Four point oh!

The picture, as you have obviously inferred, represents me turning on the power to JakeBouma.com 4.0 (in reality, I was turning on the power to Milwaukee). If you're reading this in a feed reader or email, click through and test drive the new design!

First of all, I would like to offer a sincere "thank you" to everyone who participated in the JakeBouma.com 4.0 prize giveaway. All of the winners have been selected and notified via email. Thanks to all of the prize sponsors as well. The prize giveaway obviously couldn't have happened without them.

The new iteration of JakeBouma.com is the biggest overhaul to the website in nearly two years, when i switched to the previous theme. Before that, the design of JakeBouma.com was disastrous - like watching Ben Affleck try to act.

The design is based on Nathan Rice's WordPress theme ElegantBlue, which I modified a bit to my liking. Much thought went into choosing this particular design (see below); I actually tried a couple of different themes before settling on this one. In addition to the new theme, many things have been added/enhanced/tidied up. I encourage you to poke around a bit, but here are a few of the modifications and reasonings:

Content is the main reason this blog exists, so I wanted to make reading more user-friendly and intuitive. The wider main column and larger font achieve this.

Navigation of specific pages (Contact, Archives, etc.) is clearer, with tabs at the top of the page. In the previous design, pages were listed in the sidebar.

I added a "Popular Posts" section to the sidebar for two reasons. (1) This makes it easier for first time visitors here to get an overall "feel" of the blog without having to dig through the archives, and (2) because there 400+ posts, I can highlight some oldie-but-goodie posts that might otherwise be utterly forgotten.

The Music page has been totally revamped and the About page has been kind of revamped.

Individual digressions now have a unique permalink page (example), making it easier for myself and others to link to them.

Anyway, it's really late and I'm really tired. Rather than continuing to list increasingly minor redesign details, I'm going to go to bed. Leave a comment and let me know how you like (or dislike) the new design!

Tagged as: blogging, branding, design, webdesign

{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }

Jeffro2pt0 October 27, 2007 at 4:10 am: Looks great. Is this based of a current theme or did you do this by scratch?

b. mick October 27, 2007 at 8:01 am: Looks great Jake! I’m just glad you didn’t go with something lame like a brown background or something.

Reyes-Chow October 27, 2007 at 8:34 am: Does look good man!

Shawn October 27, 2007 at 12:02 pm: Dude!

This is easily the best jakebouma.com yet! Uber upgrade!

Booch.

Shawn

Jake October 27, 2007 at 1:03 pm: Jeffro2pt0: It’s based on ElegantBlue.

b. mick: yeah, that would have been really dumb.

Bruce and Shawn: Thanks!

Andrew Stone October 27, 2007 at 4:00 pm: Oh hey, beautiful.

Brandon October 27, 2007 at 4:56 pm: Jake,

Thanks for the contest. I think everyone needs to check out your site on a regular basis. You have brought blogging to a whole new level!

Jake October 27, 2007 at 5:01 pm: Andrew: heeeeey…

Brandon: Thank you! I’m excited to see your new custom blog headers.

Shane Vander Hart October 28, 2007 at 8:10 pm: Looks good, I like the new design.

Heather October 29, 2007 at 1:45 pm: The new design looks great! And I like the layout changes.
Thanks for the contest!

Nathan Ketsdever October 30, 2007 at 5:52 am: Very nice design & feel!

Andrew Stone October 30, 2007 at 11:07 pm: I was talking to the design, not you. Weirdo.

Although i am digging the beard… i might need to head that direction myself. It’ll be like a hat for my chin. Its flipping windy here.

Hope all is well in DSM.

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