Examing a Blog Makeover
As you can see, this blog recently underwent a facelift. It’s not as drastic as the last time I updated this blog, but I was toying with it, wanted to give it a cleaner look, and ended up with this. I figured it would be an interesting look at the design process to examine the changes I made, and why I made them.
- Goodbye Adsense, Hello Performancing - One of the big changes I’ve talked about is making the jump from Google Adsense to Performancing Ads. There were several reasons for this: The Adsense had a bad CTR, And I didn’t really like how it meshed with the blog. I also like the fact that I have more control over my advertising, and that I can sell my own to keep for 100% of the profits, or use it for other things, such as affiliate promotions, and for other things, like giving it away as a promotion.
- Goodbye, 3rd column - The other big change I wanted to make was shifting from a 3-column layout to a 2-column one. After a while, I felt that the three column layout had gotten to busy and hard to read, especially being white. After adding the performancing ads, I decided to switch to this new look: 2 columns, with the sidebar being the same color as the headers and the navbar. I feel like this makes the site easier to navigate. It also gave me more room for the content row, even though the sidebar is now larger that it was originally.
- Slight color change - In addition to the sidebar being a new color, I also lightened up the background. More contrast is almost never a bad thing, and I feel like this new color combination gives it the look I was hoping for, which was to make a cohesive design out of a non-standard combination of colors.
- New Header - The new header I designed really didn’t fit, So I decided to re-design that to. There were quite a few little design tricks on display there: First, the addition of the bright yellow to my ‘G’ logo. Again with the contrast, I think it really makes it stand out. Second was the red title bar on the top. I wanted something simple, but putting it on just the blue background left something to be desired. This adds a nice touch, and helps pull the design together. I also got a unique font for the title, because I love fonts you don’t see everyday. They have to be used sparingly in my opinion, like on just one line of the text here. Also notice how the ‘G’ overlaps. It helps take several seperate elements and make them come together as a whole.
- New RSS Button - I’ve become a bit of an RSS Junkie lately, And I’ve wanted to try and increase my subscription rate on this site (hint, hint). I get really sick of the standard, stock orange RSS buttons, and it didn’t really fit it well with the design, so I decided to make one from scratch. I think this button fits in nicely with the sidebar, and I made it larger so it can stand out more.
- Switch to excerpts on front page - I like writing long articles sometimes, and I realized that it made the front page really cumbersome. you had to scroll forever just to see the latest few posts. I hope that this change makes the blog more readable.
Like the new look? hate it? Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think.