Hello faithful Blogussion readers and contest participants, welcome to the new Blogussion! A lot of the same look is still here, but with some great tweaks. I’m very excited for this design, and I have great confidence that you will enjoy it as much as I do.
As a conclusion to Design Versus Week, I said that there was going to be this new, refreshed look. While this is exciting, I think there is something that you are even more excited about if you participated in the Design Versus Week contest.
I won’t go into the details of what exactly went down during this week (except that there was an awesome contest with awesome prizes), but I will say that Design Versus Week was a success and created plenty of buzz on Twitter. I will also tell you, that there are three extremely lucky winners of some extremely awesome prizes.
Before I reveal the winners of the prizes, I just want to say that the following three people below have been picked at random. I did not pick any of them myself, I used a service called TweetAways to pick them. I also checked to see if each winner played fairly, and did not break any of the rules of this contest.
I also wanted to say this:
I don’t care if this is the first time visiting this blog, or your 100th. Thank you so much for supporting Blogussion during Design Versus Week, and supporting Blogussion by just being here now. Seriously, I have achieved more success with this blog than I thought I ever could have with any blog. And it’s thanks to your continuous support of everything I, and past Blogussioneers have done. I hope this contest shows how much I appreciate you guys.
And without further ado, the winners of the Design Versus Week competition are…
A huge congrats to all three of you! I will be sending you all a direct message on Twitter with information on how to claim your prizes shortly. And, Chris, I look forward to working with you on your blog design!
I Want Your Feedback
You competed in the contest and now I want to hear what you thought of it. How do you think the contest was run? Did you enjoy the idea of it? What kind of contests would you like to see from Blogussion later in the year? Let me know, I think this was a good experience for the whole blog!
And on that note, I would like to bid Design Versus Week a goodbye. It was fun, thanks again for making it great guys!
The New Design
Now, I want to talk to you about the new design. I really love the new look here, and I hope you guys do too as well. I experimented with some new things in the making of this design, and I really hope the results of that experimentation come out great.
Before I go over the new features of this theme, I thought I’d let you guys see the design progression of Blogussion since our opening in January 2008. This is the fourth design update.
I think this theme will stay around for a while. Now, some of the new features I want to highlight are as follows:
- New homepage layout
On the homepage, rather than having a featured post and teasers, the layout is now all teasers. There will be 6 posts featured on the front page, as well as the addition of my favorite posts. - New Favorite Posts Setup
Before, I had a list of my favorite posts on the sidebar here. I decided that it would be best to put even more emphasis on this content and throw it in the actual content area. I hope you have fun with the slider, it’s jQuery! - Custom fonts for headlines
I have chosen to use a custom font for the headlines here. Some of you will see it, and some of you on older browsers will not. I thought this would add something cool to the design, and make headlines look more interesting. - The Dropdown Menu
I have a new and much more valuable navigation in place. In the red bar (the main navigation), 2 new tabs have been added: Community and Content Jump.Community
The community tab is where all of the user-to-user interaction takes place. In it, I have a link to our (also new) Active Topics page. On this page, a list is generated where all of the discussion around Blogussion is going on. This is a great way to participate in discussions in current, or old articles.
Content Jump
This is a cool one I thought. Basically, this menu has a list of categories and popular tags on Blogussion. This is pretty useful information if you are looking to jump over to specific articles on the blog.
- Beautiful post footer
The information after the posts on this blog are now in a much more organized fashion. It’s smaller, yet full of great information. I have to say, this is probably my favorite section of the new design. I am sure you would agree. - Restyled comments
The comments section has been restyled, and split into pages when more than 50 comments are on the post. Also, trackbacks have been moved to the end of the page to make posting a comment easier. - General UI Improvements
Throughout the new design, tweaks have been made to make the experiences and usability easier. For instance, the sidebar is now gray, the footer is simplified, the search bar stands out more, and so on. You’ll notice them as you check out the design!
I Want Your Feedback
I would appreciate hearing your thoughts of the new design here. What do you think could be improved about it? What do you love about it? Hearing these things from you helps me make the design better. So please, don’t be shy! Leave a comment and tell me your thoughts about the fourth Blogussion look.
From Planning to Earning, Take II
I’ll be honest with you, the original blogging course we had here, From Planning to Earning was a failed attempt at me making money through affiliate links. I’ll admit it, and I’m not ashamed to either. But I decided that, based on the reaction of the first version – that it has potential to be a pretty successful course.
So I have decided to totally revamp it, and make it so much more useful. I have a lot of ideas for what I want this guide to be, and I think that you guys will like the direction it goes in.
What is From Planning to Earning?
