If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I mentioned in a previous post that I was working on a new theme for DerekBeau.com. Well, if you are reading this post, then you have already seen the new design. What do you think?

Not Having A Unique Identity

The idea of having the exact same look as other blogs didn’t sit well with me. Every time I would visit a blog with that GlossyBlue theme, I would think I was at my own blog for a second. Not a good thing.

I had been actively looking for a designer, but couldn’t really find exactly what I wanted. I entertained about 11 design proposals through Elance and had an email correspondence with Nate Whitehill, but ultimately decided to do it myself. It is, after all, my “personal” blog.

The Design Process

I’ve been working on this for about three days now (not continuously though, I had some college courses to go to and normal work to do) and I finally got it to the point where it is good enough for public release. I will probably mess around with a few things over the coming days and weeks, but nothing major.

The inspiration for this design came from about 6-8 different templates on TemplateMonster (a great source for inspiration) as well as current blog design trends. I also purchased the Web 2 Mini Icons from N. Design Studio and took a lot of content layout elements from the previous theme.

I actually started out (and completed the design) with a brown/green/blue color scheme. During my coding and testing, however, I didn’t really enjoy using it. For some reason (I think it was the browns), it felt too closed in rather than open and airy. I decided to try a new color scheme (the current gray/red/teal) and fell in love with it.

Additional Notes

One thing to note about this new design is the banner ad in the header. It is really just there for aesthetic purposes (the header looks boring without it) but I wouldn’t be opposed to making money from it. I will probably rotate a few attractive banners for now and maybe run a contest in the future to give the spot away to one lucky reader ;-)

Another major change is the addition of a features header. It currently shows the top posts (ordered by number of comments left), latest posts (also available in footer), and subscription links. I want to replace the new posts area with something else because I feel that it is extremely redundant, but I just don’t know what else to put there.

Closing Comments

I think that’s about everything I wanted to say about the new look. I would really like to get your feedback on it, and I hope you like it because I don’t plan on changing it for a while. I might mix up the color scheme if I get tired of this one, but I would rather concentrate on writing new content than creating new themes.

So tell me, what do you think?