I’m baaaack! The Remodelations are finished!!!
Hello everyone and welcome to our place!
Wow!!! It has passed a month already? Between holidays and being one week sick the time just flew by! So, yeah it is true! I’m back! 😀 And I’m so happy to come back! I’ve been missing you guys!!
This week I’ll be just addressing some updates and the 300 follower mark (UUUHUUUH!!! I’M SO HAPPY!). For today, I’m going to give all the details of the changes I did in my blog (the reason I had to take some time off!). I’m doing this so if you get inspired and want to change something in your blog you can come here and see the theme I’m using and so on! 🙂
If you have been reading my collab with mel, something you probably already noticed is that I’ve changed my theme! It’s true… Bye bye Toujours! 🙁 I loved that theme, however I needed a theme that gave me grid pages and that won’t didn’t suffice! So, at the moment, the theme I’m using is:
Dara
Why I’m using Dara now! Well, as I told you, it has the possibility to have Grid pages. However, that’s not the only reason! It’s also because I can get featured posts in the Home Page! If you want these two things, only two free themes come around and well, Dara had the best design overall 😛
So, at the moment this is what you will find in my homepage:
So, basically a bunch of menus that put you in the place of my place where you want to be and then my featured posts. These are basically the ones that I’m more proud and also the ones you seem to view/like/comment the most! 🙂
Afterwards we have my 3 latest posts:
This part is made by using a combination of WP shortcode and HTML! To be honest it is not how I really wanted – It’s not centered and if you are in an IPAD the last post will appear below in the left. – but, I don’t really have the money to upgrade my account to the point of having more freedom when it comes to coding HTML and CSS.
Nevertheless, if you want to know how I did this, just ask me in the comments! If I see many of you want to know I’ll do an Arthifis’ Classroom episode about it! ^.^
But, okay, until now, everything is equal as I had on Toujours, right? Now, it’s the time that things change! They are made for people who want to browse my blog to have an easier life finding things 😛
This was actually another reason to choose the Dare theme! The Featured pages possibility! Basically in the left you have the closet – place where we put everything inside just so the room seems clean. In this case is where you can go and read all my posts 😛
In the right you have the House Blueprints, there you can find all the rooms existent at this little place, being one room dedicated to one of the themes at my blog! 🙂
The closet:
And the House Blueprints:
I think the pic is self-explanatory! 🙂 At the moment you will have 6 rooms:
- Anime Living Room -> Anime Related (duh)
- Gaming Bedroom -> Gaming Related posts (duh 2x)
- Bathroom Thoughts -> Posts that I wrote that are more about my random thoughts than anything
- Arthifis’ Classroom -> You know what that is!
- Zen Garden -> Where you can find all my collabs
- Main Hall -> You, know, the entrance where you normally put your awards… So, yeah, here you can find awards. tags, our book and… Of course! The Featured Blogger of the month! 😀
Inside each room you will find the different things about the theme. Let’s give Anime as an example:
I think it ended up being pretty neat and really user-friendly. Inside of each page you can, of course, find all the posts associated to it. Let us say the 30 day anime Challenge for example:
As you can see, every post regarding the challenge is there 🙂 And that was something where I spent most of the time I was out! I had to go over 199 posts and write excerpts for every each one of them! This was important to get that neat look and not all in top of everything 🙂
Of course, you can go here easily by browsing the menu! Not really recommended for mobile users though:
As you can see, from there you can also easily go to the part of my blog you are most interested 🙂
And that’s the gist of it! There is only one thing I want to remark, and that is about the sidebar and the bottom part of the blog! As you can see, it’s even more simple than before! Now I only have my twitter. The reason is simple, I’m not using my Facebook at all 😛
More than that you only have the follow button! 🙂 However, it will have a little something more! But, I’ll address that Wednesday when I talk about… MONEY *.*
Now, I welcome you to visit our place (way more neat than before I hope). In reality I don’t welcome you… I ASK you to do it! 😀 It really would help to have your feedback about things that you think I could improve and so on! 🙂 Of course if you only have nice things to say do that also! I mean, it will make me happy xD
And that’s all for today! It’s great to be back and tomorrow you can expect my 300 followers posts which I still think it is all a dream! Thank you all! I love you <3
See you Soon! 😀
You obviously went to a lot of effort to remodel your blog! It looks very good! Well done!
I’ve been trying to make small changes to improve the appearance of mine, but I’m no good at coding or anything like that, so I’m quite limited in what I can do. *sigh*
Oh thank you so much! 😀
To be honest I’ve been thinking in doing a blog post about that! Just to give the basics so people can do some little things and tweeks, nothing major! Especially because I can’t do nothing major either ahah
I can’t speak for anybody else, but I’d read a post like that! I need all the help I can get!
Looks great! I still really don’t know how to format my blog lol so I’m still a little noob over here.