Just a little background info, From Planning to Earning is a guide created by Blogussion to help you build a blog that can one day earn you money online. This course will literally cover every aspect of starting your blog from scratch, to earning money from it.
To give you a rough idea of how this course will be set out, it will basically be broken down into two sections. A web course, and an email course.
The web course will all be on the blog, and will basically cover the information you need to know to start your blog, market, design, maintain, etc.. Then, section 2 will be the newsletter. This will cover more of the monetization aspects of blogging, and goes pretty deep into what making money from a blog really is.
You can signup to the newsletter in the sidebar, or in the form above. Since From Planning to Earning is not yet ready for your eyes, anyone who signs up to the newsletter will receive emails once a week with some great blogging tips. The same content you would expect from the blog, except it’s for you, the subscriber only.
There are still many things I’d like to do for this blog, and I am always hard at work on writing new content and creating new cool things for you guys to enjoy. I hope you like the new changes you see here, there are many new things to come still!
If you have any questions, concerns or feedback – let me know here! I would love to hear all of your critiques about the direction Blogussion is heading in.
The Discussion
Leave a Comment Read Again?Congrats to all the winner
Thanks to blogussion for a great contest.
btw I like the 3rd version of blogussion theme
Thanks for stopping by!
So, what don’t you like about this version?
Great new design, and congratulations to all the winners of the Blogussion contest. By the way, the headline font is slow-loading. Perhaps a normal font would be better.
Other than that, the new design is fantastic, although I miss the featured post. It kind of stood out a bit.
.-= Idrees Patel´s last blog ..Compelling Opening Chapters Written — Then What? =-.
I changed the way fonts load now…it should be MUCH smoother now.
Thanks for your feedback, I miss it a bit myself. I’ll certainly be experimenting with that.
Wait what? Really? Wow, how awesome is that? Thanks a lot Alex for the opportunity and congrats to the other winners. This was a great contest with great prizes and your gonna have to throw another soon I think. Look forward to hearing from you
. I can’t believe I actually won!
As far as the design goes, it looks pretty good. Of course I have always liked your theme anyways. Couple things:
When I came on here to read your blog post it asked me to login to some admin thing. Just fyi.
And your search bar is a bit crooked or something. Might be something on my end too, not sure. Just thought I would bring them up. Looks great otherwise though.
Thanks again and I still can’t believe it lol.
.-= Christopher´s last blog ..Over Selling and Keeping in Touch =-.
Congrats Chris, you’re going to freakin” love these prizes. They’re going to make your blog just so much more enjoyable for you to work on, I guarantee that right now.
Thanks for the report on the search bar, going to look into it!
Indeed, I’m looking forward to it!
Hey Chris.. Congrats man. I am really jealous now
.-= Himanshu Chanda´s last blog ..This is why your feedbacks are not effective =-.
Thanks Himanshu
Looks nice!
But just a couple of things:
When I came here it asked me to login to something. Clicking “cancel” worked fine though.
(using Chrome by the way). It can’t see the post titles and headings at all, instead it is showing that dead puzzle piece image.
Do you make use of lots of Flash now? Because I’m getting a message that Flashplayer has crashed. Using the 64bit Linux Flashplayer, which generally sucks to begin with
So I guess for now I’ll just be reading from my RSS reader.
Somehow, the fonts are now working for me
. But I did have a problem to start with, so many other people may also have that problem. Also the font is still loading pretty slowly for me.
.-= Eric B.´s last blog ..Test Your PHP Apps On Your Own Computer =-.
I have changed how the fonts will load here now, sorry about that! Things should load almost instantly now.
Thanks for the feedback here Eric.
You new design look good. I think it is sleeker. Man you are awesome designer.
Do you provide Blog Design Service? If yes I may want it in future.
By the way Congrats to the Winners, Its bad that I didn’t Win.
.-= Agent Deepak | Blogging. Marketing & Success´s last blog ..The Secrets of Success – Desire =-.
Thanks man, appreciate it!
I’m not offering it now, but I may offer a service again the future.
Thanks for stopping by and competing Agent Deepak.
I love the new design! The only thing I liked better in the version 3 design was having pictures in the teasers on the homepage.
The font is loading fine for me. The search bar’s sliced images aren’t lining up properly though.
Nice work!
There should be pictures there now…do you not see them?
Will look at the search bar, thanks for the feedback.
I see now – I was a little confused because right now all the teasers on the homepage all have the same image since it’s Design Versus Week. But I just went through the other pages and I saw that the images were different for each. So I guess there isn’t anything not to like about the new design
Sorry for the confusion….
Haha, that’s great then! Glad everything is as it should be.
I still need to update most of the images as they’re all pixelated. It’ll all get done one day though.
