New Design Goes Live!

One of my goals for 2011 was to give this blog a major face-lift. Don’t get me wrong, I really did like the way it looked but I made the error of using the same layout for all of my blogs because I liked it so much.

Well here it is, after weeks of tinkering it is finally ready to go live. 

I am very pleased with how it has turned out and think it looks a lot better than my previous layout. In fact I will go on record and say that I believe it is better than any layout I have ever had for this blog.

Some of the key points are:

Quicker Loading

Regular readers will know that I’m obsessed with having my blogs load as quickly as possible, my previous layout didn’t load as quickly as I wanted so this was my first priority when putting the new design together.

The new design loads pretty damn quick now. 

Mailing List Sign-Up Box

I have been saying I would run a mailing list for years and it even made it onto my list of goals for 2011. At the top of the blog I have a mailing list sign-up box which I think should be eye-catching enough.

Sort The Adverts

This was a massive problem on my previous layouts, I would stuff so many ads onto the page that it would barely load. When designing the new layout I wanted to not only reduce the amount of ads that I display but I also wanted to sort out what kind of ads I display.

After all there is no point having adverts displaying for a medical assistant school on a blog about making money online.

I think I need to remove at least two more but I’m happy with the current result. 

Integrate Social Media Interaction

This is something that I have struggled with in the past. With the new layout you will be able to share all of the posts with people on a host of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon & Digg. I’m also working on letting people comment direct from Facebook & Twitter.

Top Commentators

I had this with my previous layout but it didn’t work correctly all the time. Thankfully it now works, which is good because I wanted to keep it to reward my commentators for leaving their comments.

What do you think of the new layout? I am always happy to hear feedback from people so if you have something to say about it, good or bad, then please leave a comment. 

Image by bridgesward from Pixabay