Hopefully I’ve done a good job and made a smooth transition and you’ve found your way to the new site safe and sound. As you can see a lot has changed from the old site so feel free to look around and make yourself at home.
It’s still Thursday night for me. I was impatient so instead of waiting I decided to go ahead and make the move tonight.
I think things have gone well for the most part, though some of the redirects didn’t quite work. I’m a little too tired at the moment to try to figure out why so I’ll leave it for tomorrow, which I imagine will be about fixing up the things I only think went right tonight.
I’m tired and going to call it a night. Ideally I’ll wake up to a lot of wonderful comments telling me how much you like the new site, but I’m preparing myself to wake up to lots of problems just in case.
If you notice anything not looking right please send me a quick email at info@vanseodesign.com. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope not to have heard from you when I check my email in the morning.
I’ll let you all adjust to the new look and the new name and all the other new things here. I’ll be back to explain why I made this move once I know things have settled.
Until then leave a comment letting me know what you think or simply fill out the quick poll to your right.
Download a free sample from my book, Design Fundamentals.
Steven, the new site looks fantastic! Love the favicon too.
Best of luck with the new site, although you certainly don’t need it.
I will miss the almost 100% width though. 🙂
Steven, it really does look fantastic. Crisp, clear and professional. Awesome job. I wish I had the whole theme for myself!
Like the new layout Steven, much clearer and better navigation. Hope the transition went smoothly and there’s not too many more glitches to sort out. 🙂
Thanks all. I’m glad you like the new look. I still have some work to do. Some of the redirection didn’t quite work like it should have, but otherwise things seem to have gone smoothly. I’ll find out as the day goes on I suppose.
Thanks again and glad you found your way here.
Love the new look, it’s nicely arranged and simple to navigate.
Thanks Rudy. So far people seem to like things. Makes me feel a little less nervous about the change.
@Dave – I debated keeping the fluid layout and the 100% width. What I found hard about it was the difficulty in adding images to posts. Often I wanted an image to stretch the full width of the post, but it was impossible to control. I thought I would try a fixed width this time around.
The main content areas does feel a little cramped to me at the moment. It was a little wider when I started, but then I increased the width of the sidebars some and had to grab a few px from the content. I’d like to find a way to add 35px or so back to the content and I may play around with the design behind the scenes a little.
Looks nice 🙂
I’m sure you spent a lot of time on the new design and it paid off.
I like the poll option, I recently incorporated the feature into some of my posts, and I think it’s a great way to get feedback.
Was curious though, as why you chose to redesign the site and move the domain, looking forward to hearing your post about everything.
Also, one more thing, I kind of had the same feelings towards the size of the width, but then again most three column designs do.
Some thoughts I had about include either just changing it to two column, so it doesn’t take up *as much* space.
Or, although I’m not a serious coder, and not sure how you would go about this, but perhaps you could have the main text *wrap* around the columns starting as the content goes right underneath the longest sidebar.
I don’t want to sound as though I’m giving to; much criticism, as I know you’ve spent a great amount of time and effort with the new blog. I was just throwing a couple of ideas out there for you (I kind of do that sometimes 😉 ).
Thanks James. I did spend a lot of time on the design and getting things working. I’m also not one to make things easy on myself so a couple times after I’d done some major work I I changed my mind about something and spent time redoing things.
I thought the poll would be a nice way to learn a few things from everyone who reads. I’m thinking I’ll run a different poll each month with mostly simple questions.
I plan on telling you why I changed domains and why the move. The simple answer is I didn’t want to offer hosting to the general public anymore and it didn’t make sense to have hosting as part of the domain after that. I’ll write a post next week with a more detailed explanation.
Don’t worry I don’t think you’re giving too much criticism. It’s all the constructive kind anyway. Originally the design was two columns, but I added the third. I didn’t want the sidebars to be too long down the page. One of the late changes I mentioned above.
I thought the same thing about wrapping the text below the menu. It’s something I’m going to try behind the scenes to see how easy it is and see how it looks.
There are actually quite a few things I still want to do with the site, but I decided it was important to first make the move to the new domain and then make some of the additions and improvements.
Moving the site was the first of three major projects for 2008. I’ll probably take a week or two to work a more realistic 50 hours a week again for a bit and then jump into the next project.
New design is fresh, looks great.
Thanks Brian.
Clean, easy to get around, uncomplicated, fresh – great work.
Thanks Sascha.
Very nice! This has really stepped up competition. Once I get a chance, I will re-do my website. I dont think its competing well enough.
Awesome page!
Thanks Bryan. Don’t be so quick to change the design of your site. I know I’ve liked it since the first time I saw it. There could be other reasons why it’s not doing as well as you’d like.
So, I thought I would test your site with IE6 and its not pretty. Your links are broken away from the header, and I keep getting javascript error messages.
It got really bad on this particular page. I got about 5-6 messages.
Thank you very much for testing. That’s what I get for making last minute changes and forgetting to test them across browsers.
I think it’s all fixed for the most part. The only thing that should be obviously off is the menu isn’t connecting to the tabs. There’s a .png image not showing.
I also notice a thin line below the torn paper images on the home page, which isn’t specific to IE6, but happens in IE in general.
I’ll get both working, but even without the fixes it should look ok for the most part.
Thanks again for pointing it out.
I suppose I’m spoiled by my super-wide monitor, it looks like you have plenty of space for content and sidebars when viewed at 1440×900!
I’m at 1920 x 1400 so I have plenty of room too. I still would have liked the main content area to be a little bit wider, but it’s fine as it is.
I’ll probably be tweaking things for a few weeks so maybe I’ll find a nice compromise.
Wow, 1920 x 1400? I have monitor envy…
Yea, I know you are right. I have been rather busy, and havent had the time to devote to making quality posts in the forums and my blogs.
But, soon I will kick everything in overdrive.
I know how the time thing goes. Sometimes everything else can get in the way. But we also control how we spend our time. I can tell you from the experience building the new site that you have to make things a priority if you want to get them done.
Well, I’ve seen this site in some of the stages of construction and I’m so happy to finally see it live. Congratulations! I know how hard you worked to get it done.
Thanks Kristine. I know you saw the site in several stages of progress so you’re not necessarily seeing anything new now. But I appreciate the congrats and know you’re happy to see the move finally happen.
Congrats Steven! A little late but I wanted to tell you that I like the design 🙂 It’s very unique with the two columns and like many commented above, it’s quite easy to navigate. I hope you’ve worked through all the kinks that come along with such a huge switch.
Thanks Ayat. By the way have I ever told you how much you look like Khalid? Sorry I couldn’t resist.
There are still a few kinks to work out. Every day I find one or two more, but I expected I would. I think and hope I took care of the major ones.
Thanks again.
Steven…It seems You have done a great job…The new one looks just great, more user and search engines friendly. The good interface. However, I see couple of things that needs to be slightly adjusted (I am saying this without hurting your feelings). I might not like to point out in here, but in case you are interested to know, Please let me know and I will send you an email with my personal openion.
Regards
Tina
Thanks Tina. Please feel free to let me know about anything that needs adjusting. I did my best with the new design, but I know there are still things here and there that need fixing.
Any feedback is always appreciated.