Thanks for a great contest Alex. I really enjoyed the design articles, and you offered some great prizes.
I personally have been reading Blogussion since you had the first design, and I am always excited when you unveil a new one. I particularly like how sharp looking this one is. I love the footer and your feature box.
One question though: what was you reasoning for removing the thumbnails from the recent posts?
Glad you like it Jake, and congrats on the prize.
Wait…you don’t see images on the teasers either?
Whoops, meant related posts in your post footer; teasers display fine for me.
BTW, are you going to be doing any tutorials on some aspects of your new design. I know many thesis users (including me) would love to learn how you did some elements of the design.
Thanks for the prize!
I would love to, what are the things you think I should write about?
Hi Alex,
The new blogussion theme rocks and the design is very great! I am also very happy because I won in the second position @dataentryforall
Thanks a lot.
.-= Onibalusi Bamidele´s last blog ..Interview with Anthony Adams =-.
Thanks man, congrats on winning! I’ll get you your prizes shortly.
Wow, Alex. The new design is awesome! I imagine you spent a lot of time developing it. I am ashamed of my tacky layout but, hopefully, my design will progress as yours has. How much time did you spend exactly on the new design?
Too bad I missed out on designer week … I’ll check out some of the posts.
.-= Chris @ link building tips´s last undefined ..Response cached until Mon 12 @ 21:25 GMT (Refreshes in 23.81 Hours) =-.
Yessir I did. Glad it’s finally up!
I worked on the design over about 3 weeks, putting in a few hours a day on it. I didn’t work every day, but that was about how long I took.
This is freaking awesome man!!! I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Every design thing you touch brings in so much of leading edge inspiration (that’s what leading edge of thought is)
Big congrats to the winners! They are gonna have loads of loads of stuff to play with XD
Man, I can’t tell you how much I love this new design. It was like totally worth the wait. Hell you inspired me for my next design.
Nice to see you using sFIR, have you tried Cufon? Never gave me a problem and renders nicely (see my site, Rockwell font sitewide is rendered by Cufon) above all it has all the CSS3 abilities too – text shadow, gradient. And as far as I have tested – 0 JavaScript Error.
I know you don’t wanna switch back just now when you have just done desiging, but keep that as future reference. Love the sleeker red menu bar. And yea… as always, a refreshed logo.
I’ve seen none as pixel perfect as you. <3
Uh oh! The search button is a bit misplaced (FF3.5 Win7). I guess it's the styled button with search field – they always do that.
You really need to tell me how you make all this load so fast. I am on dial-up for God's sake and still it loaded so quickly!
As always, Rock on!
PS: Before this get’s bigger than the post iteself, I’d go and write a mail instead. Again, love to see Blogussion in latest trends.
.-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..Why ‘King’ Sidharth – the Secret Behind ‘King’ =-.
There you are, I was waiting for your comment bud. Glad you like the design.
I decided to just use CSS and load it. The Flash was adding so much extra load time to people’s browsers and I couldn’t stand for that. The CSS way loads almost instantly.
Glad the theme loads fast, there’s so many graphics here I’d figure people would have issues with it.
Sorry for let reply man, I was busy with Engineering entrance exam which took like whole day long (6 hours of torture!)but I am back from dead.
I know, right? Flash is so buggy! No doubt Apple hates it (and Adobe tells Apple to go screw itself beacuse now Flash can’t .. lol)
but the thing is, Cufon doens’t use flash it uses browser’s native vector rendering. So no JavaScript or Flash errors!
I am trying out speech-to-text.half of this thing was written by this program.it might save me time later in a typing all these articles.
We have much to do. still writing long e-mail for you.
Chat soon.
.-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..Why ‘King’ Sidharth – the Secret Behind ‘King’ =-.
PS: ‘like’ is an understatement, I love it <3
PPS: Above comment is a bit… weird in terms of words and aphabets.. I am still training my dragon to write well.
Alex – you said that you just used CSS and loaded. How does that work?
The refreshed design looks amazing, nice work dude I can tell you put some time into it. You’ve got some serious graphics talent, with the logo and all the gradients and web 2.0 everything here it looks astounding. Nice stuff
.-= Inside the Webb´s last blog ..Craze.cc – New and Innovative Social News/Discussion Community =-.
Appreciate it man. I would like a more intricate logo one day, but I think what’s up now is doing alright.
Congrats to the winners!!!
.-= JR @ Internet Marketing ´s last blog ..Website Speed Now A Definite Factor in Google Rankings and 12 Tools to Check Site Speed =-.
Ey Alex! I have been traveling all around the new Blogussion because I wanted to give you a comprehensive comment. It’s going to be divided into things I love and things that (I think) could be improved.
