A site redesign is not for the faint of hearts. There is a reason why graphic designers charge good money for what they do. However, back in April, I got the itch for a site redesign. Blame it on Marie Forleo. Since, it wasn’t until B-School that I realized my site was blah. And who wants to be blah? So after listening to the website module at least 10 times, I knew I wanted something that was clean, bright, and DIY friendly. Did I mention, I would be designing & coding this site myself?
So I started my site redesign hunt by browsing themes from Studiopress. I’ve been using the genesis framework since I switched over to wordpress and they give repeat customer discounts. I fell in love with the structure of the Altitude Pro theme but it required some coding to get it exactly how I wanted it.
Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication.
-Leonardo Da Vinci
Simple But Significant
Let me be honest for a second… I’m not a minimalist in any way, shape, or form. I love lots of color, patterns, and layers. But, when placed on a website, too much color and layers can be very distracting. So this site redesign I did 3 things:
- Got rid of the sidebar
- Invested in high resolution stock photography
- Created a clean and clear navigation bar.
The first was the hardest. Saying goodbye to the sidebar meant saying goodbye to most of my ad sales. However, it also meant reducing clutter and the pain of ensuring that ads matched feel of my site. So I got rid of the sidebar on all pages except for the blog archive page.
The stock images on the site’s homepage were purchases and gifts from Shay Cochrane Photography and Kate Maxwell Photography. Both of these ladies are super talented photographers and offer freebies for subscribing to their mailing lists.
The Homepage
The homepage consists of 5 sections: the welcome & opt-in, the about, the eCourse, a quote, and a gallery of recent blog posts. The welcome and about section is pretty simple and straight forward. I wanted the purpose of this site to be easily found and clear. Plus there’s a short 30 second trailer. I ended the homepage with a gallery of recent blog posts.
The Single Post
So I read somewhere readers stay on pages longer if they have images above the fold. So each blog post has a full width picture at the beginning of the post. Cool huh?
Project Gallery
I wanted to make finding projects easier. So I added a plugin that allowed posts to be filtered by categories. I think this is awesome.
Coding For Dumb Asses & Penny Pinchers
When it came to coding I heavily relied on my training from the University of YouTube & Google. So I was overwhelming under prepared for coding my site. But thanks to awesome folks who hangout in the Studio Press forum, Sridhar Katakam, and Chistopher Cochran, it was easy to find tutorial to customize the theme. Here are the some of the ones I found really useful.
Helpful Tutorials
Visual Hook Guide– A visual guide to finding coding hooks.
Altitude Pro Setup Guide- Everything you need to know about how to setup the theme. (available after theme purchase)
How to set up animated Search form in Genesis– by Sridhar Katakam
Medium-like Full View Featured Image in Genesis– This tutorial shows how I customized the single post pages.
Plug-Ins
Yoast SEO
Go Portfolio
Ninja Popups
Genesis eNews Extended
Gold MacBook Giveaway
Rules: Use the Rafflecopter form to enter daily. Giveaway ends 6/15 and is open worldwide. Winner will be notified via email.
Prize: Gold Macbook ($1299 value)
Co-hosts: Film+Fashion+Fun ♥ True Story Book Blog ♥ Life’s Cheap Thrills ♥ The World Is My Jester ♥ Krystal’s Kitsch ♥ Stripes ‘n’ Vibes ♥ NYC Recessionista ♥ EncinoMom California Lifestyle ♥ Jenn’s Blah Blah Blog ♥ Libby’s Library ♥ Style Tab ♥ Bay Area Mommy ♥ Lauryncakes ♥ Behind Blue Eyes ♥ A Labour of Life ♥ Laurita Always ♥ Womanly Woman ♥ Finger Click Saver ♥ Nicole to the Nines ♥ [oomph.] ♥ Robinson Style
Giveaway organized by: Oh My Gosh Beck! (Please email becky@ohmygoshbeck.com with any questions.)Are you a blogger who wants to participate in giveaways like these to grow your blog? Click here to find out how you can join a totally awesome group of bloggers!
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