Blogging Notes

Those who visited my blog a week ago will have noticed that the design has changed. After thinking it through, I came up with the following reasons why I needed to change the look:

1. Landscaping

I noticed that some important articles were forced down by the chronological display of posts, so they didn’t attract the attention enough. I needed a way to “stick” those articles. The sticky option of Wordpress didn’t do it for me, because that would place the article on top, but I may have already written a follow up. I needed a way to feature certain articles.

I also know that having titles of articles available creates a better chance that visitors will click on them to view the article. This would be nice for the list of featured articles.

2. New brand

I’m re-branding my blog. I’m changing everything that has to do with the representation of the brand of the blog. A logo is being made, the site needed to be adjusted to look more professional

3. Fresh start, new look

I haven’t paid real attention to this blog for about a year. Now I’ve restarted blogging regularly, so, as an added motivator, I needed to change the look of the site. Starting fresh usually helps if your environment is also adjusted to the fresh start.

4. Planning monetization

I’m planning to monetize the blog from the start. I will try use a lot of direct sales ads, so my design needed to be so that these would be as non-intrusive as possible.

5. Simple and clean

I like simple and clean design. My previous design had some distracting features, which I grew to dislike. I’d rather have a simple design, where pictures create a nice balance of color.

My new theme

After looking around, I found this Magazine style theme by Mimbo. This theme fit all my criteria and is easy to install and manage.

For those who don’t know my previous theme, The Internet Archive has an older version of my blog you can look at.

Please let me know what you think of my new theme and approach.

photo credit: felishumanus