If you’re a regular visitor here at One Money Design I’m sure you’ve noticed the new website design I recently deployed. If you read posts via your feed reader, I’d like to invite you to come on over for a visit and see the new design.
I’ve been thinking of making a change for several months now. Previously, I used Dojo, which is a free theme I found at WordPress.org. I can’t say enough good things about the theme and the free support I received from the creator from time to time. It’s a great theme to use.
But near the end of last year I made the decision to invest in a new theme. I wanted to find a professional theme with a development and support staff standing behind it that could help me take One Money Design to a new level of design for readers.
So, I’m excited with my investment in WooThemes and am amazed at what I was able to accomplish with their theme platform in such a short amount of time. But more about WooThemes later (perhaps in a future post) in which I’ll share my experiences with the blogger community.
Today, I’d like to highlight some of the changes in design to OMD. I hope you’ll find they enhance your experience here.
Featured Posts
The feature posts section is at the top of the page under the header. It highlights some of the posts that are getting the most attention from readers. I also include posts that are the first post of a new series.
More Posts on the Main Page
One of the other features I like is the ability to provide you more content or recent posts on the front page. Versus displaying full articles, I’m now displaying excerpts of the latest articles. You can quickly scan through the latest 10 posts and decide which ones you want to read. There is also a section after the latest 10 posts that provide you the titles for the next 5 posts. So, in total you can see the latest 15 posts on the front page!
Menus
I’m excited to have some page and category menus across the top of the page that I think will help improve navigation of the website. The most top menu includes pages. The menu under the header includes all of the categories you can browse through on the website.
Popular/Comments/Featured/Tags
A feature I’m particularly excited about is the ability for you to see popular posts, recent comments, links to featured articles and links to content categories over in the sidebar to your right. I think this is a great space saver and neatly organizes information for you.
Logo
One of my favorite new features of the site is the new logo. The logo was created by Logos for Websites. I’m very excited about the logo and the overall design my friend Pete created. I hope we all look like this guy when we achieve our financial goals together!
Comment counts
As you see each post on the main page, you’ll notice a comment count next to the title. I like this feature because it quickly allows you to see where others are commenting and participating in discussion. If you don’t see any comments, you’ve got a great opportunity to get the discussion started!
Latest videos
In the section at the bottom of the page you’ll find my latest videos. I’ve recently started Video blogging too.
Side blog
The side blog is a feature that I’m still thinking about. Currently, I’m using it for aside commentary. It’s for posts that may be too small for an article, or too big for a tweet on Twitter. So far, I’ve used it to let people know about my posts at Bible Money Matters, guest posts at other websites, to share helpful links to articles and provide devotionals. What would like like to see here?
Site map
The site map provides an easy way to find the content here at One Money Design. You can quickly see titles of all the articles by category.
Image gallery
This is a new cool feature I’m starting to use. As I include a picture in a post, it will also be added to the image gallery. If you hover over the pictures you’ll see the title of the post. You can click the picture to go directly to that post. Of course this puts me in the position to find more and more interesting pictures that relate closely to the content you’re reading. J
What do you think?
Wrapping up, I’m a person who values and appreciates feedback. Would you share your opinion or thoughts about the new design? Do you have any other ideas that might improve your experience here?
I really like the changes! I do something similar for a side blog on Tumblr.
The theme is really clean–I’ve used Woo Themes for a couple of projects in the past and have been happy with everything.
One suggestion I would have is to make your videos more prominent!
.-= Wojciech Kulicki´s last blog ..How to Deal With Future Income =-.
Wojciech, thanks and good advice. Not sure I can do this with the theme, but will look into it.
New theme looks great Jason. Love the new logo, featured section, comment counts, tabbed widget, and especially love the “side blog” idea and your use of asides… very creative.
Now for the constructive criticism:
Scrutinize your inclusion of each social icon button. Some may be helpful to readers and some may not. Evaluate each one scrupulously to determine if they add value to your readers.
Image gallery? Again, scrutinize its usefulness to readers.
Consider displaying your latest post as a full post on the homepage, then display all subsequent posts as teasers like you have now.
Install the Firebug and Yslow Firefox plugins to help you speed up your site loading times for both homepage and single pages because currently your site ranks low for both.
In closing, continue to always design/implement each site feature with reader benefit in mind. And make sure you don’t spend too much time tinkering… that time can be more wisely spent on producing great content for OMD readers – all bloggers get caught up w/that so just be aware of it.
Overall… great job – I think you picked a winner!
Godspeed.
.-= Matt Jabs´s last blog ..Current Giveaways on DFA – January 2010 =-.
Matt, thanks for your thoughtful comment. You make some strong points that I’m already weighing in my head. 2 things come to mind: 1) Content is for the reader; 2) any features, buttons should enhance reader experience. I could do some more housekeeping on number 2, especially with the social buttons. Thanks again.
Jason – site looks awesome! I love the new logo and design too.
I use a Woo Theme too and love it.
The only thing I would recommend is to have a prominet way to sign up for email newsletters. I like when sites have a box right on the homepage that I can sign up for the email rss.
Other than that I think it’s GREAT!
Keep up the great work!!
.-= Jason @ Redeeming Riches´s last blog ..What is The Real Cost to Skipping Your Credit Card Payments? =-.
Thanks, Jason. Good idea on the subscribe option. I’ll give that some thought. I could see where that might make it easier for people to subscribe vs. the link in the header.
Everything looks great Jason! I think Matt had some good constructive criticism to take into account. It’s always good to weigh the load times for your site vs. features. And content is always king – so get writing! the more content you have, the better!
.-= Peter´s last blog ..Blueprint For How To Make Money With A Blog: Money Making Ideas, Optimizing Your Site And Helpful Site Tools =-.
Thanks, Pete. Yes, sir. I’ll get to writing! I’m glad the new design is up so that I can focus soley on the reason why I have a blog in the first place.
Really liking the new look, Jason. Especially those social icons. You must have spent hours tweaking those.
.-= PT´s last blog ..Are You Spending Less This Year? =-.
Thanks, PT. Ha ha. Yeah, many hours getting it just right!