I visited my site on my PC after a long time and I didn’t like the way it looked. I felt it was all over the place; menus weren’t appropriate. The look was minimalistic but it wasn’t sleek and looked outdated. The home page was showing the latest post but I had to scroll down for a while to reach the second post. So, my first post always has to be catchy for the new user to stay and browse through. Too much pressure.
So, I have been working on some changes to my site over the past week. Following are some of the changes that I did in different aspects of the site.
Pages
I removed the “Links” page that I had earlier. This page had a list of sites that I visited and enjoyed when I created this page a few years back. Most of the links are non-functional now. Also stats showed that these links were hardly clicked ever. So I decided to remove this page.
I moved “Why I Write” and “About” pages to the last in the menu. Earlier they were the first and the last in the menu like the Queen’s guards. I wanted the attention on the posts more than myself. I adjusted the order accordingly.
Menus
I made quite a bit of changes in menus. Earlier I had menus and sub-menus for each category. It worked well when there were only a few posts and I was clear about the posts that I was going to write. But now, these categories did not make any sense as menus. So I reduced the categories to one – minimalism. All my minimalism related posts will be shown under this menu. Rest all will be displayed under the home page.
Now my menu has only four items – home, minimalism, why I write and About
Link Fixes
I fixed the links of Why I write and About pages. Earlier, Why I write link was “about” and “About” page was “about-me”. Now I have fixed them to have appropriate links so that people won’t get confused when I share them around.
Theme
I changed my theme from “Penscratch2” to “Rowling”. Penscratch2 was fantastic and very minimal when I had chosen it. But now, I feel it is outdated. Familiarity breeds contempt. So, I scouted for a theme that looks both minimal as well as not boring. Having a small header was another requirement. I liked the way Rowling looked and activated it already. It’s a combo of black and white and looks good, at least for my eyes.The blog posts are shown in tile format and only the title is visible on the home page. Viewers can quickly scroll through the titles.
Widgets
I removed “Search my blog” widget as Rowling comes with a blog search by default. I also added the Categories widget. I removed the categories by the top menu but if someone wants to browse based on categories they can use this widget. Not that they are going to find amazing categories but hey, I won’t judge anyone’s taste.
Feedback
I have made these changes assuming that this will be good. I also understand that most people will be reading this via WordPress Reader and these changes won’t even make any difference. I would appreciate it if you can browse a little bit and let me know what you think about the changes. Is there anything that you liked? Is there anything that you liked earlier but not there any more. Would love to hear your feedback.
Pointless & Prosaic 
I never use the wordpress reader. I have everything sent to my email so it forces me to actually use my laptop and view a person’s actual site. I know I am old school, everyone browses on their devices these days but you can kind of get a feel for one’s personality when you look at their blog design.
I think you nailed you minimalistic goals well, very clean and sleek, with enough style to make it unique.
I am reading this from my laptop and like the colour scheme and layout. Sometimes we can start adding too much to our blog, bit like hoarding and then you never get the time to keep it updated/current. I refreshed my site 2 years ago so works well but no doubt will need a rethink sometime in the future. Time and effort well spent.
I will say I am in the camp that a lot of times I just read blogs via WordPress Reader. However, I did spend some time today looking around on your site and I like the new blog design (wish I could remember the old one to compare it to). You do bring up an interesting point, depending on how people access your site the theme might not really matter as much. Personally, I have spent countless hours finding and changing my theme time and time again over the years, which might all be for very little value. Food for thoughts on this Friday.
Thanks! Glad it works.
I read from WordPress reader, mobile browser or the actual webpage depending on where I am reading it from. You are right, the design gives a feel of the person’s personality and taste.
Thanks! Yes, it’s a good idea to revisit the design once in a while and see change as required.
Thanks Eric. I use WordPress reader too mostly particularly while commuting. But I use it for the blogs that I jave already subscribed to. For new blogs, I like to visit their website via laptop so that it’s easy to browse and quickly skim through.
Regardless of whether people are using wordpress or not, it may be a good idea to change the design as you like. At the least, you get the satisfaction. 🙂
When I opened your blog today, I realised that you’ve changed the theme. Don’t remember much about how it looked earlier. But yeah change is good.
I like the quick and easy menu. Wondering why did you choose just one category to be featured in the menu…
Also, are these two posts (Find, then Forward, Blog Redesign) any special that they’ve got a special mention in the side bar?
Thanks! I have one category because that is the only solid category that I can see in my posts. Other posts are all over the place.
Find, then Forward for some reason is getting large number of views. And blog redesign as well. The right widget is just my top posts.
Oh! There was no header saying that they were top posts and I thought you had manually put them
Fixed it. Thanks!