One thing’s certain when blogging — the design must be tweaked about every four months. If you want to keep it fresh and look stylin’ the only way to make that happen is to throw in the DIY towel (that’s do-it-yourself) and hire the big guns.
For this design, I provided the core, the color and this and that, but I owe the rest to Dwight Maskew of Carbon Based Media.
He made the template, changed the colors, moved things around, added the bells and whistles and generally made a great part of my team. I’m happy to share (although I hate to) because Dwight has been my IT back end for about five months.
If you need website or blogging IT help please consider Dwight. Just know that I come first and you’re second!
Now, let me clarify the first statement up top — blogging with design has to be top of mind. No one wants to come to a stale site, but everyone gives new bloggers the benefit of the learning curve. Since I’ve been blogging a few weeks shy of a year, my learning curve is over. It was time to lose the frustration and fear and just hire the help already!
There are thousands of templates and skins for blogs; invariably, something goes wrong. What you want is a reliable design you don’t need to worry about. Unless you have oodles of time to learn blog design, you definitely don’t want to be messing with widgets and plug-ins.
There’s rarely a plug in that is plug and play; and they often mess with your design. It’s cool to have badges, icons, share this and that and more; ultimately, I wanted a simple design with a focus on content.
I’m always up for comments and tweak tips, but do me a favor? Will you kindly wait six months before you tell me?
photo credit: SEOYourBlog.com
I like it, personally I like a little smaller header, but this really does have nice peppy feeling to it.
Tee-Hee. Thanks, Ray!
Thanks for the plug, Jayme. You’re a great person to work with and I appreciate all your feedback and input. It made all the difference.
Love the look, Jayme! Very nice. And your calls to action are clear and prominent!
Looks great Jayme!
Love the purple, Geaux Tigers. Like the idea of keeping it simple, making content the focus. (I need to update my site, it’s on the to-do list so thanks for the reminder.) Being a nitpicky designer, it’s gonna be hard for me to wait six whole months to make some helpful suggestions but for you, I will. 😉
OK, so I will comment here in addition to Twitter, too…LOL!
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now. Keep it up! And according to this article, I totally agree with your opinion, but only this time!Â
I just stumbled upon
your informative blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed reading
your blog posts. I will be your frequent visitor.
It was a very nice
idea ! Just wanna say thank you for the information you have diffused. Just
continue composing this kind of post. I will be a loyal reader, thanks a lot.
G’Day jayme,
Perhaps it’s time to quote a certain Mr. Jobs
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
Regards
Leon
How interesting…this post was written 6 months ago…how is it you got a hold of it today, Leon? I’m seeing a few others, bots, pop in, too. Fascinating. Thanks for saying so, or whatever you said.