Sexy New Blog Design

Posted on 15. Feb, 2009 by Koichi in Building eduFire, eduFire News

construction

This weekend, I didn’t go curling, I didn’t go clubbing, nor did I hunt the great white shark. I sat in my chair and made the eduFire blog look pretty. During that time, I watched all three Star Wars movies (the most recent three don’t count as movies), some Doctor Who, and listened to part of a Seth Godin audiobook. This, here (unless you’re viewing this via RSS), is the finished product, so hopefully you enjoy it!

But that’s the boring part! I learned so much about this blog, and about eduFire, while redesigning it, and have made it easy for you to do the same! Here’s what’s new:

Better Categories

Before, the categories were just kind of all over the place. Now, they’re very nicely organized, so it should be easier to find what you’re looking for! One of the really cool categories, which somehow I had no idea existed, is the “building eduFire” category. The reason I didn’t notice it before, was because it used to be called “building eduRev.” Why is this? Well, you could head over there and find out. To check out other categories, just mouse over them, and a drop-down should appear! You can even subscribe to certain categories, so you only get news in your feed about certain things!

Searching

searching

Wow, I can’t believe we were missing this before! Now you can go and search for past (not future, sorry) articles. Just pop in a keyword and see what happens! It’s in the right sidebar, up at the top.

New Plugins

One of the great things about Wordpress, is the plethora of plugins that are available. Besides a bunch of back end plugins that make your experience so much more enjoyable (without you even knowing!), we’ve added a few that you might notice while stumbling about the blog. My favorite one is a “Related Posts” plugin, that tries to come up with related posts, and tells you them at the bottom of an article you’re reading. Usually it’s spot on, but sometimes it is wayyyy off.

More Features

You’ll notice that the sidebar is full of all sorts of things, including an Archive Page, a little blurb telling you who comments the most (minus blog admins), links to our shenanigans on social sites like Twitter, Popular posts, Tags, and more! Overall, this blog is easier to navigate, and it’s easier to find stuff. No more getting lost, hopefully.

tropicalisland

That’s about it – it’s still a work in progress, but if you have anything else you’d like to see, I’d love to hear it! What sorts of plugins / features do you use on your blogs, to make them better? What have you seen around the blogosphere that no blog can live without?

  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • E-mail this story to a friend!
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • TwitThis

Tags: , ,

  • I think this new design is more effective and easy to  understand by any visitor. I will change my default blog theme too.
  • Сексуально.
  • Well , the view of the passage is totally correct ,your details is really reasonable and you guy give us valuable informative post, I totally agree the standpoint of upstairs. I often surfing on this forum when I m free and I find there are so much good information we can learn in this forum! http://www.in-donesia.net/
  • Hat tip to Koichi! The blog looks gorgeous.

    One piece of constructive feedback if i may? The icons in the upper right make it look like you can somehow search Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Gmail from the search bar. I'd gently try and separate Search from those "Other ways to Connect with EduFire".

    But really I'm just nitpicking... the new look is fantastic and makes the blog so much more readable and useful as a resource.

    Koichi... FTW!
  • Thanks Jeff! Great idea, just implemented it!
  • kareem
    the redesign looks nice and slick guys, nice job.
  • Kareem! I enjoyed reading through all your posts in the redesign process! :)
  • kareem
    haha, thanks koichi!
  • Very nice revamped design.
  • Andrew Warner
    Founder of gmail might agree with your approach?
  • Dude, Andrew, this is awesome! Nobody takes advantage of the video commenting (including myself, right now, but that's because I look like a crazy person right now), so it's great to see you get up there and pave the way :)

    No comment commandeering took place here, it's great to have you (video) commenting on here, and really awesome to work that video in there too. Been following your blog since Jon's interview, keep up the amazing work!
  • This is pretty sweet Koichi!
  • The blog redesign looks fantastic!
  • WOW!

    and I don't mean world of warcraft, more the classic wow ;). very good work koichi!
  • SarahXin
    sweet design! =D
  • Can't wait for the new updates. Wordpress will definitely be a worthy addition.
  • Its looking really nice! Great success!
  • Guest
    Looks great! Nice work Koichi :)
    I just recently put Disqus on my own site thanks to your recommendation and it's working wonderfully.
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