63 Comments
New Site Design!
April 17th, 2008 by CourtAs you can probably see, we are currently integrating a new design for Court’s Internet Marketing School! We hired Unique Blog Designs to do the design, and are very happy with the work they did. Thank goodness that there are people in this world that can make things look good - I can’t!
Right now we’re trying to make sure that everything is working how it should be. You may see something funny and if you do, please contact me! I would really appreciate it. 
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April 17th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
It looks good. Very clean.
However, your content organization might have some issues. Sponsors probably won’t be happy because they are now below the fold and your basics articles won’t get as much exposure at the bottom of the page.
Have you considered bringing back blocks of navigation at the middle of the page?
April 17th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Looks great Court! I like the typography and the colours of the design.
Your RSS placement is great, and it grabbed my eye as soon as I came to the page.
The only slight drawback that I can see is that there isn’t space to add more navigation links under the header. I’m sure you could work around this though.
Keep up the good work,
Hafiz Dhanani
April 17th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
I also just noticed that the archives tab isn’t working.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Looks good. I’d probably want some sort of character (small image) in my sidebar lists to help the eye delineate one item from another, but otherwise, looks very nice.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Hey Court, the new blog design is very nice. I think unique blog designs did a great job on it and I have to admit I like it a lot better than the old theme.
It’s very clean, easy to find stuff, neat looking, etc. Looks very professional!
Keep up the great work and blog posts and definitely keep the new theme!
April 17th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I don’t like the little slider bar on the right of each comment. It’s messing up my scrolling abilities, big time. Other than that, it’s a nice look.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Two “funny things” so far:
1. In Firefox, the comments each have a scrollbar to the side (which is unnecessary because all the comment content shows anyway). I think what you’d want to do is change the “overflow: auto;” rule on the comment body to “overflow-x: auto;”
2. There are two comment subscription checkboxes: “Subscribe to comments via email” under the “Website” field and “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” under the “Submit” button.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Good call there.
April 18th, 2008 at 5:30 am
I was trying to say what John was trying to say, but I don’t have the same technical knowledge. It appears to be fixed now, though.
One more gripe. The old theme printed out really nice. Large readable font. Full width of the page. This is printing out in a tiny, tiny font, and spanning about 2/3 of the page width.
Hopefully you guys can modify the CSS to make it good and printer friendly again.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Court, looks great. Well done on this make over. It is fresh and neat and I love the revolving featured section.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Looks real good Court! Nice and clean. I like the simple header and the colors look appealing.
April 18th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Love the new look of the site Court! Keep up the good work!!! 2 quick comments:
1. The navigation gets thrown off when I click into SEO Wordpress themes. From there, if I try to click the home button, or the site logo (who designed the new logo by the way?) I just get redirected to the SEO Wordpress themes directory.
2. When are you going to make your new theme available for download? Can’t wait to install it!!!
April 18th, 2008 at 12:06 am
Big big thumbs up I love it Court
April 18th, 2008 at 12:06 am
I’m loving the re-design, Court. It’s fresh, clean, and easy on the eye. I think the sidebar organization could be improved a tad though. Otherwise, excellent!
April 18th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Really neat! At first i thought i landed on the wrong page! UBD would be Nate Whitehill? My compliments to him on a good job.
April 18th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Yes, I was the designer of the blog (but not the logo). Thanks for your kind words.
April 18th, 2008 at 5:37 am
Nate, have a look at my comment before I saw your comment!
April 18th, 2008 at 1:37 am
Where has the search function gone? I don’t see a search box! Other than that, brilliant design!
- Martin Reed
April 18th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Great looking blog. Very neat. I love the footer with everything well organized.
April 18th, 2008 at 1:58 am
Great design courtney, much better than the last one
April 18th, 2008 at 2:24 am
where are ur tags at the top of the page? have u hidden them all together?
by the way nice site was overdue!
April 18th, 2008 at 2:34 am
I like that rotating article box at the top.
BTW, where — PHYSICALLY on the page — are the <H1 tags ? In pagesource, they appear to be near the Feedburner stuff top right, but can’t locate them with mousing around.
They are likely white text from css, on white background. I thought go ogle frowned on that little trick. Or does putting the color attribute in the css “hide” that?
April 18th, 2008 at 3:19 am
I like it. It looks professional, well organized and clean. The new logo is great: it suggests pretty well what the site is about (although I must confess that at first glance I thought the “O” was a little sperm - that’s probably the fault of my dirty mind).
A search box would be helpful, I think, because many times I remember I’ve read some useful tips in your blog, and I use the search to find those posts.
April 18th, 2008 at 4:52 am
Very disappointed with the theme , looks like any run of the mill site you visit , it does not help your branding at all in my opinion!
The earlier design had that distinct theme which as a branding tool was great.
It was very very different than a lot of other websites and said a lot about you from marketing standpoint. Not this one ..
I used to love coming to this site and read posts ..
April 18th, 2008 at 10:16 am
I do miss the bright and vibrant colors and the logo doesn’t stand out in my mind. However, i really like the Featured Post thing that scrolls through.
Court, can you include images in that section as well?
April 18th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Yeah we can actually!
April 18th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
That’s going to look really sharp and professional then. Very nice job guys!
April 18th, 2008 at 5:36 am
Absolutely stunning change for the better. Congratulations. UBD have scored again!
April 18th, 2008 at 5:42 am
Wonderful design!
How are those guys prices btw?
