Blog

New Design

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if you see any Bugs lets me know… the new design is loaded with some in house plugins, like the shout box just above the comments on the Homepage,

For reference the shout box is going to where I promote my products, or websites I like , and can leave there for a month or so.

I have dumped the Archive system for better Categories, and used a few other plugins, Once the site settles down and gets reindex then I will list want I did, for better or worse.. I’m know in the Hands of the search engines….

1,890 pages in Google
5,654 pages Yahoo
3,954 pages in Live

My Blog Stats

There are currently 440 posts and 3,175 comments, contained within 23 categories.

DaveN

56 Comments

  • DaveN 1678 days ago

    oops for DazzlinDonna is it Dark enough now :)

    DaveN

    Reply
  • Mike 1678 days ago

    http://www.twentysteps.com

    Liking the new look, Dave. I have a question to ask, though. Why are you wearing a pair of red underpants on your head?

    Reply
  • Edwin 1678 days ago

    For a supposedly hacked blog you’re blog looks pretty cool to me Dave ;=)
    Nice Design for sure!

    Reply
  • DaveN 1678 days ago

    Ask Tim Mayer, he knows why ;)

    DaveN

    Reply
  • Melanie Phung 1678 days ago

    http://www.all-about-content.com/

    Funny, this whole time I’ve been thinking that what the web was really missing was a red and black site that “overachieves the first step in [its] critical path of actioning future mission-critical reader deliverables”. I think you’ve just opened up the gates of Web 3.0. Congrats.

    Reply
  • Manish Pandey 1678 days ago

    http://www.manishpandey.com

    Looks decent to me Dave!

    Congrats for the new design.

    Reply
  • Manish Pandey 1678 days ago

    http://www.manishpandey.com

    Well Dave I also found on your source that one of your CSS is not externally called.

    This one…

    /* Begin Contact Form CSS */
    {…

    …}

    Just link them to an external CSS file.

    Except that its all good! I mean cool! :)

    Reply
  • Farmer 1678 days ago

    I love the new design. I like a darker look.

    Reply
  • Adam 1678 days ago

    http://www.conversion-matters.co.uk

    The add to rss reader buttons are partly hidden by the comment form on FF/Ubuntu :O

    I thought it was moderately odd that the labels for these input fields are below the boxes but other than that I like it :)

    A

    Reply
  • DaveN 1678 days ago

    Adam what screen res are you running out on

    Reply
  • Joost de Valk 1678 days ago

    http://www.joostdevalk.nl/

    Lovin’ it. Although I still think the post area needs a max-width :)

    Reply
  • Joost de Valk 1678 days ago

    http://www.joostdevalk.nl/

    And why is there still no subscribe to comments plugin Dave? :)

    Reply
  • Joost de Valk 1678 days ago

    http://www.joostdevalk.nl/

    Ow and you probably want to merge subsequent comments by the same person as well :)

    Reply
  • Joost de Valk 1678 days ago

    http://www.joostdevalk.nl/

    To prevent 5 comments in a row by the same person, doing it just for the click throughs on your recent comments widget :P

    Reply
  • Joost de Valk 1678 days ago

    http://www.joostdevalk.nl/

    And why’s the calendar still there? Pages like this:

    http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/2007/07/03

    will surely go supplemental and waste spider time :)

    Reply
  • Wicked Keemo 1678 days ago

    Hey Dave,

    Reply
  • Wicked Keemo 1678 days ago

    Joost has a point

    Reply
  • Wicked Keemo 1678 days ago

    You need to sort out

    Reply
  • Wicked Keemo 1678 days ago

    that recent comments issue

    Reply
  • Wicked Keemo 1678 days ago

    Haha :D

    Reply
  • Wicked Keemo 1678 days ago

    Also, where’d you get the 23 categories from? I only count 19 on the right. Maybe there’s a duplicate content issue there?
    On a more pedantic note, “I’m know in the Hands of the search engines…”. Umm don’t you mean “I’m NOW in the Hands of the search engines…” :P

    Reply
  • Loren 1678 days ago

    http://www.searchenginejournal.com

    Lose that default Digg It button.

