogroll links for the appropriate categories.

Hope that helps!