I have a new blog layout!

And I'm so proud of this one because I did it myself!  So here's the story - during my Winter break last December, I set myself a project which was to redesign the layout of my website The Enthusiast's Guide to Jane Eyre*.  And I had fun doing it - I've always enjoyed fiddling with code and making pretty graphics.  But blog layouts are much more daunting to me which is why I've always gotten designers to do them for me in the past.  However, because I really relished tweaking the template for my Jane Eyre website (I absolutely can not code from scratch), I started thinking.  And that led me to try my hand at tweaking a template for my blog despite the fact that I still really liked the old one.  But ultimately, there were two things I wanted that pushed me rework it -

• Responsive Design: Obviously for Blogger there's a choice between the ugly default mobile view and a scaled down version of your full desktop layout, but I've seen great mobile versions of other blogs that adjusted to the visitor's screen and I wanted to have that for mine.   According to my stats maybe 5% of the people who visit my blog view it in mobile, but still I wanted everything to look uniform and pretty.  So when I came across a template with a responsive design built in,  I was so happy!


• White space:  In web design, I really like a minimal look with accenting colors and lots of white space.  My tumblr reflects that, as does my twitter, so I decided to bring that to my blog and let that white space open everything up.  I think it also helps for when I post something with a lot of photos - the photos aren't overshadowed by the things around it in the layout and there's less of a clash of images.  It makes me feel better somehow to visit my blog and see everything looking a bit cleaner and brighter. 

Some of the other things I was excited about adding to my site though is a Scroll to Top button in the bottom corner, a drop down menu in the navigation bar and customized post share buttons (goodbye ugly Blogger style!).  So this layout took me much longer than expected - almost a week of pretty obsessive layout re-working.  I want to mention a couple of resources that really helped me figure out all the kinks in my blog too - StackOverflow and xomisse.

I hope this will be a design that will last me a very long time, as I don't want to keep changing the look of my blog.  It's nice when a blog has a consistent, recognizable look to it.  But in this case, I really wanted a little more function with the beautiful form.  And hopefully this design will suit me for a long time.  At least, if I do feel the need for a change sometime way in the future, perhaps redesigning my blog logo in the sidebar will be enough to refresh the look!

And now I have a couple questions for  bloggers - I've always had my blog homepage show the full body of the post because I felt it's easier to have the full post to read for a visitor, instead of having to click through to read more.  But I can definitely see how it can clean up the look of the blog so I was wondering -

Which do you prefer more - Read more/Post Summaries or Full Posts on blog homepages?

And, how often do you click on social media links?

Because I was thinking of putting my links in my navigation bar as text in a dropdown menu, but I was worried that people won't find it as easily or just assume I don't have any if they didn't see the images.

And for comparison - here is the before and after of my blog:

Continue reading →

New Blog Design + a Giveaway!

New blog design alert! It’s always exciting when you get something new and shiny! This was designed by the very talented gals behind These Paper Blogs - Megan and Chri! Thank you so much girls for this beautiful design! I was looking for a something that would look elegant, less busy, and more vintage-y than my previous one, and from their portfolio I found their designs to have a lovely clean aesthetic which was the basis for what I wanted. In 2012, when I first sought a blog design from Jenny at Inside the Kaleidoscope, I really had no idea of what I wanted. And what she came up with was both unexpected and perfect. Going into a second redesign, I had more of a notion of what I wanted for my blog so this time around I was more involved with the process, and sending little tweaks and ideas to Megan and Chri. It’s turned out better than I could have hoped though - actually I think the new design has a sort of semblance to the movie poster for the recent Jane Eyre - in the color and the head silhouette -

Kind of?

which is perfect for me of course! And I think it was just serendipitous!

Megan and Chri were just delightful to work with, I sometimes felt bad about all the emails I sent their way with my harebrained ideas, but they were ever gracious and accommodating. I love the look of their designs, and it is all at such affordable prices! They were always prompt at responding to my emails as well which is particularly great because for someone as impatient as me, the wait to see what the designer comes up with is painful, but regular communication eases my fretfulness!

To celebrate my new blog design, I’m having a little Amazon Gift Card giveaway for $25! And because I’ve added a few more social networks to my blog sidebar, there are quite a few options to gain more entries. (Sorry about the social media overload!)  I have come to the sad decision to get rid of Google Friend Connect... Umm mostly because Google has taken it out of their updated widget lineup and I can no longer access the code.  They replaced it with a Google+ widget and no thanks.  Bloglovin is my preferred follow method now anyway!

And if you are one of the lovely, fantastic people to have my blog button on their blog, I would really appreciate it if you could update it with the new button! Thank you lovely fantastic person!

• Open Internationally
• One Gift Card to one winner
• The giveaway ends in two weeks, and the winner will be promptly contacted. The winner must reply to the email within 48 hours or a new winner will be chosen.

And again please check out These Paper Blogs if you are looking for a new design!  And thank you so much for visiting my blog! :)


a Rafflecopter giveaway

My old design for the memories:

New Blog Design!

 The wonderful Jenny at Inside the Kaleidoscope has just redesigned and prettified my blog!!  I'm so in love with this design and I highly recommend Jenny if you are at all interested in sprucing up the look of your blog!  Jenny was so great to work with and very quickly whipped up this amazing design!  Literally over the weekend!

The prices are so affordable, and Jenny was entirely helpful and responsive to my ideas. She took the measure of my old blog and what I had envisioned for the new one, and turned it into something I wouldn't have even thought of, but loved immediately. Check out Inside the Kaleidoscope for more of Jenny's blog designs and pricing!

And if you are kind enough to have my blog button on your blog, I would really appreciate it if you would switch it out for this new one - the html is in the sidebar.  Thanks!