    Since most of your posts don’t make it to Digg, having a Digg this button with a big fat ZERO looks like fucking ass.

    Instead, install the Digg This plugin : http://www.aviransplace.com/index.php/digg-this-wordpress-plugin/

    This way, the big Digg box will only be included at the top of your blog post if that specific post has been submitted to Digg and has received referrals from the Digg.com domain.

    Then you won’t have that damn fat ass 0 next to all of your posts.

    Reply
  • Darren Rowse 1678 days ago

    Darren Rowse

    Really like it – although the first thing I noticed when I came wasn’t your content or navigation etc – it was the digg buttons all lined up with 0′s in them. Hope you don’t mind some honest feedback but I think it cheapens the look of the overall design and I wouldn’t go with them – or at least wouldn’t include them on the front page.

    Apart form that – very nice work.

    Reply
  • topper 1677 days ago

    Sorry Dave, but I don’t like it. Too dark (a sign of things to come?).

    Plus if you added a little yellow it would almost exactly the same color scheme as my old bedroom back in 1986 – apart from the gradient fill at the top ;)

    Reply
  • Dudibob 1677 days ago

    http://www.dudibob.com

    reminds me of a forum, will take some time getting used to the darkness lol

    Reply
  • Dudibob 1677 days ago

    http://www.dudibob.com

    and you kept the slogan! yey

    Reply
  • stu 1677 days ago

    http://www.webmasterwords.com

    I think you will see a big improvement by getting rid of the archive. Although its still accessible via the calender as Joost points out.

    Also i think its better to clip the posts displayed in categories rather than listing a page of full posts

    Overall i like the design though.

    Reply
  • DaveN 1677 days ago

    @ Darren and Loren.. Dam right, Digg buttons gone !!

    @ Joost . pffffffffft ;) Calendar Gone ! and 301′s in place

    @ Topper. Darkness is in my soul sorry :0

    keep up with the comments you are changing the touch and feel of the site and I thankyou

    DaveN

    Reply
  • Owen 1677 days ago

    http://www.u-g-h.com

    Dave, one suggestion. A way to make your comments standout from all the others would be a nice touch. There’s a couple of WP plugins around that do that.

    Just my 2p

    Reply
  • pickled 1677 days ago

    like the .html extention on the post pages, how’d you do that?

    on a related note you probably show get the plugin that adds the trailing / to your category urls.

    and your slogan isn’t funny enough imo, doesn’t fit you. needs to be something like ‘I can’t stop ranking it’ or ‘I rank it with both hands’ :)

    Reply
  • pickled 1677 days ago

    oh and you should space the post content away from the borders more, I’d make it match the comments

    Reply
  • Loren 1677 days ago

    http://www.searchenginejournal.com

    DARKNESS!!!

    Reply
  • Freelance Website Design 1677 days ago

    http://www.alfredfox.com

    Looks good. I like that its clean, uncluttered, and width 100% And who doesn’t love a dark website?

    Reply
  • Liam Delahunty 1677 days ago

    http://www.liamdelahunty.com/

    Looks great but you’ve got some gypsy in drag in your about box ;-)

    I like this a lot – it look different, yet remains very comfortable.

    You could consider changing the wordpress comments error page from default.

    Reply
  • DaveN 1677 days ago

    @ pickled in the Customize Permalink Structure

    just add Custom structure: /%postname%.html then add a 301 to the old pages.

    DaveN

    Reply
  • Liam Delahunty 1677 days ago

    http://www.liamdelahunty.com/

    Just noticed that the home page has a couple of superfluous entries in it.

    see: http://www.liamdelahunty.com/blog/media/dave-naylor-a-uk-seo_118373.gif

    Reply
  • DaveN 1677 days ago

    @ liam couple of superfluous entries – lol They are two screen shots of the same adsense block showing good targeting and bad targeting depending on whether your on the home page or the post page, But the adsense bot has been and visited the site so i get crap ads on both now.. unless you need to know about bin laden ???

