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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Redesign - Reader Stickyness


Moving Away from the 'Blogger' Look

I will be doing a massive redesign of the blog in the next few weeks and was wondering if I could get some opinions on how it looks so far. Just click on the Image for the full size. It should be 1024 X 768, representing the average viewer resolution.

Only about 30-40% of the actual graphics are complete and the rest is just the 'colour scheme' of the website. I'll be moving on to the actual coding of the website shortly as I now have enough graphics to create a working website before doing the rest.


The main focus of this new design is to catch the eye of the new commer so they might actually read my articles which may help them. The concept is that the farther you go from the look of a template, the more eye catching it is, because users who surf blogs see the same template 2000 times.

Here are some resources for redesigning your blog or website which helped me emensely when figuring out my design and theory:

How I Redesigned My Blog by Ben Yoskovitz
Talking about Blog Design: Podcast [41 minutes long]
Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Blog’s Usability by Skellie
The Last Word on Minimalist Blogging by Blog Bloke
Anatomy of a Successful Blog by Blog Bloke
Who Says your Blog Design has to be Boring? by Blog Bloke
Blog Design Tips
How to design a sexy header for your site using CSS by Woork
Code Readibility 01 by Woork
Code Readibility 02 by Woork

I encourage anyone, not just designers, to critique it!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks good Zander. A big improvement and making it fit the larger screen size is a must these days.

An idea for getting comments. Link to me and I will include you in my blog network. Keep commenting like you have and visit the other network members as well, and it will happen.

Cheers!

...BB

Veedo said...

hey there, thanks for commenting

how exactly do you want me to link you? side bar link ok?

cus, i have a lot of good stuff here.. the things i talk about worked perfectly for me and got me over a thousand contacts... so i just want to get it out there

Anonymous said...

Sure Zander, the sidebar is fine. Just make the link "Blog Bloke".

I need a favour to ask of you. When you leave a comment on my blog would you mind just using your name instead of including a description of your blog as well?

The reason is you are getting a double entry on my Blokester role and therefore two links. Using the description also takes up too much room in the sidebar and it squeezes out someone else from being on the roll.

Thanks.

Keep up the great work!

...BB

Veedo said...

yeah, sorry about that... decided half way through to use my blog title with my name XD still can't decide lol