WOAH! I caught a bug this morning and decided to completely redesign the site. I think I have everything the way I want it now although there may be a few more minor changes to come but hopefully nothing drastic. If you just follow my feed an haven’t been by the site in a while, drop by and lot me know what you think of the new look.
Also new today is a static page for The Wealthy Blogger listing, a new dedicated subscription page, some sponsors, and new twitter profile background. I am still trying to work the kinks out of my adsense placement so if there locations annoy you let me know.
Leave me a comment and let me know what you think about layout.
I added a third column to incorporate a few more links around the site, let me know if you think it works.
{ 8 comments }
Welcome to the club fellow site re-designer 🙂
I really like it! Is your networth profile a plugin or a template you update?
Suggestions:
-Add a recent comments plugin. Perhaps it is just me but I REALLY like to know where the discussion is happening at a quick glance!
-Change page titles to Article Name – Site name. I think I recall hearing that indexes better since Google puts more weight on the earlier words.
-Your links in Google Adsense are standard blue/green whereas your site links are grey/red. I have heard conflicting accounts of whether blending or jumping out works better… but it might be something to look at!
-Consider using a Google Search instead of WP search (something I still need to do). Google would probably give much better results.
I will think of some other things if I got a few more minutes 🙂 And if you have a second.. drop me a line on my new design, too!
MLR
@MLR
Thanks for the suggestions, I will certainly look into to doing most of that, I went ahead and setup the Google site search which seems to work pretty well, it was a lot easier to get setup than I thought. I should have done it a while ago.
I like the blue green links, they pop out but I don’t feel the are obtrusive, the idea is to draw people to at least look at them.
I am trying to think about how I could add a recent comments plugin, the side bar is already kind of full I will have to look and see if I can move some it around or add a left hand column.
For some reason I’m seeing a blank space under your Recent posts. I’d suggest putting a Google ad there if one isn’t there already, as those do better the higher they are on the page.
@Mrs. Micah The way I had my ads arranged, was causing 3 ads to render in the posts section which blanks out the other blocks. I moved things around so I think it works out now. Thanks for the heads up.
Good looking site! I almost commented on your last site and thought there were things that made it difficult to sort out (mostly in your sidebars). This look is much cleaner and sorts everything really nice.
The “Posts” next to the subscribe button might be a bit confusing to some, but maybe just me 🙂
I also agree with Mrs. Micah on the Google ad location. Consider moving up a bit closer to the content of the post.
I like the 2 sidebars & recent comments!
Jeff has a good point, but I guess if someone is going to subscribe they probably know what the image means, right?
For the Google Search it looks like you had to move it. Wasn’t the search bar elsewhere? Just curious if that was a coding issue before I do the same for mine.
@Jeff Rose
Good call on the “Posts” label, I went ahead and changed it to RSS Feed.
@MLR
The way my Theme lays it out you either have to use their custom search, which was the old location, or add a search widget to the sidebar to do it yourself. I am going to look into putting it in the same location the old one was at, but that will take editing the templates, this was just easier.
Looks awesome in FF3 on my Mac. It’s very clean and flows smoothly. The only thing I want to comment on is the dashed lines. I generally think simple whitespace is better, but you did a great job of incorporating the lines into the design.
Comments on this entry are closed.