    DaveN

    Reply
  • Liam Delahunty 1677 days ago

    http://www.liamdelahunty.com/

    Genie mac. Now I feel like a complete pr*ck! Next time, I’ll read first… Right then, when’s the next SEOdays? (Desperately trying to redeem myself)

    Reply
  • tast 1677 days ago

    Dave,
    I would suggest using different color combination(s) for home about contact us and photo tabs and their associated states. What I mean is that, for example, if I am on your home page, home tab color is red and the rest are green – so far so good- but if I hover over any of the other three tabs it turns red, which is same color as active tab, hence there are two tabs with same color (which can be confusing for a moment, and I think that you are loosing intended color distinguishton ).

    Reply
  • IrishWonder 1675 days ago

    http://www.irishwonder.syndk8.co.uk/2007/07/01/google-keyword-tool-external/

    Oh holy shit this looks almost like SEOmoz with the 3 columns stolen off SEOIdiot! :D

    Reply
  • AussieWebmaster 1674 days ago

    I liked the other one better but then I don’t like green and grey… too institutional.

    Reply
  • Adam Moro 1674 days ago

    http://www.adammoro.com/

    Wow – looks great! Only thing that didn’t sit right with me was the new slogan. I’m not saying it’s bad or anything – I just really liked the old one. Regardless though, very nice.

    Reply
  • DaveN 1673 days ago

    Adam Moro you know what I agree with you, on that .

    also added red for author posts,

    Reply
  • Julian Paling 1672 days ago

    http://dfinitive.com/blog

    Overall I like the design, its modern and clean.

    But i think that the text can become a little difficult to read when stretched out. On my monitor, which is widescreen, there are too many characters per line. Also for me the font size or font, is a little too small.

    Julian.

    Reply
  • JLH 1672 days ago

    http://www.jlh-design.com

    Not sure if this has been mentioned, but if you travel the web with the nonfollow links highlighted in pink. The blue font of the commenters links can’t be read behind the pink. Just a note of mine.

    Reply
  • DaveN 1672 days ago

    JLH yer I know :)

    Reply
  • James 1666 days ago

    A quick amateur question if you don’t mind: how did you redirect all your old pages to new? Using a plugin or .htaccess?

    Thanks.

    Reply
  • Liam Delahunty 1664 days ago

    http://www.liamdelahunty.com

    How about a previous / next at the bottom of the comments so I don’t need to ctrl + home or scroll back up to the top to read another post?

    Reply
  • Alan Hart 1659 days ago

    http://www.alanhart.co.uk

    Nice redesign, No links to tools though even though “/tools” still exists? oh and tools/page_rank.php seems broken:(http://alanhart.co.uk/tempimg/DNPageRank.jpg)
    Not sure if you know about this?

    Reply
  • http://www.hatchmedia.co.uk 1658 days ago

    http://infohatchmedia.co.uk

    Nice design keep up the top work

    Reply
  • [...] talking about wordpress designs, I quite like Dave Naylor’s redesign [...]

  • Web Browser 1408 days ago

    Too bright, hurt my eyes.

    Also, you “forgot” to share that JS code, so just thought that in case you are writing, finish the article… 2c

    Reply
  • Osman Patel 1407 days ago

    http://www.city-news.co.uk

    Is it me, but when enter the URL my FF browser crashes – WTF!!

    It works ok n IE, however there is a bug when it renders the page.

    besides that this is a completely new look, very good!!

    Reply
  • Kettlebell Training 1407 days ago

    http://www.kettlebelltraining.net

    Um, what happened to the dark layout everyone is talking about?

    Vic

    Reply
  • Neil Yeomans 1407 days ago

    http://www.lucidite.co.uk/

    My Firefox crashed 100% of the time too until I disabled all of my Firefox plugins, couldn’t be bothered to check which one ;) Try it Osman.

    Reply
  • DavidT 1406 days ago

    Im Digging the new look Dave very nice indeed!

    Reply

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