The one thing that is always remembered well by people who visit our site is the design. Ever since the beginning of Blogussion, the design has always been well liked and enjoyed by our readers. And today, October 23rd 2009 – it just got a whole lot more memorable.
This blog is growing at a very fast pace. Not only in the community, but behind the scenes. New content is being developed every day by Seth and Alex, and with such breakthroughs slowly coming together – a design to hold it all is needed. Unfortunately, our old design would not have worked well with the things we have coming together.
But I don’t want to get too much into the future with this post. I want to talk about the new stuff in the design that just went live today!
The Tweaked Layout
So really, we decided to keep the same feel and look as Blogussion as always had. If you look through the evolution of our designs, we really have always had the same kind of look to us. In this design, we tried to compact everything down and making adding content to it even easier.
Comparing those images to the current one should not only bring back memories from our dedicated readers who have been with our blog since the beginning, but should show the progress that this blog has made since December 2008.
Layout changes to look out for
The things below are what I focused on the most and want you guys to take note of when you are looking around this design.
- Simplified header and nav: Opposed to our old, longer navigation bar we now have in place a much better looking and functioning dropdown menu bar. Now we can fit all of our most pertinent content in the navigation bar without clutter.
- A more valuable sidebar: The new sidebar I have added to the design is by far the coolest sidebar I have ever made in all of the blog designs I have done.
At the top, we have a sliding accordion menu that holds information as to where you can subscribe to our RSS feed, sign up to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter.
Right below it, we have made use of the Multimedia box option in Thesis and will be displaying random banners promoting our best content on our blog. Right now, you should see a banner for our new sideblog, UniqueBlog.net. More banners will be thrown into rotation shortly, and please remember that these banner spots are not for sale (read why not).
Then, our newest section, an addition to popular posts – author picks. Basically, this is a list of our favorite posts on Blogussion picked by the main authors of the blog. Six of them are shown in the sidebar, but you can find the whole list at our new Favorites page. I mentioned this idea in a very recent post here “Methods to Bring Life Back to Old Posts” and thought it was such a good idea that I would add it here.
- Poll: The polls are back, and we will be using information collected from the polls to help improve the content we have going here on Blogussion.
- Our footer got fat…again: I decided to let the footer go again, and it went from fat in version one to thin in version two, and now in this refreshed version – it is fatter than ever. It’s truly stunning and holds some fun information. Scroll down a bit to see it, and don’t forget to click on the “go to top” button to smoothly return to the top of the blog!
I encourage you to go around and see if you can find new goodies that have been added to the design. Seriously, a lot of things were improved on from the last version and you should hopefully love what you find!
The Start of the Blogging Tips Newsletter
So, as a part of our new (and very slick) subscription panels in the sidebar, a new tab has been added – a newsletter! A newsletter has been something that we have been wanting to start up for a very long time now and we have finally got around to starting one up!
All you need to do to signup is enter your first name and email address and you will be set to go! In our newsletter, we plan to offer:
- A list of the most recent posts on Blogussion
- Premium blogging tips that will not be found on Blogussion.com blog
- Inside scoop to news updates, offers and more from Blogussion
- A shout out to our user of the week and a link to their blog (read more below)
- And more! Subscribe to find out.
User of the Week
When it comes to the community here on Blogussion we don’t mess around. We respond to all comments on our posts, and even write guest posts for some of our most loyal readers just to show how much we truly appreciate you guys.
Now, we had this new idea to reward even more of you guys by creating a user of the week award. Every user we pick (chosen by Alex and Seth) will get a mention in our newsletter as to why we have chosen them as our user of the week and will write a short description of their website as well!
The things we are looking for in our user of the week nominees:
- Participates in the comment sections of the posts, even with other users
- Writes constructive comments and advice
- Guest posting for the blog helps too
- Interacting in older posts on the blog
- Sharing posts on social media sites (Twitter, Digg, etc.)
There is still a little bit of development going on with the newsletter, so for the first week of its existence there will be no newsletter. This is only to continue development on it. We still encourage you to sign up for it if you are interested in it, and we will not send you any emails until our newsletter series starts.
A Change of Post Schedule
With the new design, we figured that maybe it would be a good time to unveil a new posting schedule. Our current schedule, once every second day is easy on us, but we feel like it can be improved. We have two dedicated authors on the blog, and there is no reason why we can’t get new content to you delivered every day.
