- Under: Web Design,
Elite By Design Gets A Shiny New Design
If you are reading this post right now, you are seeing the new design on Elite By Design. I’ve been working hard on this design for the past several months and I am so proud to finally unveil it!
This past week has also been Elite By Design’s one year birthday week. That’s right, we’ve been here for one year. Pretty exciting huh? Here are a few numbers I’d like to share that illustrate our growth over the past twelve months:
1. Over 825k unique visitors.
2. Over 2 million page views.
3. Two features on the front page of Digg.com.
4. 1600+ RSS subscribers.
5. Technorati rank of 7,200.
6. Almost 2,400 comments from readers.
But to me, those numbers aren’t nearly as important as the Elite By Design community. Over the past year we have gained a loyal following of designers and artists alike. To repay you for your time and devotion, we’ve added a brand new Community section onto the site.
The Community section is a place where bloggers can come and share their articles with the rest of the world. It will feature design-related articles and design resources from readers’ sites on the web.
A Note To Current Subscribers:
If you are currently subscribed to Elite By Design and are reading this via RSS, there are a couple of choices you need to make. We are now offering three different feeds on the site: One for blog posts, one for community posts, and one for everything.
Current subscribers are subscribed to both blog posts and community posts. If you would only like to subscribe to blog posts, click here. If you would like to only subscribe to community posts, click here.
In this redesign you’ll notice several new features:
1. Home page redesign – We really strayed out of the norm and turned our homepage into a directory of the site giving both new and old visitors access to the best content in our archives.
2. New and improved sidebar – The new sidebar looks and feels great on the site. With a prominent RSS feed section and clear sections for content, finding your way around the site has never been easier!
3. Recent posts – With a lot of inspiration from Tutorial 9 and now PSD Tuts, we’ve added a recent posts section below our posts so you can find articles relevant to you.
4. Author sections/pages – Below each post there is now an author’s section to feature our incredible authors on the site. Just as well, clicking on their name will take you to their author page where you can see all the posts they have written. Pay some respect and check out their sites!
5. Community area – Submit your design articles and freebies to share with the whole community! This is a great way to gear up your website and expose yourself and your website to Elite By Design’s audience of designers.
6. Theme section – The theme section is a place to find the perfect WordPress theme for your website. Yes, we are selling some themes from here, but we will also be featuring WordPress themes from other designers as well.
7. Flickr group – Now you can submit your work to the Elite By Design Flickr Group. Share your masterpieces with the world! Every month we will include a roundup of some of our favorite pieces!
8. Improved categories – Finding content that matters to you is easier than ever. On our blog, simply click to our new categories page to find the perfect post that relates to what you do.
9. New footer – The new footer below this post highlights my favorite sites on the web as well as directs your attention to our new WordPress theme directory.
10. Background – We made a beautiful background to compliment the new design. Keep checking back for updates on this background as we will be using it to highlight new events and holidays.
I would love to hear your thoughts – what do you like about the new site? What don’t you like? Has the site improved, or gotten worse? Fill out the poll below to let us know, or if you have a few minutes to spare, click through and fill out our brief survey.
Thanks everyone again for such a tremendous year, we couldn’t have done it without you!
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- Website: http://elitebydesign.com
- About: Brian is a blogger and web designer at Elite By Design. He has been blogging for over a year providing quality design-related articles for the community.
Rock on! Very slick redesign. A lot more personality!
I really like the new design, kudos!
congrats on the new build. looks sweet!
Very cool redesign Brian, the community section is a neat idea.
What a great way to start a new year with a fantastic redesign. Kudos, Brian!
@Sonny Gill:
@Angie Bowen:
@John:
@Max:
@Dulce:
Thank you all for the kind words – I’m glad you like the design and I look forward to seeing how this new theme works for EBD!
Love it! It certainly is slick and a lot more readable. Also, I love your use of the Function icons. One critique I have, though, is that I don’t that the red titles and links really fit with the rest of the design. That’s just my opinion, though.
I like! Good job.
@Sean Neill:
Interesting observation Sean. Just out of curiosity, what colors would you like better? I spent a long time trying to pick the best color – I worked through oranges, greens, blues, etc. I felt that red fit the best, but maybe I was wrong. What are your thoughts?
@Martha Van Inwegen:
Thank you very much!
gr8 new design back to basics, if you search through your comments when you talked about redesigns a while back (i was commenting as roger) and going back to the old first design i think everyone agreed that form over function seems to be the best fit for blogging again!
good stuff!
Congratulations on the redesign, the background and the border looks great
WOW! A sci-fi theme, pretty good! And happy birthday to your great bolg.
Wow – love the replies and hover that shows previous comments. Custom or plugin?
Wow new look for the site is awesome… super clean
Very, very nice look.
I would echo, however, the earlier comment that the red type on a dark background is quite difficult to read. Red against the lighter backgrounds is attractive and legible, however.
I don’t know what other color might be most esthetically pleasing, but there must be a choice that doesn’t require concerted effort just to be able to read the text against a dark background.
Clarity is, of course, next to godliness.
