New blog redesign now live!
I thought my blog was due for a bit of a refresh and a new look so welcome to my new design! I’ve seen Nate’s work all over the Internet and was really impressed with his style of design so I employed his company Unique Blog Designs to come up with a new theme for my blog and this is the result.
We’ll be making slight tweaks to the theme, so please bear with me if you see anything amiss.
Oh, and keep an eye out because very soon I’ll be running a competition to give one blog owner the chance to have their blog totally redesigned by Nate, a prize worth $799 no less!
What does everybody think of the new design?
What I’m listening to right now: Prince - “Bob George”
Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 10:09 pm and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
October 1st, 2007 at 11:12 pm
It looks very nice and clean. Only comment I’d make is that there’s too much ‘above the fold’ on the single post pages. maybe take off the popular / recent post boxes and just have them on the home page.
Did you see the before and after design of Problogger? Looks like there’s a trend to having more navigation and little chunks of what’s in store on blog homepages, and not a huge list of complete blog posts.
The search submit button falls onto a new line in Ubuntu Firefox too, but don’t tell anyone I told you that, they’ll think I’m a geek
October 1st, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Very swish Kieron, Nate has done you proud
October 1st, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Looks really neat mate - agree with the comment above though, there is a bit going on above the fold, making it a fair old scroll down to the content.
Looks very fresh though - Can I pinch your old theme if you don’t want it lol?
October 1st, 2007 at 11:41 pm
lol - I was going to ask to pinch the old theme seeing as I did it
October 1st, 2007 at 11:42 pm
Sorry - should have also said that it is a neat design
the Go button needs fixing in Firefox (go for search) though as it goes on to the next line for me (could be as I am on a mac though)
October 1st, 2007 at 11:59 pm
also what about the antispam capchkas? Or whatever they’re called?
There’s also a random check box below “submit comment” what’s it do?
October 2nd, 2007 at 1:01 am
Love the new site design! Its great!
October 2nd, 2007 at 1:03 am
I’d like to see more adverts. Maybe 2 banners below the top menu and three, no, four columns of ads to the right.
Please just swamp the content so the part that I want to read is progressively harder harder and harder to find, let alone read…
No wait! It doesn’t matter! I’ve got Google Reader and don’t see the adverts anyway.
D’oh! (For us all!)
Seriously:
far too many ads
far too much scrolling to get to content
“popular” and “recent” posts should be off to the right
Get your $799 back!
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:35 am
Looks good to me.
Reminds me Johnchow.com design considering the ads but at the end it does not bother too much.
I like the popular and recent post area and the icons you used, very Web 2.0!
Well done!
Francesco
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:39 am
The overall look and feel is bright and inviting and the design is nice. But the main content is being pushed too far down the page (can’t see any above the fold on 1024×768). Grab some space back from the header and popular posts, recent posts sections. Also once there are several comments it’s difficult to quickly see the demarcation, could try emboldening the “posted by” line.
The content is top class as usual.
October 2nd, 2007 at 11:28 am
The ‘about me’ should be styled to match the rest of the sidebar navigation menu and I agree with Richard in that there are too many ads - or more specifically they are placed in the wrong place and they are the wrong size. Your menu (when you had 9 comments on this page) stretches 4 pages before we read the bottom of your site - 4 pages of virtually empty space.
Your RSS & Technorati header has a different style to the others.
There’s also a tick box beneath your ’submit comment’ button with no label (Firefox 2, Win XP). What’s it for?
Otherwise nice looking, nothing truely special though. Nevertheless, if you are happy with it, then that’s all that matters.
Value is in the eye of the beholder.
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:41 pm
I like it
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:55 pm
something about the comments makes them hard to read. Too much black text I think.
And I think the blue gradient of the body background clashes a bit with the blue header.
Says me with the default Wordpress theme
Apart from that, looking good.
October 2nd, 2007 at 1:15 pm
I agree with Richard (Lovehoney). I feel there are way too many adverts. It turns people off.
It’s one of the reasons that I only have one 468*60 adsense on my blog. People want information and insight not adverts.
Make to non-grumpiness now.
October 2nd, 2007 at 1:42 pm
I’m not that taken with the design, as others have said too many prominent adverts. I’m sure you had the same number before, they just did’nt leap out!
Personally i’d move the popular posts into the footer. I’d also remove the recent posts, lets face it the recent posts are displayed on the homepage anyway!
Finally i noticed a some of the side header have different backgrounds like topics has a striped background, blogrush on the other hand has a solid background.
October 2nd, 2007 at 1:51 pm
I love it, very summer-esque. I agree with the comment about there being too much above the fold, before you get to the content.
Also for me the clean layout would have me worrying about CTR on the ads… but that’s just me.
October 2nd, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Another thing I noticed was that the comments text at the bottom of a post summary isn’t a link.
October 2nd, 2007 at 5:11 pm
I preferred the other one actually.
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:22 pm
[...] concert review - O2 arena London Friday 3rd August 2007New blog redesign now live!Offline for a couple of daysGetUpdated.co.uk - everything you need to market online [...]
October 6th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Not sure I’m that impressed if you spent $799 on it.
The stripes across the here.org.uk logo strip at the top looks visually odd - plus there’s a line that goes through it!. I know you’re trying to be web 2.0, but nah - sorry i’m recovering from flashing casino lights and neon, so it might just be me. Thinking about it more, there’s just too many different blues imo.
Popular posts look good, ut for me the lines should marry up (i.e. the edge of the popular post image should be the same as the date image of the posting). This reply box also overspills the greylines surrounding it.
Not too fussed about the number of advertisers - but think you should put “About Me” above the block banner - perhaps add your RSS subscription higher to split up advertisers. i.e ordering About Me - Block Banner - RSS - Sponsors.
It’s ok, but I’d be disappointed spending $799 and this was the result - especially if it’s meant to be exclusive.
Sorry mate - you did ask
October 9th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
[...] the basic layout feel familiar, especially the fat footer? That’s because the blog design was done by Unique Blog Designs. It was then adjusted based on reader feedback. If Kieron dropped [...]
November 6th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
I’ve just noticed that your ‘description’ and ‘author’ meta tags are empty on your new design - would you mind saying why? I know meta tags are decreasing in importance but I just wondered if there was a valid reason.
December 30th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
[...] second blog redesign of the year goes [...]