Recently, when I realised that I had passed my first birthday as a Blogtrepreneur, I decided it was time for a change. I had got all too used and tired with standardised blog themes and wanted to stand out, to be different, and to put myself in a different light by getting a new theme that would depict my entrepreneurial flare.
The hiring of the designer was easy - and in fact I’ll be making a whole post on the design part of the blog and the designer himself (for the time being, he goes by the name Connor and you can check out his blog here).
Instead, in this post I want to focus on the reasons for changing blog themes and when the time is right to swap your industry standard layout for a brand spanking new one. I decided it was time to change blog themes when…:
- My old theme started taking ages to load up after bogging it down with too many features, with too many plugins and with too many widgets (I blame MyBlogLog!)
- I logged onto the site to be greeted by a disaster scene where text and images had been flung all over the place, and the site lacked real direction.
- My writing was affected due to the lack of thrust and flare I had for my blog design
- I had problems trying to position pictures into a post due to some dodgy coding
- You go onto other blogs and realise that your site is missing some important features.
- You’re just downright bored and want a change in your life (this feeling here is probably caused by personal feelings and has nothing to do with blogging or the internet!)
Making a blog theme appealing to visitors can be quite a task as I’ve found out. There are certain elements which you need to include, especially in the header - things like logo, search bar, advertising and deep linking all need to be done significantly but not in moderation. Balance is the key and I think I’ve cracked the design after a few days working with the programmer.
The sidebar has also caused quite a lot of thinking to occur. The main reason is that a lot of space is needed for the different elements associated with a sidebar - archives, categories, ads, polls, interactivity, etc. However, we came up with an ingenious idea to solve this - the use of AJAX! Yes, in the redesign, all you interactive lovers will see slidy sidebars! I won’t expand into too much detail but you can see what I mean hopefully - so be excited.
OK, well I don’t want to spoil any more aspects of the design, but Im just building the tension so I can have an awesome relaunch of Blogtrepreneur. Tell your friends/family/dog/cat!
P.S. As there’s still time for change, are there any features/design elements that you would like to see in the redesign? Feel free to comment or shoot me a detailed email!
- Subscribe to our RSS feed for instant updates!
- Receive the latest posts by email
- Add me to your Technorati Favourites
10 responses so far ↓
1 Dave Starr -- ROI Guy // Mar 20, 2007 at 12:50 am
Looking forward to seeing what you come up with. My only real suggestion is to use a wider design .. or, more appropriately, a fluid design that will fill all the reader’s screen space. The template you’re using, in common with a great many of them out there was designed to show off the designers graphics skills by keeping it narrow and thus not having to deal with various screen widths of the users. Hopefully we’ll see this sort of lowest common denominator thinking disappear over time.
I’ve seen very limited use of Ajax in blogs lately and encourage you to press on with your ideas. Ajax is the way to go … eliminate the one for one transactions of every user mouse click resulting in a call back to the server … it’s definitely a cool technology rather than just a gimmick.
And, as far as MyBogLog? You remind me of someone like myself who still smokes, knows all the reasons he shouldn’t and does it anyway. Guess that’s what makes us all humans …. but after two go-rounds with that monstrosity I’ve learned my lesson.
2 adnan // Mar 21, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Thanks for the insight Dave - the narrow the design has been something thats annoyed me as well as the really small sidebars. Most links (like to my popular posts and to blogs in my blogroll), take up 2/3 lines, which means more downscrolling and really unattractive sidebars.
This will hopefully be solved in the new design, and yes, it is a lot wider with only 1 sidebar as well.
You’re right about AJAX and it is an awesome technology. I love the way b5media have their little AJAXy sidebar widget which has links and RSS for other blogs in their network - very attractive.
Lol - MyBlogLog also adds on annoying loading times as well. But the plus side is that you might just see some famous blogger visiting your site - an all important boost in happiness!
Btw, Dave as a valued commentator, I’ve sent you a mockup of the new blog design for more critique and as a thankyou for sticking with Blogtrepreneur!
3 ilker // Mar 22, 2007 at 2:47 am
I’m a new reader here so have not much value! But don’t blame MyBlogLog for your poor blog design.. See Ray’s blog? He recently won a free blog re-design because he critiqued my blog
4 adnan // Mar 23, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Hey Ilker - thanks for joining us and for becoming a new reader! The blame onto MyBlogLog was just a little bit of sarcasm - just friendly banter. But Matt at NetBusinessBlog.com did scrap MBL from his site because it was causing his site to load slow. Indeed in my new blog redesign there won’t be a room to include MBL - I just don’t think it has that much added value other than for the blogger to see who’s been reading your site.
Wow I didn’t realise that Ray won the free blog re-design! Good on him! Lol it was a kind offer by you as well to offer that, I hope his new blog turns out real nice!
Anyway thanks for dropping by ilker - is that really you in your MyBlogLog avatar?!
5 emigre // Mar 24, 2007 at 4:16 am
Hi..I got here through your post on Alexa in Yaro’s forums. I changed the theme of my site a few months ago after sticking with one since I started because of some features that I wanted in the new theme: namely better organisation with 3 colums, bigger body text for easy reading and better layout for easy navigation.
But most importantly, I wanted a column where I could list out the titles of most recently written articles as I feel that it’s important to have an overall view of what’s on the site to encourage reading without having to go into any categories.
I’m trying out the Alexa widget thing to see how it goes for my make money site, god knows I need whatever traffic boost I can get. But I would be really thrilled if you are willing to include me in your blogroll. In any case, I’m putting your site in mine.
I learn lots from your site…thanks!
6 ilker // Mar 24, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Hehe.. well Ray didn’t change his blog design yet but he said he will this weekend.
About my avatar.. haven’t you read the post my blog yet? =)
7 adnan // Mar 25, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Hey emigre - nice having you here and I hope you’ll continue to be a reader and active commentator! Hmm I did toy with the idea of a 3 column navigation - most seem to have them to group their most useful information. But I’ve had 3 columns for so long now I wanted to be a little different.
Good luck with the Alexa widget and I’m glad my field report was useful. Sorry but due to the large number of exchange requests I’m unable to swap links at this time - but thanks for the linkback - its much appreciated
Ilker - lol I’m looking forward to Ray’s new design and to the graphics yo’re producing. And no sorry didnt read your post :). But have read it now and did vote for Oreira! Thanks for dropping by again.
8 SEO Blog // Aug 1, 2007 at 8:02 am
Hey Adnan, I was just wondering today if the theme you are using on your blog is a custom made or downloaded from somewhere. Glad I found this in the post
9 adnan // Aug 1, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Hey - it’s a custom made template.
10 The Best Of Blogtrepreneur In 2007 // Jan 3, 2008 at 12:18 am
[...] When Is It Time To Change Blog Themes? [...]
Leave a Comment