Awesome re-design, Brian! It looks great!!
Love the new design! Great work
So much easier to read than the previous design. A great choice indeed.
Love it but the top adsense block is too big – on my screen, it takes the first fold – make it smaller so I can at least see the beginning of the content – moving it too the column would be even better.
Nice “space” background. Cool redesign, guys!
@styletime:
Thanks for the comment, and much agreed!
@Noura Yehia:
@luc:
Thanks so much for your kind words – I’m glad you like the design!
@Sonny Gill:
I love them too! And custom…
@Aaron Irizarry:
Thank you very much!
@Christopher Boyer:
Hmm, what browser are you using? The site is built on a white BG, so I’m not quite sure why you’re seeing the text on a dark background. Maybe cookies are keeping you on the old design – try either hard refreshing or clearing your cookies to see the new design!
@Haley:
@Kyle Eslick:
@David Airey:
Thank you so much, I’m so glad you all like it!
@Mike:
I’m currently testing Adsense units on the site – size, position, etc. I will certainly be moving the units around in the coming weeks, and I will keep your words in mind. Thanks!
@Daus:
Thanks, I love space background too!
Wow I like the new design. Everything looks perfect. I liked you picked the gray background which has much better usability wise from the old black background.
@Thomson:
Thanks – I am so glad we switched to a light background. Everything is so much cleaner and easier to read!
Great work Brian,
Fresh, clean and friendly, with a nice inspiration in the amazing Abduzeedo. Correct?
I’ll be waiting for some new premium from you.
Keep the good work!
Hi Brian,
Looks great! Only thing upon first notice that I found irritating was your big black comments, it distracts from the flow of things in my honest opinion.
But great job indeed.
@Guga:
Hm, I actually just noticed our similarities in terms of the featured content on the homepage (I assume this is what you were referencing). Perhaps Abduzeedo was an inspiration! Thanks for te comment Guga!
@Jacob Cass:
Great point Jacob. I made the comments dark to attract attention to the author’s remarks. However you’re right, this might be messing up the flow of the page. Perhaps just a slightly darker gray than the rest of the comments?
Looks good Brian. A few comments:
I see you used XHTML Strict doctype, but it fails to validate. The front page yields 28 errors. Maybe switching to transitional would be easier to maintain.
The width of the content area doesn’t fit in a 1024 resolution. not sure what the minimal resolution you had in mind for the new design.
Also I’m a bit confused about how Community section works. I expect to see user submitted links and articles. But right now I only see your own. Maybe it’s because it’s not yet populated?
Anyways, I like the overall design of the new site. GJ.
@Jin:
Jin, thanks for pointing out the validation errors. Of course, being a new redesign, there are going to be a few tweaks we still need to make. Hopefully we’ll clear this up in the next few days.
I understand that not everyone has widescreen monitors, my own work computer still isn’t widescreen, however I built the overall design to fit inside a widescreen while the content is meant to fit inside almost all standard sized screens.
For the community section, the goal is to have other bloggers submit their own articles and resources to share with the community. You can submit your posts at http://elitebydesign.com/submit. Until we get a regular submission base however, I will be adding my own favorite articles to the section to help it get some momentum.
I’m glad you like the design, glad to hear from you Jin
Brian: I was referring to the “Brian said” darker fields. Don’t know what has changed since I wrote before, but now (with the same browser [Opera v9.64]) I’m having no trouble reading the red type against the darker backgound.
Looks great.
@Christopher Boyer:
Well that’s good to hear, I’m not sure what could have happened. Glad everything is fixed though!
Hey Brian – Love the new design!
I think the red fits because of the other subtle red elements in the design (ads on side, add up top. A dark grey might work, but could be easily overlooked.
With the whole dark comment element, I think it’s good that author and readers are separated, but maybe a lighter shade of grey than what you currently have. I found that when I was reading these comments I always skipped the readers comments because of a distraction from the dark grey.
Otherwise – I love it! Very mac like
Cheers,
Matt.
@Matt Hamilton:
I’m glad you like the red as well, I love it over the old light green (and orange in v.2).
Well you’re the second comment on the colors, so I’ll lighten them up and see how things look – thanks for the heads up!
@Jacob Cass:
@Matt Hamilton:
I updated the colors – what do you think? Too light or still too dark?
Looks great Brian. I like it a lot.
Looks great Brian, well done
Much better with the light grey author comments!
Your “new” design basically a slight revision of the old http://PSDTUTS.com . I mean even to the font scheme.
@Steven Snell:
@Lee Munroe:
Thank you, glad you all like the design!
@Jacob Cass:
Good, I’m glad this works better!
@Ali A. Akbar:
While I can see where you are coming from with your opinion, I’m going to have to disagree with you on that one. Sure, we both use Helvetica – one of the most commonly used typefaces in the existence of mankind, but other than a couple of structural similarities, our designs are quite different.
Nice design
Could you tell what plugin are you using for “Reply” function from comments? Thanks!
Much nicer than the previous design! I was looking forward to this
[...] regards to our recent redesign, there is an issue that I need to let everyone know about so you are able to make an informed [...]