The New Layout

Aug
2008
13

posted by on The Blog

9 comments


Well you should notice a big change here on the blog, we have a new layout! I’ve had the MistyLook theme on here for way too long. Although it was very functional it was just getting old and when you are looking at the same theme for a long time you get bored of it. Even worse it does not give you motivation to write blog posts. I have been wanting a new blog layout for some time, although I really did not want to pay a lot for it because this blog really does not make any money. It is just a place to talk about what I do and give tips to people who are also running their own business.

Over about a 2 month period I looked for a good theme and could not find one that I liked. My friend Nate from Unique Blog Designs knew I was looking for a design and was nice enough to hook me up with their Personal Blog theme. The actual character in the logo was made by my friend Chris. He does really good work and he charges a lot less than most people.

As you can see I have changed the Personal Blog theme around a bit. The first thing that I had to do was fit my logo in. I thought it would be easy be that whole process took me around 2.5 hours! Next I changed the colors, the green looked nice but I wanted my blog to look unique, so I used blue. I did some more CSS changes then worked on the sidebar. I would say the hardest thing was getting my Flickr stream to go into 3 columns. Overall I like how the theme turned out, although I still need to do some work on it, but I wanted to get it out to give myself more motivation to write blog posts. Also my birthday is next week and I wanted to have the new theme up before that.

Some of the things I still want to do is install some SEO plugins, somehow get brian’s threaded comments to work with this theme, and find out how to replace the Gravatar icons with MyBlogLog ones. If anyone knows how I would really appreciate the help! Please let me know what you think of the new theme and if there is something you think I left out make sure to let me know!

The Contest
Getting the new theme up is a big thing for me so I’ve decided to have a contest. I myself will be giving up prizes but I have also enlisted John Chow and Ian Fernando to give some prizes. I will be announcing the contest next week, but if you would like to get in on the contest let me know by e-mailing me. Any type of contest prize will be appreciated. Stay tuned!

Related posts:

  1. Unique Blog Designs 1 Year Anniversary Contest!
  2. Win a 1GB Mushkin Flash Drive!
  3. Happy Easter & Contest Reminder
  4. CES Swag Contest Over
  5. Some Blog Upgrades
  • http://www.lithman.net David Lithman

    Nice character! I feel like the header has maybe a little too much dead/white space in it. But overall, I like the new fresh look.

  • http://www.tyleringram.com Tyler Ingram

    Ah nice looking design. Clean and easy on the eyes! The character fits too, nice job!

  • http://www.carleylenz.com Carley

    sweet new layout! gimmie some time, after lots of reading, and i’ll be able to make one of these for you! haha, i hope!! :)

  • http://www.khalidslife.com Khalid

    I like it Bob, very simple yet effective. The personal logo is cool too!

  • http://www.clearlygaming.com Mike Huang

    I love the new look, Bob :) I have been MIA for a while, so hope to get back in touch

    -Mike

  • http://www.iphoneincanada.ca Gary

    I love this theme. I also had Nate help me with my design and it’s been great so far! The blog looks much better than before!

  • http://www.stephenfung.net Stephen

    Huge improvement, but like David said, too much white space at the top.

    You’re a “Bob”ble head :lol:

  • http://btr.michaelkwan.com Michael Kwan

    This is going to sound like an echo, but while I like the overall look of the new theme, the header image is a bit much. It’s too big and has too much white space. The header image also feels quite separate from the rest of the content. I think it’s because the gradient doesn’t stretch all the way up.

  • http://dereksemmler.com/ Derek

    That caricature is really cool, I’ve wanted to do something like that myself but have zero skills in that area. I’ve still got a blog running MistyLook as well and oddly enough I too have lost much of the motivation on that blog, maybe a redesign is the trick. The new design looks good.