Thank you so much! 😀 Well, we are all noobs until we take the time to learn it ahah I didn’t know anything about coding when I started this adventure ahah
I’ll probably do a post in Arthifis’ Classroom to talk about some easy things you can do to format the blog! 😛
Sounds great! Happy to see you back 🙂
Thank you~! ^.^
Of course! 🙂
I am looking at your blog on my phone and it looks great!!!
I really have to start working on my own blog overhaul if I wanna be ready in time but I’m sooo lazy…
Thank you so much!
I think the way to be less work is by having a clear idea of what you want before even starting! But, yeah… To be able to change for this design I had to go to every post and write the excerpt… And I only have 200 posts >.<
But I do think your design is pretty cool though
oh wow – that’s so much work. I’m no going to do that
But you have the premium plan right? With that you have a lot more freedom to tweek things in design if I’m not wrong 😛
I’m probably going to upgrade to Business
Really? Do a review about it afterwords please! That thing is expensive and I wanted to know if it is worth it or if in that stage it’s better to go and work with wordpress.org instead 😛
I will. I want to play with plugins
Yeah, the thing is with wordpress.org you can play with plugins without paying so much yearly 😛
I know. I don’t wanna bother programming and I’m a little scared I will loose a lot of the community if I’m no longer featured on the reader. I like easy….
That’s my fear also! Xp that’s why I would love to hear your thoughts on the business plan xD for now it will only be personal for me though ahah
Please teach me, I want to improve my blog as well. Thank you.
lolol thank you! I decided I’ll be doing a post explaining everything that I used to be able to do this design 😀 It’s easier that way eheh
This is kind of how I want to reorganize my page! Especially with monthly challenges I’m thinking about doing. I’m still playing around with formatting until I find something I think will stick or I end up liking lol. Nice look and welcome back!
Thank you~! 😀
Yeah, this kind of design is perfect for montlhy challenges eheh yeah, take your time! That’s the best way to get the perfect design for you 😀
You’re new blog format looks amazing! It looks like you have done an incredible job! I need to try to figure out a better format for myself but I don’t know what I’m doing ? it’s great to have you back again! ?
Thank you! 😀 I know that feeling! I also didn’t know much about what I was doing in the beginning! To be honest the 3 last posts took me forever to actually be able to do them xD
I’ll be doing a post in the near future giving some hints and explaining some easy coding that can make the difference 🙂 Maybe it will help you
You’re welcome ? and aww well you got there in the end! Your post has made me want to revamp my blog a bit now haha ??
And ooooh yes that sounds like a great idea! I think that will definitely be beneficial! I’ll look out for that! ?
Love the new format! Been trying to slowly improve my website layout as well but it’s been a pretty slow process since I’m still pretty uneducated in website design lol. Anyways looking forward to seeing more new stuff from you again 😉
Thank you so much! ^.^
loool I actually went in a hiatus because I knew it would take forever to do everything xD In reality when I started I also didn’t understand much about coding or design ahah
I’ll be doing a post explaining some easy tips that may help other people trying to change the design as I did! This way I hope they don’t lose so much time as I did in the beginning trying to figure things out ahah
Pretty neat, pretty neat Art :D. So this is what you were aiming for. I’ve come across short code, but never really bothered with them or used them. From what I can gather from just off handed using the basic one, it pretty much works like widgets/embeds but only with more customisation. I’m pretty interested to see how many pages you’ve used, I assume quite a few. The pages (if you’re using pages) are pretty much the engine for your blog page now.
I’m interested to see the post(s) on shortcode and html. For those that don’t know what CSS means, it stands for cascading style sheets.
My philosophy has always been: always make your blog theme yours. Learn to get the best out of it. This means using the different type of post formats, don’t just use standard.
As for my theme, XDD. It’s pretty dated. For the most part I love it, at the same time I wouldn’t mind some of the new features that more modern themes have. Funny enough the much older WP themed ones are still popular.
Yeah xD It took a little more time because I didn’t really knew anything about shortcode, HTML and CSS xD
Yes, I used the page system, especially the grid page! I’m using, at the moment, 30 pages. But that number is going to grow when I get more series and I start to do affilliate links 🙂 When it comes to types, the home page is full width, then all others that don’t have posts in there are grid pages and the ones with the posts are standard 😛
I didn’t really use much coding in the posts themselves (only when I want to post any kind of polls centered is when I use HTML, only because you can’t center it by the visual editor). The pages though are completely different. However, the one that does have more HTML is the home page. But, to be honest, it is not really that difficult xD
I think that the older themes are still popular because if you are only doing a blog for fun they are the easiest to use and have a nice design 😀 However, I do recommend trying other themes! The featured posts/pages are really cool! And if you want to do a static home page I think the older themes are way more difficult to work with because they don’t have some of the features that are nice to use in a homepage xD
Nevertheless, I will be doing a small post in the Arthifis’ Class side, where I’m going to explain a little more about what I had to in order to get this design xD It seems people are really interested to know more! 😀 To be honest, it will probably be more than one so I can “attack” each part of the blog that was designed differently 😀
Thank you for you comment and I’m happy to see that you liked it eheh