A Refresh For Elite By Design

Today is the official launch of Elite By Design v.5! I have launched this new design in light of the new year, a fresh new start for Elite By Design, and to introduce a few new key features for the site.

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Old vs. New

The first thing you will notice about the new design is that it is not drastically different from v.4, which can be seen below:

Versus the new (and hopefully improved) design:

What’s New?

A few of the changes made in the new design include a more vibrant background, a brighter color scheme, and a completely redesigned content structure. Version four was overloaded with content on the home page and single posts. The new design streamlines posts into a single-column, easy to read, list.

The sidebar has been cleaned up to show readers how to follow Elite By Design on various social networks. Below these buttons are advertisements, which keep the site up and running.

You will also notice a new Elite By Design Facebook Group which you can become a fan of, to connect with me and get the latest updates from the site right in your Facebook news stream.

The top three tabs of the site represent the three main areas that I am going to be focusing on in the future. The Web Design section will be a showcase of web design and development tutorials, guides, resources, and roundups. The WordPress Themes area showcases some awesome WordPress themes that you can browse, demo, and purchase. Finally, the Inspiration & Resources area is specifically for readers looking for some design freebies, inspiration, and tools.

What’s Next For Elite By Design?

The year 2009 was a disappointing year for myself, and for Elite By Design. With only two posts in the entire year, you could say that I took quite a long vacation. In reality, I was working hard at school to keep my grades up. My academics always come before the internet.

However, even with no activity on the site, my solid foundation of high-quality articles meant that in 2009, Elite By Design still saw over 650,000 unique visitors who viewed over 1.1 million pages. Over 30% of this was from search engines.

My goal for the new year is to bring back the Elite By Design brand and to publish more guides, tutorials, roundups, and resources for designers everywhere. I would like to see my Twitter fan-base grown, my new Facebook Fan Page to grow, and for traffic on Elite By Design to pick up the pace it had in 2008.

Please comment below and tell me what you think of Elite By Design, the new design, and of course, what you would like to see during 2010. Thank you all for your support, even after my year of absence, and I hope that 2010 will bring about lots of new adventures.