New Look Site (+ New Authors)

Hey Guys,

If you are a regular reader you might have noticed that today we've re-done the entire site with a new theme and new design. It's been quite a major rethinking of our whole design and layout which took a while to do but with our intentions of becoming a much larger site with significantly more traffic I decided it was the time to do so. Anyway before I explain some of the changes I thought I'd remind you all of how the page looked just 1 day ago so I can point out previous problems.

Previous Blog Design!

As you can see the old design was rather cluttered with two sidebars, one on each side of the main posting area, which were quite thin and meant the sidebar content was crushed. As well as this it mean the actual post space wasn't large enough to fit normal size images so they tended to overlap out of the page which was really annoying. To solve the problem in the new design we've completely removed the right sidebar and put the useful things from that side of the page onto the left sidebar which has been made bigger so all the gadgets fit well. It has also meant we have massively increased the size of the posting areas which means not only can we have full sized inages but also means that posts will now not be nearly as tall as they were previously so it'll be quicker to load most of our pages.

Our description/tagline at the top of the page has been removed because it was rather annoying there and meant there was a massive amount of empty space to either side and took longer to get to the actual post. Our 'Pages' link bar has also been updated so it looks more professional and it's easier to tell which page you are on and have highlighted.  The labels gadget that was previously in the left sidebar has changed into a post cloud which now shows all our labels and tags. Currently the frontpage will now only show the latest two posts.  To make it easier to find similar content you can now find a suggestion of 5 similar posts at the bottom of each posts. 

To go with our new blog design I've also hired two new writers today, one of them is known as Imperial Awesomeness and has already made his first post and also Amalgon, one of the .co.uk's biggest forum posters and most active members will also start posting soon and I'm extremely to have them both on board. Aml133 recently joined us and has made loads of great posts and he'll be continuing working with us for the foreseeable future. Lavan has also been a great addition to the blog and he's made some really great posts. I hope you'll read and share all of their posts.

I'd also be really great if you could follow us on Twitter here.

Steve10