Going Through the Blog Redesign Process

January 8, 2008

Yesterday I launched a new design for Instigator Blog. The feedback has been great – some positive, some negative (to be expected), and all of it interesting and important.

In my post announcing the new design, I wrote, “And, I’m writing a much more detailed post explaining the process I went through in redesigning the blog, and that should be coming soon.”

And thanks to Darren Rowse that post is now available: How I Redesigned My Blog.

Darren agreed to publish the post as a guest piece on ProBlogger. I was glad to do it there and hopefully help shed some light on the grueling, time consuming and detailed-centric process of redesigning a blog.

Enjoy! And please post your comments there (and here!) to let me know what you think…

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Comments
  • Q Denham
    Very nice, Ben. Good work!

    Just wondering, though: How is a "detailed-centric process" different from a detailed process? :-)

    Best of luck to you in 2008!
  • seems this new year means also new face for many blogs. i have also redesigned my blog last jan 1 :)

    nice ben.
  • I like it - great job!
    A definite improvement !

    Lucas
  • Hi Ben. Congratulations with your re-design. I do like it a lot. Enjoyed reading your "behind the design scene" process. I have a question: how did you get your Most Popular and Recent lists to show up only as related to the category of the blog post readers are viewing? Did you use some specific plugins for that (which?) or tweaked the existing ones (how)? Hope it's not a top secret info to share with the rest of the blogiverse, or is it? ;-)
  • Great to see you featuring on Darren's blog.How are your traffic stats now?
  • Hey Ben,
    Good work man.
    Love the new look!
  • Hi Ben,
    Just finished reading your post on Problogger. I must say that the process is challenging. I am currently undergoing that same process on blog but I have to get a designer to do the work. One thing I have learnt over time is that people get to see your blog before getting to read what you write. So, one only has some seconds to make an impression.

    Your blog design is simple and professional. Keep up the work
  • Your redesign looks terrific.

    I am particularly impressed with the idea of delivering targeted content to the reader using the filtered category list on the sidebar, which is invoked when the user chooses to view a single post. This is a great idea and I intend to integrate it into my blog, too.

    This is a beautiful, well thought out and functional blog theme design. Very nice work!
  • Thank you to everyone for visiting and commenting.

    @inspirationbit: It's done via Blogroll Links. I'm not using any plugins.

    The "Recent Posts" is a fairly standard bit of WP code.

    The "Most Popular Posts" and "Top Categories" in the footer are hand-picked by me.

    In my blogroll I have blogroll categories that match my post categories. I add links into the blogroll associated with each category and then there's a snippet of code that grabs the proper blogroll links for the appropriate categories.

    Hope that helps!
  • Thanks for answering my questions, Ben. Wow, that's an interesting way of handling the blogroll. I should look into that, haven't been using blogroll for my blog for awhile now.
  • Design looks good! Always nice. I implemented a template selector for my blog, so people can chose how they want it to look!
  • I love this design. And it's great how you have the boxing gloves on advertise here, as well as on the logo. It draws the eye straight to the ad spaces. Very clever.
  • Hi Ben,

    I was just reading Pam's comment on excerpts and I'm curious to know what you decide after having used it for a while. I considered using when I was designing my blog, but decided not too... Yet I'm always thinking of ways to improve the flow of my blog and may reconsider. Your site loads really quick and flows well though.. which is another thing I'm working on improving for my mine.
  • Hi Natasha - I'm sure in the future I'll write a follow-up post on the design : what's worked, what hasn't, etc. So stay tuned for that!

    Using excerpts has to improve the load time because you're showing less content. And lately I've been writing some much longer posts...so I think it's the right, albeit a difficult, decision to make.
  • Great design! I know it ain't easy to redesign your own blog to something else :) I love the subscribe by RSS and email buttons there too
  • Nicely done Ben! Very clean and very easy to see. I really like that you didn't remove the My Blog Log widget. It's nice to see who else is visiting you.

    Interesting that you also have stuff all the way at the bottom of your site, including a picture. That was something I didn't expect, and yet it's very pleasing to see your smiling face down at the bottom too!

    All in all, great work!
  • I visited Problogger and read your very well written post. Very informative and educative. I have, as requested by you, left a comment there too.
  • @Phil: I was using Problogger as a template for the picture at the bottom. And he had some positive things to say about the response he got in doing it.

    I like having the picture at the top too, but that's really not much of a bio; I wanted to give people a bit more context.
  • Love the simplicity and design, Ben. Looking forward to the usual high quality posts.

    Hey, no more widgets?
  • Hi Ben,

    Great post! Thanks for inspiring me to redo the look on my own blog. The instigator blog instigated a great big layout change on my part.
  • I love your nice and clean designs, which i think it's great! nice to know that you are monetizing it though, cheers!
  • @Vernon: I've removed almost everything for now, and will be working on the sidebars over time. Still trying to figure out what goes where and why...
  • The new design looks great!
  • Loved your post on ProBlogger -- great advice, especially since I've just begun the process of redesigning my blog (how did it get so cluttered so quickly?).

    Don't know why, but I'm not seeing the title header when I load your blog on Firefox. And the Recent Posts, Top Categories, etc. at the very bottom of the page threw me; I wasn't expecting that. Do you think most readers will scroll all the way to the bottom to get to that info? I did because I was looking over your entire site, but I'm not sure most first-time visitors will.

    Thanks for all the good ideas!
    Laura
  • nice design, should help bring in more viewers
  • Nice design! I like the colors, easy on the eyes. Boxing gloves are a nice touch to your instigator title.
  • I think the design itself is much better. But I'm not sure that the colour palette used here is better than your old one. It's more "mature" I guess..
  • Philippe - Thanks for commenting. I wanted a color palette that was less "in your face" in an effort to have the content stand out more. A blog needs a great design, but unless your blog is about design or something design-related, I don't think the design should be what stands out more than the content. So I took a more subtle approach with it.

    Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age!
  • Hi Ben,

    I foud your site via the article on problogger, very interesting.

    The site design looks great, nice and clean and crisp.

    I really like the way you have integrated your RSS feed at the top, that makes it easy to spot and will be one of the first things people notice, I have subscribed :)
  • Thanks for the look under the hood on the new design! I have been considering a new appearance on a couple of my blogs, but have been kind of stumped on how I want to handle this process. So the insight on your remodel was very helpful.
  • I like the new design, very clear and easy to read.
  • I have just found your blog and love all the info. I will be coming back here regularly.
  • Thanks for all the comments.

    @Barb: Glad you found the blog, and you'll keep visiting!
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