New Design at Instigator Blog
It was time.
I’ve updated the design at Instigator Blog with something that I hope works well for everyone.
If you’re reading this via the RSS feed, please come take a look!
So why did I do it?
- I wanted something a bit more sophisticated looking.
- I wanted to flex my design and WordPress editing muscles.
- I never really liked the fonts of the old design.
- I wanted to experiment with a 3-column layout.
- I wanted to shrink the height of the header and get more content above the fold.
I think this design does a much better job of showing people what Instigator Blog is all about. My biggest worry with making the move was alienating anyone in my community, and newcomers as well. It was crucial that the design be inviting and open. I think it’s both, but with more flair.
I’ve still got a bit of fine tuning to do in a few places, but I’m ecstatic with how it turned out.
But now it’s your turn — What do YOU think?
Take a poke around, look at some posts, pages, search, etc. and let me know your thoughts!
Ben, It’s awesome!! I like the new banner at the top as well as the new font. Great job!!
I think it looks pretty good, although change is scary, you know! I don’t know if it’s just the way I’m viewing it, but I have a scroll bar at the bottom, which means I have to scroll to the right to see the right-hand side of the third column. I think it makes it look “less” thank it could. I do feel like it’s easy to navigate, however, if not a tad crowded.
(Sorry if I don’t seem totally supportive - I figure you want honest feedback. I really do think you did a good job! I especially like the header.)
I was actually thinking that your previous design didn’t do justice to your blog. This new design is really excellent!
Big thumbs up Ben
That’s great, Ben!
The three column style and the color’s match is great, a clean style, and honestly so much more better than the old one.
I think it looks nice and clean. Plus, the title of your post was a SUPER way to get RSS readers to click over and actually visit ;).
Maybe you should do a screen shot of the old blog so new visitors can compare new to old.
Good job!
Ben - Change is scary but it is also empowering - it feels good to flex those muscles.
It is nice and clean but you will need to add pictures of some sort to more of your posts to keep it from looking to clinical.
Great work!
Thanks for all the feedback.
Lorna - what resolution are you at?
Does anyone else see a scrollbar at the bottom?
Char - I agree regarding the pictures, that was one of my fears with this style of design: looking to clinical (which to me is the opposite of inviting.)
Hey Ben!
The change looks good. I especially like the new color scheme.
The scroll bar shows up at 800×600. The cutoff is about half way through your subscribe button, so the contact link is off screen. All content shows up, though.
I love it Ben!
In fact, this might just inspire me to give my blog a new look. It’s definitely time for a face lift over there.
Good job, Ben. I like the imagery of the boxing gloves… challenging people to think about what you write.
Rick - that’s what I figured. The width is 850, so it’s really designed for higher resolutions. I don’t like the idea of the CONTACT not showing (although there’s a visible EMAIL ME link), and I don’t like the SUBSCRIBE button being cut off. I may move it to the left sidebar…
I do know from my own research that 800×600 is a fairly small percentage of Web users, but again, this is the kind of thing that concerned me with switching and going 3-column — making the site LESS inviting…
Thanks to everyone for the feedback.
Looks good but I read this site through an RSS feed so it doesn’t matter that much.
GREAT JOB! Congratulations! Very impressed with the design. How do you do it all???
I am not sure what it looked like before, but it looks very clean as others have pointed out.
One important thing, your RSS auto-discovery seems to be broken/missing. It is very important for numerous things, especially making it easy to subscribe , but also can play a role in syndication etc.
Andy - I tried it with Google Reader and it picked up the FeedBurner feed.
Can you try again and let me know what happens?
I’ve just added a snippet of code into the header — I’m hoping auto-discovery picks up the FeedBurner feed.
Thanks!
It is working now - I wasn’t getting an icon at the time I commented, and when I hit subscribe GR couldn’t find the feed.
Auto-discovery comes up with the following
http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2FInstigatorBlog
Not bad. Very clean-looking. Do you find a better response for the body-sidebar-sidebar layout than sidebar-body-sidebar?
Looks nice, Ben. I like the clean look. I agree with Char about the pictures. Also, though I run a higher res, I tend to keep my sidebar open in FF making the viewing area smaller, so I get the vertical scroller too. That loses your 3rd column, so you might want to move your subscription stuff to the second column, and keep “less critical” stuff in the 3rd.