Well, every day except the weekends. So expect an article posted every day of the work week, Monday through Friday, and a little break for the weekend. Our traffic is very light on the weekends, so until we can get that up – we want to take that time off and plan out the weeks post schedule, do some behind the scenes work and of course watch the Patriots game on Sundays!
We want to hear from you
So we have this new design out, but not much feedback yet! So now I am asking you – what do you think of this new design on Blogussion? Do you like it better, or do you like the older one better?
If you find any bugs, errors or anything that you think is wrong with the design then please visit our contact form and let us know! Or, if you just want to tell us how much you love or hate our new theme, don’t be afraid to let it all out in an email as well!
Thank you for reading, and we are very excited for the future of this blog.
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Awesome changes guys. I beleive you guys have made some great updates and your really making a name in the blogosphere!
The newsletter, and user of the week are also great updates! Keep up the great work, I look forward to seeing more
Rob´s last blog ..Interview with blogging guru Rhys Wynee
Thanks Rob! We’re glad to have you supporting us!
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
Wow! The improved site looks awesome! Great job Alex!
Thanks a lot Tim! I appreciate the comment.
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
This blog has become one of my favorite blogs. Really good design and nice tips on blogging.
Keep up the good work. I’ll be regularly following it now.
Thanks a lot Usman, I’m glad you enjoy the blog so much!
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
You are welcome Alex.
After visiting Blogussion and Asnio, I’ve started liking Thesis Theme more than ever. lol.. but I don’t even know even the ABC of Web Design.
Usman Latif´s last blog ..Twitter Expands its New Lists Feature
I’m with Usman….this has quickly become one of my favorite blogs also. Well done!
Thanks for dropping by Tracy, glad you enjoy the blog.
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
You are on the right track guys! Keep up the good work!
Mario´s last blog ..How To Remember Names
Looks fantastic! Keep up the good work.
Eric B.´s last blog ..Creating an Awesome Website Design With Gimp
This theme is great but it kindly look as busy site for me.
Dana@Online Knowledge´s last blog ..Backup WordPress Database
Thanks for the comment Dana, but I don’t quite understand what you mean, could you rephrase that?
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
Love it. Really admire the fact that this blog is advertisement-free w/c makes it really pleasing to peoples eyes.. That’s why I am eager to have this blog featured at my head to head.. Have you already answered the questions I sent ?
Melvin´s last blog ..A Social Bookmarking Site That Can Earn You Money
There is way too much content I want to make available to the readers of my blog, and the ads would get in the way so I just had to get rid of them ASAP.
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
Totally love it! Excellent attention to detail. Powerful design!
Brandon Cox´s last blog ..From Fuel Your Blogging: Tips for Managing Multiple Blogs
Thanks a ton for the support and retweeting a few of our articles! I really appreciate it Brandon!
I’m really liking your new blog too, I subscribed to it. Good work over at your end as well.
Well. I do like the new design. Because you have simplified it. I always simplified and elegant themes.
And one of the best thing to appreciate is in your footer section.
And the worst thing is in your content border color. You definitely have to change the color to a little bit dim one to make it attractive since it is distracting.
And do we really need the same sized (almost) header and the navigation bar? It will be better if the navigation bar picture fonts are little bit small.
BlogrPro´s last blog ..Exclusive Interview with Andy Bailey – The man behind CommentLuv
Thanks a lot for your feedback! The footer turned out so sexy, I’m not gonna lie.
I did actually think about the header and nav and I agree, maybe it could be a little smaller! It’s not exactly a top priority for me right now, but one day I think I will get on it! I guess I am not the only one who thought of that.
Very nice Alex. Especially the sidebar is now a lot better. As usual the footer is great!
I think you should take the comment by previous reader – try reducing the Nav Bar height and image sizes. What say?
Ashwin´s last blog ..Writing more Blog Posts – the Myth and the Reality!
I think it’s a very good idea Ashwin, I have added it to my todo list.
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
Another point i wanted to mention for a long time.
I see you are using the Feedburner API to display Feed subscribers at the top. As a known problem, sometimes the API returns 0. So make sure you handle this in PHP and display an alternate text. ‘0′ doesn’t look good there
Ashwin´s last blog ..Writing more Blog Posts – the Myth and the Reality!
