Why Redesign My Website?
a circular movement of water, counter to a main current, causing a small whirlpool.
By definition the web is a fluid medium, it ebbs and flows like a river. In fact, when I formed my first web development company I pondered a wide variety of names and first settled on Eddy as my company name. Eddy is both a persons name (informal for Edward) and also a circular movement of water, counter to a main current, causing a small whirlpool. Exactly what I wanted my company to do. To be honest, the company was ready to be launched, we had brochures designed, logos ready and then one night at dinner I was speaking to my wife about the launch when my five year old son asked “Do I know Eddy?”.
That stopped me dead in my tracks and made me take a step back. I stayed up late that night looking at the company and realized that I had been too close to the problem, I’d become blind to the obvious and my attention was so focussed on the details that I’d not looked at the larger picture. The old expression “you can’t see the forest for the trees” came to mind but in this case, it wasn’t just about some vague concept it was about money. Eddy died that night but Rodonic was born.
Rodonic web design services, Ottawa
Rodonic was a funny company name, it was intentionally designed to mean nothing. In fact, when Rodonic was launched there was no other uses of the word in the Google database. That was great for branding and helped ensure the company was a success.
Where with Eddy I focussed only on my desires for branding, Rodonic was all about others. The name, selected in part for its vagueness was a perfect software company name. We tested the name to ensure it could work with various titles such as Rodonic WordPress, Rodonic DRAW, etc. and it stacked up as well as Corel, Microsoft or Adobe (I was young and had big dreams). What it lacked however was a passionate team behind it and eventually the business closed.
Why Redesign thisismyurl.com?
Just like Eddy, I was so close to the old design that I’d forgotten to check if the visiting public could find things easily on the website and just like Rodonic sometimes you have to take a deep breath and accept that changes are needed. The top navigation of the old design had bugged me for some time but more importantly, I had to ask myself what the purpose of my website is (remember, that’s one of the ways to make a successful website). This is what I came up with:
- Provide quality, informative posts related to the space between design and technology.
- Provide easy access to downloads.
- Inform the public about my technical and creative skills.
Oddly, my website structure of the old site was too cluttered and confusing for most people to find my most popular WordPress plugins easily. So I took a bit of time and redesigned the layout. Some of the new features of the site are just to show off but others are designed to make using the website much easier to use.
Automatic highlighting of key posts
Key posts are now highlighted
One of the big improvements to the website is for navigation and highlighting of critical posts. Throughout the website downloads are now automatically highlighted in the listings with icons to represent the categories they belong to. So far, I’ve highlighted:
- Free downloads
- WordPress downloads (as well as Plugins and Themes)
- osCommerce downloads
- Macintosh downloads
- Windows downloads
Automated content additions
To further assist users to find key content such as downloads, I’ve added an automated piece of text at the bottom of key articles, designed to help users find other related downloads much faster.
These new additions to each page are found on all pages that share a common category. For example, if a post is included in the Free downloads category, a paragraph and link to free downloads is included on the bottom of each post. The text is automatically applied from a central repository and increased the displayed count as I add downloads to the specific category.
Improved header
By far the biggest addition to the website is a new, cleaner header. The new header is designed to show the key navigation and highlight sub navigation quickly.
I’ve used standard CSS layers to highlight the active page as well as to focus attention on mouseover states. The key advantage over previous designs is that I can now help surfers find downloads and blog posts much faster.
Ongoing changes
There’s a lot more to come over the next few weeks, and as always I would love to hear back from you so if you’re having a problem finding content on my site, confused by navigation or just want to say hi, I’d love to hear from you. – Chris
I’ll hold my hand up as someone who found the old layout a little cumbersome and I’m a big fan of the new design. Especially like the icons representing the various downloads, makes it very easy to identify the tools you’re looking for. The one thing I’m not so sure about is the way the ‘About’ tab and sidebar hug the right hand side of the page, on a wide screen it leaves a big white gap between those elements and the rest of the site. A minor niggle but thought I’d mention it, overall though, nice work!
Nice step forward. I like this design from a usabilty point of view, but the looks of your old design were more appealing to me.
My 5 cent to improving this design… you could link the whole text of your “share this” listing and not just the icons of each service. And I have to agree with GC to the big white space between content and sidebar being a bit of unusual.
I like the new look although I’m not sure am I like more than old one =)
By the way, there is some problem in Firefox with bottom scrollbar. Looks like your pages have more than 100% width.
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I think after time by time site needed redesign, not having technical knowledge but as all said even yours. Changes is Rule of The World..
Chris
Guess what? I thought I went to the wrong side. The makeover is great but probably it’s just me, I’m not too fond of fluid design. With 24″ screen, there is just too much white space floating around. Everything else is fine. The sidebar has everything we need for easy navigation.
Yan
Design should always be clean and neat. People don’t care about your mad design skill they care about easy access to articles and posts.
I can confirm the width problem not just in firefox – it appears to affect all gecko based browsers even at full screen width. And the div id=’translate’ on the right is rendered on top of the textarea. nice effect I’ve never seen before ;-)
@Klaus … lol OK fine, some time between sledding and rock climbing I’ll get time to fix it this weekend.
Thanks to everybody for your feedback both positive and critical, I truly believe the best way to build a great website is to have a lot of feedback from the people who read it. Chris
i think that you show your skills to us ;) but really you have nice designs but i my opinion you should let this designs for sometime and redesign it or replace it ” let’s say monthly ” but not weekly !!
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Hi Christopher,
I think you redesign your website because you want to give more facilities to regular readers and fresh visitors of your site. I see the changes which you maintain with nice effect. I mostly like your language widget because every reader can read your blog in his or her maternal language.
==>> Pintu
I think it’s good to change things up once in a while. It adds some freshness. I was used to the old design though, so the new one will take some getting used to.
Your redesign works pretty well to me. It is easy to navigate, neat, and simple. I can always come back to this blog without having a headache, and that is a good thing.
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Redesigning is good once and awhile or if you need something for your website. Don’t be like me and be on the 4th redesign in 6 months, that’s a little too much xD.
I have to say though, this site look really nice. It’s sleek and simple.
i don’t know what the old design looked like,but i definitely like the new one, it is easy to read, the font choice is great,every article has headline and something like sub headline so one can decide whether to read the article or no
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very clean and easy look, unlike a lot of blogs
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@All – thanks for the feedback guys and keep in mind that a blog is a fluid medium so I’ll be putting a lot of work into it as soon as I’m settled back in from my trip.