Just my $0.02… anyway
I’m using Internet Explorer at 1280 by 800. As of this afternoon, there is no scroll bar at the bottom of my screen. That helped things to be spaced out better, and it’s looking really good now. Everything seems to have been able to stretch out a bit, which leaves more white space for a nice, clean look.
Even better would be to place subscription information in prime real estate, that magic triangle right where people suggest placing Adsense.
Great point, Andy. I definitely didn’t miss yours the first time I visited, and thought, “what a great idea.”
Nice and clean Ben! A suggestion … I would add some more padding in the sidebar tags so that the items such as Popular Posts, Topics etc have a little more white space and are easier to read (at the moment they appear a little “swished” and it is hard to just scan.
Andy and Tony (and others) — let me know what you think of the “subscribe box” that shows up on top now. I think it’s only showing properly on single posts - so click through to take a look.
Leah - I agree. I’ve added some padding, but I think I may use a little graphic of some kind to help highlight individual elements in the sidebar.
That works well, at least in Firefox.
One of my biggest problems is making mine work in IE. It was looking ok in IE6 but IE7 messed it up again.
Andy - did you test mine in IE7 and it’s broken?
I just tried IE6 and it looks like it worked properly - auto-discovering the FeedBurner feed.
I appreciate the help!
The subscribe icon and tag looks good in both Firefox 2 and IE7. Both also found your feed with no problem.
The subscribe icon and tag are on both your home page and single post pages, just not your archive pages.
I was just pointing out the problem I alway hit on my site. Rick has tested it so I don’t have to (I hate even loading up IE7)
Rick — I haven’t put the subscribe code on the Archive pages yet (but I will soon.)
I’ve also left the SUBSCRIBE stuff in the far right sidebar - but after mucking with sizes and having sidebars disappear on me in IE, I’m leaving the width as is…
And thanks for testing Rick!
Andy — if you want me to send you the code I’ve used just shoot me an email. Maybe it’ll help you in IE7…
I will get there in the end, my problem is always the line spacing in the form on the left hand side. I need to specify it implicitly in the CSS, but might just use it as an advert for firefox
Does this blog theme look broken? Get a browser that supports standards
Looks great, Ben. Apparently you, Andy, and Rick got is all worked out while I slept.
Don’t you guys ever sleep?
You sleep too much.
Since that last comment I launched a new website and had a good 6 hrs sleep.
I’ve learned to let half my brain sleep while the other half works. Then switch. The results are sometimes odd, but I can just keep on trucking…
(OK that was a complete lie.)
I like the new look. Cleaner, easier to read, more professional.
Looks very nice and clean. I love the gloves!
Nice work, Ben. The three column design seems to work well…after all, aren’t our sidebars getting more and more packed with relevant widgets and whatnots?
Jordan - sidebars are getting packed. I’m desperately trying to keep mine as neat as possible, and organize them intelligently.
Having two sidebars adds some flexibility which I like, but it also opens up the door for cramming in more stuff. Very likely I’ll be reducing over time not adding…but there are some essentials in there for me (and hopefully everyone else too!)
I’m a little late with a comment here, but I’ll say it anyway - it looks good! Only thing I don’t like is the black bar at the top. Feels too different from the blue. Anyway, looks good.
I like the new design. Well done.
Since recently launching my own blog (kind of a blog and kind of not http://www.techtraction.com please pardon the shameless plug), I’ve started paying closer attention to what others are doing with their design. I like your new design simply because it makes sense to me. Easy navigation and no nonsense.
I’m not totally thrilled with my design but figure it’s 1.0 and gets me started. After I’ve learned more about what I want and how to do it, I’ll work on 2.0.
Looks good, Ben! Very clean!
I also just underwent a massive site redesign over at http://www.2dolphins.com (yup, another shameless plug). I’d had the old frames-based design in place for more than 2 years and it was just looking stale. The new design moves the blog itself front & center and all of the other pages are modelled after it, so there’s a consistent look (mostly) throughout.
I’ve been puring over every little detail. Even down to a custom “quote” graphic used for blockquote insets. I’m still refining the code a bit to try to make the pages load a bit faster. I hope to move the stylesheet data to an externally-linked file, but this is still presenting a few problems…
Rob - no problem on the shameless plug - your site looks good. I’m particularly intrigued by your adoption journal, sounds like something that could help a lot of parents.
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I found your blog very interesting,just setting mine up.hope it does as well as yours.
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