My New Blog Design

You may have noticed that my blog design has changed significantly. Once I had the chance to use my old blog design for a few months I discovered it had a number of short comings so I decided to change to a new design to improve the usability and effectiveness of my blog.

Changing a website's design is very easy if you are using a content management system (CMS) such as Blogger, which I use, or Wordpress, which is also very popular. All you need to do is go to a website that lists lots of different template designs and pick the one that's right for you.

These are the key features I wanted the new design to have:

• Two column design so the page was less cluttered.
• Sidebar on the right so the content is the first thing that users and search engines will see.
• Large text and clean font for easier reading of posts.
• Large posting (content) area to allow for longer lines meaning less scrolling and wider content such as images, videos and tables.
• Horizontal navigation that is highly customisable.
• Simple and clean design for faster page load times and easier reading.

I went through quite a few different designs before I settled on this one. This design is called 'Twenty Ten' and has been adapted to Blogger (by The Man Who Walked Thru Wall) from the most recent default Wordpress template. I would have liked to have something a bit more unique, many Adelaide Bloggers use this design, but in the end this one has the least number of problems.

Change Log

These are changes I have made to the template code:

• 11/04/2011 -Optimised title tags to show the post name instead of the blog name.
  
• 11/04/2011 - Added copyright info and link to this post in the footer.
  
• 11/04/2011 - Removed the large header image. I don't really have a relevant image to put there at the moment and I like the idea of having a small header to have more content viewable 'above the fold.'