Yeah, it happens every once in a while? How can you fix that problem?
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
Great stuff guys, you did a great job and really made Thesis your own unique site. Impressive.
Marko Saric´s last blog ..From 0 to 200.000 visitors, 8 blogging lessons learned in the first year
Thanks for dropping by Marko, I’m glad you like the blog!
The design is like our first step to hitting our own 200k mark in our first year. Hoping we can do it too. :p
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
You guys did a great design here. You guys have one of the better Thesis designed blogs that are out on the internet. Greg Ellison
Greg Ellison´s last blog ..Pumpkin Carving Pattern Sites
Thanks Greg, Thesis makes it so easy to customize a blog, so I definitely think that is one of the major reasons why Blogussion has a great layout.
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
I like the tweaks, I’ve always thought less is more. As far as the weekend traffic, I’ve noticed the same thing and recently saw a poll on some forums full of people who see it, too. Its tempting to put in that overtime and work on content and promotion over the weekends, but the slow traffic is a nice natural reminder that we still need to take some time off once in a while
John´s last blog ..Business Weather Forecast: COLD!
I totally agree John. Seth and I are basically going to be writing our posts on the weekend so we can relax a bit in the week day between marketing the blog and developing for it at the same time.
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
Alex, Seth
Great work! the new design is fantastic. I am so jealous. I wish I knew how to design and code. I just started tinkering with photoshop and did your tutorial last week. The first time it took me 3 hours and was a disaster. The second time, 2 hours and wasn’t much better. Finally I got it right the other day in under twenty minutes, and mine is better than yours! haha, jk!
Zachary Cohen´s last blog ..The Farming Revolution and Social Media
Thanks for dropping by Zach! Haven’t heard from you in a bit.
You followed the subscribe box tutorial? How did you think it was written, was it hard to follow? It’s one of my first step by step tutorials I have ever written, so any feedback there would be lovely.
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
Hey Alex
I emailed you last week or so and never heard back, but now i know why! you were busy with this! Im gonna send you guys another post soon if you’ll have it!
Did you get my email?
Z
Zachary Cohen´s last blog ..The Farming Revolution and Social Media
Nope, don’t think so!
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
Alex how did you get the slide out effect on the newsletter, rss and twitter sidebar elements?
Zachary Cohen´s last blog ..The Farming Revolution and Social Media
I used jQuery, and the accordion plugin. Just Google something like “jQuery accordion” and you will find some cool tutorials.
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
I like the new design. Especially drop down menu is really cool.
InternetHow Blog´s last blog ..My Favorite Blog Posts This Week
Thanks! I think the dropdown menu turned out pretty nicely.
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
I’m new here (came through the Problogger forum), so I didn’t see the old design, but this looks great! How do you get the “Popular Posts” on the side?
We are glad to have you here! Also we hope you will stick around and keep finding useful content. We love problogger’s new forum.
Seth´s last blog ..Blogussion Gets A Refreshed Look, and New Features
You guys are awesome! User of the week is a great idea. Lately, I’ve been lazy as far as commenting on your posts. But the chance to be featured in your newsletter gives me a little more incentive.
I instantly noticed three things when I came to this article.
1) I’m looking at your site on Firefox with a 14″ laptop display and I have to scroll horizontally to see the entire site. Not a big deal, but figured you would want to know.
2) The new nav menu feels like it’s missing something. There’s a large gap between Archives and Search. Alex, you know much better than I, but this was another split-second observation.
3) This is something I’ve always noticed on your site but have never mentioned. The “B” in your favicon is different than the “B” in your logo. I think you should use your new mark as the favicon but maybe invert the colors (red bubble and white “B”). More like the one on your about page.
Overall it looks great, Alex! I could go on and on about all the things I like about this design. But I figured you value criticism much more than compliments.
Nick Tart | JuniorBiz´s last blog ..Don’t Buy a Book Without Finding Where It’s Cheapest
Thanks for stopping by Nick! Haven’t seen you in a while, that’s for sure.
I really tried my best to make this site as scroll friendly as possible. I will still try, and it will be fixed in the near future! I hope there isn’t too much scrolling on your part.
