The previous incarnation of my blog – more of a magazine style – allowed me to present a more diverse range of content. But what is the point of that if the format imposed means you are restricted in how to categorise what you write? Finding a way to make the old Max Magazine theme work for the sorts of things I wanted to write never worked quite the way I wanted it.
So I’ve gone back to basics. This blog now, once again, looks more like a blog. It is based on the Focused theme by Site5. Here’s a summary of the main changes:
- A more blog-style homepage
- Fully responsive design – so the pages should look good on anything from a small phone screen up to a 30″ monitor
- More space for larger photos
- A clearer, lighter and simpler design
- Use of Google fonts for headlines
- 2-click social media sharing buttons for better data protection
- A clearer overview – in the main menu – of the main themes of the blog
- Dedicated sections for the articles I am writing elsewhere, and for live streams and videos of my presentations, including adding all old material into these sections
A slight mishap during the rebuilding process meant some subscribers were deluged with e-mails – this has now been solved!
Anyway, do let me know what you think of the new design!
Do let me know what you think!
[UPDATE] A few stats looking back. This is at least the 5th different design of my blog in the 8 and a half years I have been writing it. The first year it ran on pLog (that became LifeType) and since then on WordPress. There are 1778 published posts, meaning 1 post every 0.57 days in that time. 11086 comments have been approved at the time of writing.
@Vincent – I will have to use the “Read More” option in WordPress more from now on. That should solve the excessive scrolling issue.
@Stefan / @Vincent – I have no better photo. Really. So I am going to have to go on being grumpy here for a while longer yet!
Nice redesign, I like it.
As a minor point, I would have probably had the left column fixed, so it doesn’t scroll up. But maybe that clashes with the responsive layout (and it was indeed first mobile-first that I discovered the new layout – with another one of your articles)
I second the Vincent’s view on the serious photo 🙂
Dear Jon,
I like the new layout. I thought that the old one was a bit confusing with all its sections.
Nevertheless, one point of critique:
On my 13 inch monitor it is a bid hard to get an overview of your last articles. That is because each article preview at the home page requires quite a lot of space. So it is difficult to get a quick grasp on what you have written in the past days or weeks. If I scale the browser view to 90 or 80 % it becomes easier.
Another very minor point: the picture in your logo is relatively dark and you look super serious on it. Maybe a brighter & friendlier photo might be an idea?
Hi Jon,
Nice work on the new look. I especially like the idea of having larger pictures. I noticed, however, that you did not include a Twitter timeline off to the side. I personally like it when I see one so that if I’ve enjoyed the blog, I can follow the author on Twitter. Hope all is well.
Jason