After a few hours of testing, tweaking, tracking down bugs and fixing up a few small glitches I’m happy to say that the ProBlogger Design Relaunch is looking stable and we’re tucking it into bed for the night.
Ben has also just headed to bed (after pulling a late night) for some well deserved rest.
There are still a few things that we’ll work on over the next 24 hours or so including:
- Search – the search field in the top right hand corner isn’t producing results yet
- Archives – link in top menu will produce more than just dated archives
- Print Stylesheets – while the new template does print better Ben will produce an even better option for this
- Job Board Integration – the Job Board will receive a similar makeover and the latest jobs from it will appear on the front page of ProBlogger
- ie6 bugs – we’re aware of the sidebar issue with ie6 and will produce an ie6 stylesheet to rectify this
There are also a few minor styling tweaks to be made and I need to tidy up the categories and other links in the footer a little – but apart from these issues there’s not a lot more to do to get things up to speed for the time being.
At this point it’s over to you. There will no doubt be a few more bugs that we’ve not found yet and different issues for those of you on different browsers. If you find anything that’s not covered above please do let us know.
I’d invite your comment and constructive feedback in comments below. This is a work in progress and while we’re happy with where this design takes us both Ben and I would like your help in taking it to the next level.
Once again I’d like to thank Ben Bleikamp for his amazing design work, Mike Rohde for his logo, Gary King for his reworking of the Job Board (he’s completely reworked the back end of it – we’ll go live with the new version tomorrow) and the b5media tech team for their support through this process.
PS: both Ben and I intend to write more on the process of this redesign in the coming days so those of you with questions feel free to continue to ask them and we’ll attempt to get some answers together for you.
Hi Darren,
I like the new design a lot. The new home page has a cool feel to it and I’m looking forward to checking out the new features. I like the design of the blog, as well. Quite a departure from the old design.
I’d be interested in a post about the thinking behind the new home page design, as it’s got more of a portal feel to it.
To you and the crew – good work!
I think the new design looks great, and is definitely an improvement over the old design – it is now much less cluttered.
One issue for me is that the font used for the article text and the sidebar headings looks ‘funny’ or ‘off’ – I’m using Firefox 2.0.0.6 under Windows XP. I like the use of a sans-serif font, but it just isn’t rendering nicely on my screen.
Love the new look. Good luck to you guys getting the whole thing up and running tomorrow, if I find any bugs I will let you know
Ah! It is very Web 2.0
It looks good and if i find any bugs, i will let you guys know. Good job!
Missy.
i did not copy the above poster, he typed as i typed, we happened to be thinking alike.
Wow…nice re-design! Surprised as I don’t see adsense…yet.
Darren and Ben,
I really like the new design!
You both did an excellent job and I can’t wait to see the finished product.
Darren,
I think the design is great finaly you got something new after all this time :) I got use to see your picture and I think you should put that back!
Other things I notice on your blog is that you are missing keywords , some SEO’s say they are useless but I think they are good to be there on each post.
Also,
I hope that your SE rating will not decrease because you did change the template, and many other things. Good after all is that you placed 404 page! I like that! non of the webmasters should miss that part, every visitor counts!
Anyways good luck with your new design, I wish you could provide next week a statistics how your template change your visitor rating whether it decrease or increas.
Sorry for my English it’s not the best :)
Visit my blog sometimes I think you will enjoy it http://www.bontb.com
i like the new theme a lot! Wish i have one that is cool like this..:(
Darren, it looks very good.
I’m envious, but on my budget, I’m just going to have to stick with the free themes – or start learning the coding myself… and that ain’t going to happen.
Very nice!
Wow. Super cool new design, almost seems to me like a revolution in the look and design of blogs, but maybe I’m just an amateur. Gives me loads of ideas on how I’d like future sites of mine to look. Is the site built on WordPress?
Much better, but the homepage is totally cluttered.
I’m loving the new design. Very professional; lots of whitespace.
Hey…you stole my theme!
Okay, so you didn’t steal my theme – I was just trying to see how many people would check my site, lol.
The new theme looks good, although it will certainly take some time to get used to it. Your old site was so familiar and comfortable to me that this almost feels like I’m not in the right place.
What are your plans for the header? You’ve got an awful lot of white space in there so I imagine you will be adding something up there.
I have to give you credit though, I am not sure I would have been so open to a complete redesign given how successful your site has been in fear of turning people off. Good job!
Love the new design. Has a nice fresh look and is much more user friendly I think!
I particularly like the bottom section of the page.
Looks good, Darren. Much easier on the eyes…feels much less cluttered.
Now if you can just find a way to get a little white space around that B5 Flash banner. ;-)
Nice clean design Darren. I don’t suppose you will be a post in the near future explain the inspiration behind the design change and the new and interest features you have integrated in a bid to further optimise the site?
Very nice! (I disliked your former layout and colors, by the way.)
One complaint: The disparity between the articles’ font size and the comments’ font size is too great. If I enlarge the comments’ font display in order to comfortably read the washed-out gray text, then the articles’ font display is ginormous! So I end up having to go back and forth between larger and smaller font displays in order to easily read more than one article and its comments.
Oh, second complaint, now that I think of it: The washed-out gray font color for the comment text is unnecessarily difficult to read, and s-o-o-o- 2006. :-)
(I’m looking at your site using Firefox 2.0.0.6 on a Mac PPC G5 with a 20″ Cinema Display, and I have 20-20 vision or better in both eyes.)
Otherwise, everything looks much better, Darren. Congrats to all!
It’s coming along nicely! No bugs in IE7!
