You may have noticed a change in my website today. Well, unless this is your first time here, in which case you’ll just have to take my word for it when I say it looked a little different around here yesterday.
Five months ago, I was in LOVEEEE with my wordpress theme (the old one). I thought it was so unique and different from all the other themes I had seen. Plus, it integrated embedded videos from youtube very easily, which is the real reason I got the old theme in the first place. However, over time I realized the design was not very clean and a bit hard on the eyes. My readers deserve better than a crappy website!
I knew I needed a change, and after some shopping around on ThemeForest I got this phenomenal theme for $30. I want to point out some of the improvements from the old theme:
- The frontpage slider that fades to the next article every six seconds. How sweet is that!?
- A 600 character preview of any new post (not just video posts) on the main page
- A clean white background behind my text. This is so much easier to read and will allow me to reduce the gratuitous amounts of bolding and coloring I used to do with my text in the old theme to make it jump out
- A much cleaner comments section that isn’t embarrassing (the last site was a joke)
- Prominently displayed Subscribers and Twitter Followers at the top right (which reminds me, click those buttons if you don’t already subscribe and/or follow. Now! Please…)
- A real picture of me in the header instead of a cartoon. Geez I’m good looking! This photo was hand selected by Tag, but I’m not 100% sold on it. Let me know if you like the photo or think I need a better one.
So that’s how I feel about the new site, but I want to get your opinion. Do you love it as much as I do? Did I waste $30 on a crappy theme?
Whether you like it or not, thank you so much for coming to my site. It sincerely means the world to me when people come to my website, and I am just darn lucky to have so many great readers.
I have grown from literally nothing less than six months ago, to having over 100 feed subscribers and close to 300 twitter followers. In the last month, I’ve had over 2,500 visits and close to 5,000 page views. I have 135 posts and over 1,000 comments on those posts. This is ALL thanks to you.
I hope you’ll stay with me as I continue to grow this site and keep entertaining the pants off of you.
Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT at Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer of Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.
Very nice, easy to use, and easy on the eyes. Good work
Thanks Daniel. It can’t be much worse than what I had before, right?
Im liking the change very nice!
Thanks Jonathan!
I like the new look a lot. I admit I found the old site a little cluttered. We thrifty people don’t like clutter.
Thanks for letting me know about the change.
Darla
Thanks Darla, I had a feeling the old design was driving some people away. I’m glad you like the new one better!
Very nice. I would like to know when you are going to tell the Texas Government how to plan their Budget better. I think they need your support and ideas.
As soon I get voted in as governor. Can I count on your vote?
nice work! This is a much cleaner design for sure! I’m loving it! $30 well spent. One of these days I think I’ll fork over some case for a .com instead of the ol’ blogspot address. I’ll catch up to you eventually!
It’s so nice to have complete control over your site and know that you can do whatever you want with it. As soon as you have the money, I strongly recommend making the switch!
The new design looks great, Kevin!
Thanks Clare. I’m still waiting for you to check “Open a Roth IRA” off your bucket list! Get it done lady!
I definitely dig the new look!
Thanks. By the way, I love your post about buying Apple products vs stock.. Very nice spin.
Lovin’ the new look! 🙂 Amazing stats, too. What’s the one thing that helped you grow so fast? Keep it up!
My success has been a combination of my personal network (mostly facebook) and Yakezie. I post every one of my articles to my facebook account, and I have just had a ton of Yakezie folks come over and read my blog. I’d also like to think I write Pulitzer Prize content…
Nice new spiffy site Kevin! I recently redid my theme as well, come check it out.
Very Nice! I definitely like that site compared to your old one. And I love the Suit Song! I hadn’t heard it before.
I like the new design! But I miss the old cartoon face you had with the superior smirk. 🙂
Ha, I’m glad you liked it. I thought it was cool, but I had a few people tell me they didn’t like it. I did kinda get tired of it, so now you’re all stuck with just a regular picture of me.
I love the new picture! It’s my favorite.
This is a lot nicer than the old site. Good job! I need to find a nice theme too…
It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve done in recent memory. I honestly had some trouble sleeping last night, knowing that I was releasing this design this morning.
Very nice! It is easier to read and follow the different articles than the old site. This makes me want to get a new theme for my site, ha! Great job.
Like I just told Joe, it’s super exciting to release a new theme. Plus I’ve had so much support from my readers and great traffic today, I strongly recommend it!
I like the site changes. Not that my opinion should matter. For us old people the font is a little small, but with the white background it is very readable.
As long as I have my Wal-Mart readers with me….
But sorry, as entertaining as you think you have been, my pants remain in place!
Keep up the good work!
I can feel you there. I changed it from 12 to 13. I tried 14 but that’s a little too big for my taste. Remember, you can always CTRL + to make it bigger. If you’re on a MAC, well, then you’re own your own
I told you I liked the new design on twitter, but thought I’d stop by and check it out on my macbook 🙂
Looking good! The text is very easy on the eyes.
I like it man, nice and clean.
I am a little late, but I freaking love the new theme. The pic of you I could do without lol jk
Why does your post say you have 100 subscribers, but the feed button at the top say 24,189? It appears one of your numbers is very, very wrong.
I don’t know. I’ve reached out to the developer to find out why it makes that mistake sometimes and haven’t heard back. As of right now, it seems to be corrected. However, it keeps jumping back and forth from correct to incorrect.