April 18th, 2008 at 6:44 am
Looks good. Nice clean look there. Great work by UBD as usual!
April 18th, 2008 at 7:19 am
Nice and clean, everything seems to be working so far!
April 18th, 2008 at 8:53 am
This site rocks Court. Though the guys at UBD have done a fantastic job as always, it matters not what it looks like as the content is top notch. Great work all round!
April 18th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Very clean, and very professional looking. I’d love to hire those guys to do a design for me, but after the estimate I was quoted… let’s just say I can’t afford it for now, and leave it at that.
They are *very* good at what they do, though.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:14 am
I really like the way you display the number of comments. It seems like there’s a lot of white space towards the top of the page in the middle (between the logo and the RSS, and the post title and comment number). I’m not sure about that aspect. Otherwise very nice design.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Two things are confusing me. One, my avatar isn’t showing up, although clicking on it leads to my profile. Two, the title text over the avatars is in Spanish. “Guarda il mio profilo su mybloglog.com” Or is that Italian?
April 18th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Lol. Now my avatar DID show up, but I’m still getting the foreign language.
April 18th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Never liked many of the UBD sites, and still don’t. They’re all the same with a few things here and there. Whats with the big text too?
Way to jump on the band wagon and be like everyone else…
April 18th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
I’m not a huge fan of that missing 10-15 pixels of the gradient under ‘Home’. I’m using Firefox.
April 18th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Lookin’ good Court!
I particularly like the scrolling feature article widget. I may have to add something like that to my theme.
April 18th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Interesting too see how this works out?
April 18th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I love the color combo; it’s easy on the eyes. And the design has a real professional feel. Someone coming here for the first time would definitely get the competent vibe.
My only suggestions would be:
1. Go bolder with the logo (then you could also use it as an avatar)
2. Reduce the type size on the sidebar items
3. Include a search box
But those are just nit-picky things. It’s a nice theme even without those changes.
April 18th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Great design Court, I think it is over-all a better look. Getting rid of the forest green concept was wise. The one strike that I can see is that of replacing the search bar with the ‘Type your email address’ bar. In my opinion, an odd choice and quite ambiguous.
April 18th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
First impression - cleaner and less cluttered than before. I like the color-combo. I like the feature article as well. Nice, still roaming around…
April 18th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
I like it better than the old one. Great job.
April 19th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Court looks very good . Ive been looking for designer myself for my site and have contacted Unique. The featured post section is very nice
April 19th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
I like the new look, Court — it brings your site to a new level. Really, really sharp.
Are you planning on changing the site’s favicon in the future, or are you keeping the old one for recognition purposes?
April 19th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Hey Court: What about the H1 tags mentioned above? I think worthy of an answer or even a post. Your previous layout had them light grey on white. The lasik site has black on black. This one SEEMS to have white on white (from what I can decipher from css). Aside from I thought go ogle frowned on text same color as background, how did you do that so I can’t even find it dragging the mouse around? Or is this too “sensitive” a subject to address in public. (Go ogle may be watching?)
April 19th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
I just noticed — new design is NOT printer friendly AT ALL (from Firefox, at least).
April 19th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Nice job Court! It looks fantastic.
Dave
April 20th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Looks great Court!
April 27th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Totally good looking, even the older one very cool also!
Thanks!
April 20th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Looks very nice! Unique Blog Designs have done a great job. However I would remove the tag cloud. Do you keep it for SEO purposes?
April 20th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Wow, the site looks great. I really like the new color palette. And as others have said, the rotating article feature is a nice touch. As usual Nate, Matt, and the UBD team have done a great job.
April 20th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Yes - definitely missing a Search function. I’ve come from Blogger Unleashed and am trying to read a review of Bubulicious that Vic mentioned on his about page (without giving the link) and I can’t find it. Google is not helping either. Giving up.
April 20th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I must say, the site looks really nice. I was able to tell that UBD did your site though, just from the top. All of their themes have roughly the same layout. They do a really nice job on graphics and making the site come together though. Just curious, how much did you pay? My quote was really really high!
April 20th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Smooth theme Court! But I will miss the funky more colourful one a little.
And that search function - tis needed… lucky I know how to type a search term into my browser URL
Quick question though… whatever happened to the “You Blog” section and links from your main site?
It seems to have died a slow death???
Stephen
April 21st, 2008 at 12:33 am
Terrific look, Court. Very neat and very nice. Great work.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:03 am
Just FYI, I clicked the “Keywords” link under Boost Traffic in The Basics section in the sidebar and it comes back here to the site design article. Hovering the mouse shows: http://courtneytuttle.com/2008/04/17/new-site-design/# as the target. Just thought I’d help with a little troubleshooting.
By the way, I’ll take the opportunity to thank you for all the work you do here. I know it isn’t all charity
I hope to use the info here to help build up my new projects, a site for new dads at http://www.undefeateddaddy.com and also a real world personal finance site at http://www.financegourmet.com.
Wish me luck (or the time to develop the skills needed to use all the info on this site!)
April 21st, 2008 at 3:54 pm
i love the new design!
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:41 am
Great design, though I think there’s something missing… a search bar. Or do I just not see it? Sorry, my eyes are kinda bad.
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Sorry to disagree with the majority but I liked the old lay-out better, this one is boring and not very original/ personal, just my 2cents, SY
April 24th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
The new design is a great improvement. You have my vote.
April 27th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Very good looking, In spite the older one very cool also!
Thanks!