Things I love:
- All the extra images and touches within the post. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a post that is so detailed from a graphic design perspective.
- The comments area makes it clear where there are separate discussions.
- The content jump function is awesome! Especially for newcomers.
- The header is a lot less cluttered.
- The images at the bottom of the footer are incredible!
- The About page looks sick (I love the italicized, gray intros).
- How the sidebar lines up perfectly on the homepage.
Things to be improved (IMO):
- The new logo looks a little plain.
- I miss not having a feature post.
- Popular posts seem a little cluttered.
- Post tags are hard to read (Chrome)
Overall, I think it’s great, Alex! It caught me off-guard (even though I obviously new it was coming) when I first saw it, but the more I hang around, the more I like it. I’m one of those darn humans who is resistant to change.
Nicely done, man! And great job with the contest. I know it must take you forever to publish a post, but if you keep making them look as good as this one does, people will take notice.
.-= Nick Tart´s last blog ..Interview: Adam Horwitz, A Dude with Two 6-Figure Businesses =-.
“The new logo looks a little plain.”
- It’s perfect, simple and contrasty. And it fits the general design.
“Post tags are hard to read (Chrome)”
- Yeap.. I’m also using Chrome. I’d suggested to change “a:hover”‘s color to something more black or grey.
Haha, really appreciate it dude! Glad your “love” list is bigger than the “bad” list.
I will work on the readability of the tags, as I agree that they’re a little hard to read. I’m kind of iffy on the popular posts myself, how do you think I could make it less cluttered looking? I had trouble with it to be honest..
Thanks for the feedback, REALLY appreciate it dude!
The contest was a lot, but I enjoyed it. I have to do it again sometime.
As far as the popular posts area, I think you should get rid of the text shadow (even though it’s really cool
) on the descriptions. Then I would just double the bottom margin of each list entry. Since you added the feature post on the homepage, you can afford to spread them out a bit.
Thank you for actually taking and implementing all of this feedback from all of these comments, Alex! So many bloggers would just read the comments and think, “What do they know? They’re just my readers. I’m the master of my design! Wahahaha!”
I’m glad you’re not like that. Reminds me of the Brian Clark quote that was on here a bunch.
.-= Nick Tart´s last blog ..Interview: Adam Horwitz, A Dude with Two 6-Figure Businesses =-.
Hey Alex,
I bet it will improve the bounce rate and the time on site.
Your new blog design is.. so-o-o clickable
PS. Too bad I’m not amongst the winners.. -(
.-= iWoodpecker´s last blog ..Suggest a Blog Using CommentLuv: 15+ Needed =-.
Yeah man, I certainly hope so.
Sorry man, hope you had fun anyways.
Congrats to the winners and an excellent design once again Alex; very good work.
.-= Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..DEDC Remains DoFollow – BUT… =-.
Thanks Dennis, appreciate it.
Congrats to the winners. When all is said and done you’ll have to post links that show before and after so we can the rewards.
I was thinking that myself. I think it will be neat.
That’s a nice idea, I was thinking of doing that here on Blogussion with Chris’s blog…would make a good post actually.
I love the new Blogussion look! I found V3 a little too ‘in your face’, V4 is nice , clean and is less ‘sharp’. I really liked the way that this competition was ran, I thought the prizes were cool too, however I didn’t participate. While I thought that the prizes on offer were great, I just didn’t really think that they would help me. I’m not sure what prizes I would have wanted though I just think that there could have been more variety.
.-= Jasmine Henry from System Fail News´s last blog ..Have You Voted? =-.
Wow, new design looks awesome and you are a master of Thesis Alex
.-= Tinh´s last blog ..WPWebHost Offers $3.50 Hosting & $0.99 Domain Promo =-.
Alex,
First I want to say you are going places man.
But taking a look around your new design I found two things that I would change or at least think about.
1) I feel you could add more to the header like on the right side. Maybe put the number of subscribers and followers there or have a nice fancy place for people to learn more about Blogussion and you.
2) When scrolling down each individual post I see you add the new section for number of discussions with the ability to “leave a comment”, “reread the post” or subscribe to your feed. I feel this should be right above the social bookmarking buttons that are right about the about the author box or at least make the “leave a comment” and “reread” buttons bolder because I just about glanced over them.
Let me know if you need any further advice or feedback and I would be more than happy to help you out.
.-= Derek Jensen´s last blog ..Using Facebook as a Journal =-.
this is quite an impressive design. I am new here and would just like to say hi. Im a 15 yr old blogger and the best thing about your blog is the quality of the content. This is what inspires me to write. Keep on blogging, your an awesome blogger and your way when it comes to designing quality themes is very, very top notch. See ya round.
Great design……… Lots of changes Wow
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