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
Yeah, I’ve been reading your site between classes when I don’t have much time.
Don’t worry about it too much, Alex. There’s very little scrolling. I just don’t see all the little icons on the right side of the sidebar.
Nick Tart´s last blog ..Don’t Buy a Book Without Finding Where It’s Cheapest
Now it’s look better tha before. You must be using Thesis Theme, right?
Reza Winandar´s last blog ..5 Tips to Increase the Number of Subscribers for Beginner
It wouldn’t be designed by me if it weren’t on Thesis!
Alex,
You guys continue to deliver the goods. Well done. I always enjoy the site design and content. All the best, have you all considered forums? Cheers!
Miguel´s last blog ..Apple’s “Get a Mac”ad: Broken Promises
Thanks a lot Miguel! I haven’t seen you in a while man, glad you’re still blogging!
We do plan on a forum, but it will be limited upon its arrival. Trust me, it will be interesting!
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
Very impressive. I think it was wise that you did not deviate too much from the original look and feel. I must say that your blog has really gotten better with the addition of Seth on the team.
Tycoon Blogger´s last blog ..VOTE now for the Rookie Blogger of the Year
We have always had the same kind of feel, and it has always worked for us, so we didn’t want to stray away from it much. It’s just a thing where it wouldn’t be right to fix what isn’t broken.
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
Make over is really cool and neat!
Thanks Sham! What’s your favorite part?
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
Wonderful design! It is far better than the original layout. First time readers of your site will find it very confusing to which one they will need to click, this is for the Version 1. I also like the header, most especially the blogussion logo. It’s very much appealing compared the one you used before.
Paul Jean´s last blog ..How To Maintain Your Hardwood Floors
Thanks Paul!
What exactly are you talking about when you say:
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
The layout is too wide for my resolution. And I’m not liking how there’s padding on the right side, but not on the left.
Other than that, not bad
Where is there extra padding?
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
W0ot!
I am loving it even more. And guess what? now that I know you’ve ditched Banner Ads.. I am inspired to do the same! and I love you even more.
And yea… that post on OIO Publisher. What relevance is left? Does it really work?
King Sidharth´s last blog ..Bringing Meditation Online
I strongly believe in the “no ads policy” and enforce it on all of my blogs!
OIOPublisher is a great plugin if you do want to sell ads. I never recommend selling ads when you are a new blog, but if you think that you can make some decent money from ads, then I highly recommend you go with OIO to sell.
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
The new look is awesome! Great and nice designs…
Web Hosting Blog´s last blog ..Web Hosting for Small Business and for Blogs
Thanks we greatly appreciate it. What’s your favorite new feature?
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
Honestly i really like your layout particularly the navigation and your footer
Ronblogger´s last blog ..Blogging Tips and Techniques
Hey Alex, Speaking of new layouts…
Love the new design – beautiful visually and function wise.
Flash Your Tattoo Blog´s last blog ..Mermaid Love
Alex,
I really like your new layout. I think the accordion signup bar is pretty slick, and I’ve always thought fat footers are more functional than fat headers.
I’m also glad to hear you’re moving to a Mon-Fri posting schedule. I’ve been back and forth between every other day and Mon-Fri, so I think I just need to pick one and stick with it.
The gust of the week is a really cool idea too. Maybe if guest who write about your site on their blog could be considered too *hint hint* jk
I’m looking forward to your new stuff.
Blake @ Props Blog Ideas´s last blog ..Leave Those Spammy Ads Behind And Join In The Blogussion
Thanks a lot man! I read your review of the blog a few times and I am really glad you think so highly of the place!
I’m glad you like the new schedule. So far it has proven to be a lot better for our traffic than our old one was, so that’s something we are very happy about. I guess if you fall behind during the week you can hit us up on the weekends since there won’t be anything new (except the newsletter)!
The user of the week will definitely be a fun thing to include in the newsletter! Can’t wait to pick the first winner.
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life
The new design is excellent, I couldn’t suggest any other changes which would make the site better than what it already is!
Who did the design, or did you do it yourselves?
Jonathan Sprague´s last blog ..Haro Host – *Halloween Special* 50% Off Your First Month
Glad you like it Jon! I did the design myself.
Alex´s last blog ..8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life