Hey Darren,
The front page is great – it has a lot of information and posts all within easy reach, and that’s a very good thing – especially since most people coming to your blog for the first time don’t end up on the front page.
However, I have to say your old design was much more inviting. The colors, the openness and the overall feeling were just more inviting, and felt more like a human talking to you. This new design feels like it’s trying a little too hard to be cool.
Overall, I liked your old design better and think it would work better to continue to attract readers than this one. As you have told us many times, your blog is a form of conversation between you and all of us, one on one. This doesn’t feel as personal.
I like the new layout a lot better because it looks cleaner although it was a nice surprise when I got done with moving and had to sift through my hundreds of RSS feeds that had backed up in the half week I had no internet access. Anyway, besides the cleanness, I can now accurately read your name. In the old template the font was so small I had your last name inaccurate and was shocked to come across a post of people getting your wrong to discover I too had it wrong.
Cleaner, more modern, more business….does this mean you have gone all serious on us?
It looks awesome. I really like this much more than the old layout.
Nice design Darren.
You guys do it best all the time.I have a few suggestions though.
1. Include Gravatars in the comments.
2. The Subscribe box can be taken further to the top merging with the space to the right of the logo. There is a waste of real estate there.
3. Ouch those sharp edges hurt!!
Cheers!
Mani
Much better than the old design. Long overdue change, and this will only serve to improve your readership, i believe.
Oh Baby!!!
Thats beautiful….
I like a lot peoples..
I like how you’ve de-cluttered the site (side) and put it all on the footer (actually doing the same on a new website myself)
Absolutely sweet! Live the lively colors and bigger fonts.
Very nice job Darren. Congrats.
And going through redesign and redev myself right now (after 3.5 years), I know the trauma of ‘is this right,’ ‘how about this way,’ to ‘let’s just get the darn thing up as it’s good.’
Keep up the good work. You’ve helped a lot of folks, including me.
– Kevin
nicely done !
a little suggestion is that to make the featured post more ‘stand-out’
because the first one that catch my eyes is those video.
the list of post of the left side is a little smaller on the width, which i tend to ignore it :P
overall the theme, color and designs are very nice ^^
nice job guys
Congrats Darren and everybody working on the project! It’s cool and more “mature”.
We’ve entered a new phrase, right?
In my IE7 the ads are a bit wonkie. Everything else looks good.
Nice job!
very beautiful, i like it!
Cool design Darren!
People weill spend some more time on problogger.net now.
Ya I am seeing sidebar issue its going below the post in IE 6.. Hope you will fix this ASAP.
I love it, nice job…the bottom area with the categories and other info is very nice…I always liked that in other themes I saw.
YOUR BLOG LOOKS AWESOME! I LIKE THE DESIGN AS WELL AS CONTENT!!! GREAT WORK!!!!!
Brilliant, great stuff Darren – very inspiring and has made me look at how I could tighten up my site.
One thing I’m not keen on is the logo. The double P looks odd. Would be better, in my opinion, if the P was dropped and rely on the symbol, or dump the symbol.
Anyway, I can find my away around your blog now and nice to see the absence of adsense ;-)
Went to bed (UK time) on the old design and wok up to this. Pleasant surprise – wasn’t sure what I was expecting but I’m impressed. Hats off to everyone who has worked so hard on this – the blood sweat and tears is what puts me off doing major redesigns on my sites, so respect for pushing through.
It felt a little cramped on my laptop – the articles on the left column felt less important than the video or the sponsors – not a problem though. It looks great on my main monitor.
Good colours, too – I was never a great fan of the orange :)
‘Grats all around.
Sorry, that should be “woke up” not “wok up” :)
By the way, what time zone is ProBlogger working to. This post says 1.08pm on 10th August. Either you stayed up all through the night and are going to bed in the afternoon (possible, I’ve done it) or your time zone is set way ahead! :)
Problogger didn’t have exact times on the posts before, just the date – what made you change your mind, if it was a deliberate choice?
Nice one Darren. It’s all looking so much more professional. I can’t tell you how glad I am to be rid of those orange-coloured links!
I’d be interested to see what the difference in pageviews is with the RSS readers coming back to take a look at the site…
It’s cool. good work! ;-)
Hi Darren,
I liked the old blog better than the new blog :)
Three reasons, putting my consultant IA hat on:
1. it was what I was used to as a reader,
2. you now look like everyone else that followed Brian at Copyblogger, and
3. the photo of you at the top of your page helped with your branding more than any logo redesign might.
That said, the content is the same, and I doubt you will lose many readers over it, so the implications are fairly surviveable. New readers will see a format that they are familiar with, so you’ll probably even profit from it.
Are you going to publish RSS/hit figures after a month or so to show us what effect you think the new format had on readership levels? I’m not sure how many other people would be interested, but I know I would (as I tend to stick to a bog standard K2-with-two-sidebars layout and just change the header graphic) – I’m open to customisation as an option if there are real benefits.
Cheers, Andrew
Can the main text be made max-width 100%, please? It’s too wide for 510px (window width when you have two browsers side-by-side).
Otherwise, great improvement. These colours seem much clearer.
Wow! The design looks so slick and highly professional. I love it!
clean and professional, congrats!
Nice, crisp and clear at last!!!
Just to let you know that I am also running a site using a P-logo :)
I really like the new homepage but the single post page seems very sparse. Being an RSS reader it won’t affect me much though :)
Good work guys.
Darren! Great revamp of the site!
1 remark: The archives by topic still do not show up.
Kudos to Mr. Bleikamp
My bad for not reading well… it was on your to-do list!
Great work guys. At first I thought I had hit the wrong page *lol* but I must say that it looks good.
I’m glad I wasn’t the one doing all the work :)