My personal website (blog) is over 4 years old now and in that time it has been tweaked, altered and experimented with by myself looking to add something a little new and hopefully entice people to have a good look around. My CSS knowledge is quite limited and more often than not if I get stuck to the point where my hair is torn out in large clumps as I can’t find the answer on good old Google, I give my friend Ben a nudge, of which he replies with the life saving answer.
I came to the obvious conclusion that my CSS limits were just not enough to add that extra bit of sparkle to my website and after a little conversation with Ben, I convinced him to have a gander and see what small changes he could make to improve the design. I wasn’t expecting a great deal as he only had an hour free, however the result was extremely impressive in my eyes and I hope you agree too.
Tammie Lister, who designed my WordPress theme did a fantastic job of giving my website a unique look and feel, but inevitably to the dread of any designer, I desired extra text and graphical elements on top as Ben cheekily explains:
Recently I was talking to my friend, and fellow blogger James Woodcock, about his website and somehow I ended up suggesting I spend an hour or so tidying it up. James is a video game and tech journalist… and an endless tinkerer. He loves messing around with his website – adding new content and improving the functionality. Unfortunately lots of additions has meant things got a little confused and somewhere along the way things became a little untidy and Tammie Listers original design got lost.
Ben not only managed the improvement I wished and hoped for, but smashed my expectations by transforming the website with a far cleaner experience and even older posts with little information look shockingly good compared to before. Ben has not only improved my website for all of my visitors, but has also inspired me to work that bit harder when creating new content and add new features to add to his work.
Ben has created an in-depth post explaining the changes and the reasoning behind those decisions on his own website. It is really worth a read if you like me have been looking for little stylesheet alterations that can make such a noticeable difference.
Since Ben made his changes, I have of course been tweaking again, but this time with much greater care and consideration, adding a new flash articles preview on the front page, links to the various platforms I cover to make it more apparent that I write about more than just the Xbox 360 console and other little changes that might not be so obvious (thanks Tyme for a few suggestions as well!).
I hope you all enjoy the changes…