The new design is live
I love working on new designs - it’s part of the reason I keep blogging. I like writing, I enjoy getting comments, but I love starting new designs and tweaking them pixel by pixel until they are just right. This design, though it’s still incomplete, is my most complete design…ever.
I’ve been designing websites for almost 6 years and I’ve never actually finished an entire site. By finish, I don’t mean add content and pages. I mean I’ve never focused on the tiniest details and made sure everything was how I wanted it. I am still not done with this design, but I feel like it’s something I can work with and keep for a while, at least until the next CSS Reboot. It’s definitely much better than the blinding blue and green design I had up before.
What I’ve finished
The header is final (although I might remove the slogan). I spent quite a bit of time playing with different logos, and while this one is simple, I think it captures the theme of this site well. I’ve got the primary content areas formatted, the main layout is done, and I’ve worked a lot on the comments (though I’m still not 100% happy with them).
What I haven’t finished
Everything else. I’m still working on getting the archives pages to look just right. I’m still trying to get the post navigation to look good. I’m still tweaking the comment styles. I still have to upload a plugin that somehow pulls the first paragraph from each post so that the excerpts on the main page and the archives page look good. I’m still not happy with all the icons I’ve chosen. And the list goes on.
After I finish the design I’m going to reorganize the categories and reorganize most of the site. There are a lot of posts from the first month or two that suck - I’ll probably delete them or host them somewhere else. I want this site to be more personal and be more inspiring. I think this new layout will allow that. The content will be much more unique and I’m going to avoid reposting the same news all the other blogs you read are talking about. This blog will still be about making money, marketing, blogging, etc, but hopefully I’ll be able to provide more stories and write more thoughtful posts regarding those topics.
I guess I’m not nearly as close to done as I feel like I am, but this is still as close as I’ve been in a long time. The rest of it is just tiny details that shouldn’t take too long, although they probably will.
Hopefully you like the design. I won’t have time to finish everything before May 1st as I’m knee deep in code for Problogging.com. We are coming out with a new design for Problogging that will feature our services much more prominently.
I’m planning on doing a write-up of what kind of thoughts went into this design and the coding, but right now the code is so ugly that there is no sense in explaining it. The structure I chose is not random, and I will try to explain why I went with it in a future post.
Until then, I hope you like what’s up so far. I’ve spent quite a bit of time on what I have but I’m looking forward to getting it 100% finished.
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I didn’t bother to format all the WordPress tags and so it is a bit ugly under the hood.
Love It! Much better then your first design. I am looking forward to reading more stories and your more thoughtful posts as those are the ones I tend to enjoy more. Congrats on the design and keep up the good work.