New Design - Your Feedback Wanted!
17 November, 2007 - Your Feedback - 23 Comments
Yesterday, I promised to show you the full new design for this blog as opposed to just a teaser. My initial plan was to show you several different options based off the same theme, but the Google Analytics post that I just published has taken the best part of four hours to write, in turn taking up the time I was going to use to create the other designs.
I’ll post some variations of the design after the weekend, but for now I wanted to show you the direction that I’m going in.
First and foremost, ignore the specific advertisers. I just used the ones that others around the blogosphere are using so you could get an idea of how it will look when I have my own advertisers.
I would absolutely love to hear your comments and suggestions. Good or bad, I can take it all. Ultimately, you are the people who will be using this design so I want to make sure it works for you as much as it works for me and my advertisers.
Click the image below to view the full version.
Again, I want to hear all your comments. I hope you like it, but please be honest. I would much rather make changes right now than have to do it when it’s coded as a WordPress theme. For those wondering who designed it… this is entirely designed by me apart from the RSS icon, which I downloaded many a moon ago. 
I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say. Other than my own eyes, you’re the first to see it.
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed!
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Posted on 17 November, 2007 by Jamie Harrop
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I think you should avoid Comic Sans.
Also, while sidebars can work in different colours, the page background should be white or another light colour. Not black.
That’s just my opinion though.
Thanks for the comments, Ben.
It seems you’re not alone in your opinion on the Comic Sans font. I’ll be writing a quick post shortly with an update on the new design.
I love it
It seems you’re one of the few who do love it, Ruchir.
Comic Sans Serif is definitely not a good font to choose for most content or even title. But strangely, here, it fits perfectly. The design is awesome!!
Thanks Andrew. Wow. Somebody, like me, who actually likes the Comic Sans font. We’re a dying breed.
I’ll have to make this quick, but my simple response is that I much prefer this design. I find the other one too dark and gloomy. As others have said, the Comic Sans needs to be removed - it doesn’t really match the genre of the website in my opinion - entrepreneur… should be slightly more professional in my eyes with a bit of fun behind it, just like it is now!
Why is it that you would like to change the design by the way? Could you not just re-work the content layout of the current design?
Good look, anyway, Jamie!
Thanks for the comment, Mike.
You make some fantastic points.
The main reason for changing the design is this one (at least the home page) just doesn’t work for a blog. I guess you’re right. A rework of this design may well be a better idea.
I agree with Ben. While the “snapshot” of the new site looks cool, reading white against the black background does slow the reading speed and tires the eyes easily.
Comic Sans is somehow a little too informal as a title. Maybe a graphic can be used to make the blog more “friendly” if that is what you are trying to convey…
Thanks Ivy. Pointed noted, and good points for sure.
At the risk of sounding harsh it would be a massive step backwards for you to move to that design.
If you’re looking for a new one contact me and we might be able to come to some sort of arrangement. I do charge for my services but as I’m a reader of your blog a large discount could be in order.
Thanks Tom.
I’ll keep you in mind, but for the time being I’m going to have my business partner (our designer in our Web developmet company) take a stab at it. More info coming in a post soon.
Very interesting design, something different than what is going on on a lot of other blogs. I think the big competition blue star thing, is a bit too much and black might be too dark to work with. It’d be interesting to see how the content fits and looks in a live version.
Thanks Erik.
Unfortunately, it seems this design is destined not to make it to a live version. But that’s ok. I’m really pleased I got the feedback I did.
I like the top half it’s not too much black or orange but something doesn’t work for me on the bottom half, maybe too much black? I’m not usually against using black, but it kind of feels too much like a Halloween site. Maybe a different colour on the bottom section?
Haha. A Halloween site is so true, Nick.
Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated.
Slightly off-topic, but I love the way you reply to each and every comment Jamie, keeping in touch with your readers
It does nothing but make sense, Mike.
I’ve always been a fan of interacting with my readers. Some say it’s too “forum like” due to the way a conversation starts, but I say it’s good practice.
Good work jamie! But it’s an awful lot of black in my opinion. It’d get a bit depressing after a while, I think. But then again, I read your blog through RSS, so I’m not really sure how much my opinion matter
Thanks for commenting, Ayomide.
One of the reasons I want to change the design is because I can’t display the full post in the RSS feed. Due to the post snippet on the homepage, I have to use the WordPress function to cut the post short.
Once the new design is in place (whatever that design shall be), you’ll be able to read the full post via RSS.
how are you displaying short bits of each story? Are you using the ‘more’ tag or the_excerpt ?
Hey Tom,
I was using ‘more’. However, now that I’ve updated the homepage of this design, I’m no longer displaying the excerpts.
For what it’s worth, while I was hunting around for different plugins, I did find one to allow you to show the full post in the RSS feed even when you use the ‘more’ tag. Had I not changed this design, it would have been perfect. If anybody needs this plugin, you can get it at http://cavemonkey50.com/code/full-feed/
I like it… just not sure what I think compared to your current design. It’s good, but light colours work well for your blog content and feel.
Re: comic sans, the maths department at my high school would publish every assessment piece in that font.