Well this is exciting! [wp] is now sporting look number three. The third incarnation of the site is quite a bit different from the last.
First off, it’s wider. Massively wider, filling up a 1280 screen, something that over 90% of readers have — I decided that as the overwhelming majority have screens with large (normal?) resolutions it was worth it as I’d be able to fit more stuff in the sidebar and have a wider content area, always good for putting lots of code in 🙂
Next up is that the site now sports a number of CSS3 gradients in the — one for the header background and the second as the content background. That does mean the site loads without a single image used for backgrounds. For the three visitors who use IE, you get a solid colour throughout the whole background which looks fine. I think it’s a fairly good example of progressive enhancement and all that jazz.
The increased width of the design does mean that there is a new ad spot open in the header so if you want to promote your product to a great audience then check out the BSA page.
The sidebar is now sporting a fancy do-dah tabbed area where you can find a number of different articles in a number of different.. yeah, just take a look. Also in the sidebar are some handy links to various bits of the site and subscription options.
You might have noticed the ‘Free Themes’ section of the navbar too. That’s where I’m going to be releasing a number of really simple but quite nice themes (and getting rid of the horrible ones there at the moment!) in the new WPShout “Theme House”. I’ve got two lined up at the moment which I’ll be releasing over the next couple of weeks.
I’ve had a couple of people ask if the new design is based on a Woo theme. Simple answer is yeah, I did take one of their themes as a starting point. Long answer is that I took one of their themes, completely stripped it down and rebuilt more or less the entire backend of it, using some pretty cool functions I’ll be sharing over the next couple of weeks. If I’m honest, I was pretty surprised how bad it was! The optimisation for both load times and search engines was poor to say the least with no sprites or the like and using a zillion background images and divs to achieve the overall effect of the theme.
I’ve also split content up into more sensible and smaller categories, as you’ll see in the navbar — the two categories I had before were a bit pointless and hopefully it’ll now be easier to find the content you’re after.
So there we are. New design. What do you think?
Definitely easier on the eyes. Colors aren’t as loud. Text easier to read. You should contact me about a new logo though.
Yes it is !
Nice redesign, though i will miss the “uniqueness” of the old one, just as Amor said.
Good job !
True, but hopefully the uniqueness has been lost in favour of something that’s overall easier to use and navigate.
Wow Alex, I didn’t realize you’d redesigned! It looks great, the new color scheme is so nice on the eye and everything just feels much more organized. Great job 😀
Cheers Michael 🙂
Your new Design looks good on some devices. But i’m not a big fan of horizontal Scrollbars. Couldn’t you make the layout fluid? That would be much better – but it’s too a bigger challenge for the designer.
Yes, I could have done, but I didn’t think it was worth it as >10% of readers have screens smaller than 1280px wide, so I didn’t bother.
Wait, maybe it’s just me but I can’t clearly read the codes now. Maybe because of the body color: #565656 and the background-color for pre which is #144297?
Yeah, I managed to lose the updated version of the stylesheet which had this fixed. Should look ok now!
I did like the old design because I find it unique. This one is nice too and like what they say, very readable.
i like the old one, but the new one look simple and fast loading
Thanks 🙂 The new one runs like a speed train which is great. The wider layout also allows me to do some pretty awesome stuff within posts which is good (see tomorrow’s post).
The new design looks awsome and very readable. The only suggestion from my part is that of the small distortion in the logo in header. A quality png will solve it.
Yeah, I don’t really know why it’s doing that — it’s the original file I got the quote from which is the problem, not the header sprite. I’ll look into it.
The new design looks great Alex! 🙂
Cheers Kyle 🙂
Loving the new design. The last design was very pleased on the eye but wasn’t very practical in some ways (e.g. the numerous images below posts etc before the comments section).
Good job 🙂
Thanks Kevin. The old one was a bit too busy and whilst I’ve still got plans for images below posts, I’ll tone it down next time 🙂
Wow. Love at first glance. It’s much much easier on the eye!
I just recently redesigned my blog as well, it’s a lot of fun!
I think the theme looks pretty good! Any screenshot of the last design? Would love to see how it looked before the redesign.
yep, I must always highlight the page to read in the last design 😛
Regarding new design, my screen is a bit wider than 1024, so I can see the almost-annoying horizontal scrollbar, but still can see the whole content/sidebar without scrolling the page. 😀
Looks much better than the one before! Not too shabby about the logo, though.