So for most people, having a new blog design to start the year is uncommon. I don’t wanna say it’s something that I am looking forward on doing every year but for the third time in three years, I have always introduced a new design to refresh the blog and cater to my *new needs.
Now welcome to MelvinBlog 3.0! If you’re reading from your RSS, its time to come out of your shells to visit my actual site or you can look at this screenshot(click for a larger look):
As you can see, this blog still sports that magazine look although much more cleaner and less cluttered than the previous one.
Why Change?
First and foremost is to refresh the look of the blog. The Colormatic UBD theme has been in this blog for over a year now and we all know people get bored with same design over and over again.
The second reason is to clean things up. If you look at the mainstream blog redesign these days, you can see that most of them have started cleaning up the clutter. For instance, ProBlogger’s new design emphasizes a better spacing and lesser elements. Shoemoney’s blog is also just sporting a clean theme now.
When I decided to go to version 2.0, I had a lot of things in mind including some elements that I want to add that I haven’t added before. With that, I settled for ColorMatic, in which I can pretty much put a lot of things in one place without having users to scroll down.
A year has passed and I realized that some things aren’t really worth putting into the blog. With that I had to find a template that I can work with that still is a magazine theme, yet sports lesser clutter. Another factor that I always consider is that I don’t want to look like a mainstream blog (one which looks like another). So that’s why I settled for this design.
Websource Theme
The theme that you are looking now is called WebSource theme. It comes from ThemeForest.net and specifically a guy named DDStudios. You’re wondering why I didn’t go with top notch themes like StudioPress, Thesis, WooThemes, and etc. The reason as I mentioned above is that I hate being mainstream. Most bloggers would just want to jump into something just because a lot of people are into it.
Also as always, I did some minor customizations in the codes so to make sure that the blog will extremely look unique.
For me as long as the theme works, doesn’t have that much bugs and is greatly structured, then I’m in to consider it. And to add, Websource looks extremely unique while also fitting my needs and requirements.
The redesign isn’t fully complete yet. As you can see, there are some elements that still look weird or you may visit a certain page that looks odd. In fact, I don’t even have a logo yet as I’m planning to implement a new one for this new design so my designer is currently working on it right now. Let’s say the site is just 50% done and I’m just excited to launch it right away. 😉
The Old Look
So for the last time, let’s savor the old look for MelvinBlog which is also known as Version 2.0. This theme from ThemeWars has done a lot of good things, made me good money and helped me engage my content more to my readers.
So that’s it. I will just let you find for yourself some new features and elements that I added and/or that comes with this new design. Please also expect that there might be some bugs or minor flaws (as mentioned) that I haven’t found out yet or I’m currently fixing so please bare with it for the moment. 😉
As always you’re opinion matters a lot to me. 🙂
Nice one Melvin! A nice way to kick the year off, and I think this design is a lot cleaner and more professional. Can we expect more posts from you this year?
Nice design Melvin and better then old one. I love the header style, looks awesome.
nice design… I like the clean way of presenting… may be you should get a unique logo that will be nice too…
I like this new design Melvin. It’s more cleaner.
looks good buddy….anyways change is always good
you are still using that same color scheme…no plans of changing it
I like the overall change of your blog here! Judging from the previous and current appearances of your blog, I’d say your current blog appearance looks great. It’s also easy on the eyes.
The new design looks great, 🙂 keep it up and i’m looking forward to your future posts.
hello melvin. the new Design looks awesome. but being a regular visitor of your blog, I could say that it felt weird being here the first time I saw your new theme. I guess that’s because I’m used to your old theme.
oopps.. I just wanted to add that I like your old design better. but it looks like your site improved in page load. so I guess it’s ok too.
Look Good, Good reason to change it, how long you carried your last theme Melvin.
I agree, I almost want to bite off you and use this theme 😉
But there are certain things I have to consider before changing themes.
This theme certainly does look cleaner and is more organized.
I wonder if this theme is ad optimized and are able to use multiple columns…
Love the new theme; it’s a very clean layout, the only thing I picked up was that your blog heading isnt coming up as ‘H1’. Apart from that 🙂 sweet theme.
@thomas, heheh. yep, I’m really hoping to churn out more posts this year than the latter part of last year but we’ll see. 😀
@d3s0, you always pirate my theme man! 🙂
yea as mentioned, its currently in the works so it should be available soon! 🙂
well the color schemes blue and green has been the colors of melvinblog ever since starting and so since they match really well together, i don’t see any reasons to change those colors
Thanks. I’d say the biggest factor of redesigning my site is to make it look cleaner since the previous one was really cluttered.
I carried that for over a year Shanker. I think its 14 months to be exaact. But as always, I try to refresh things once in a while. 😀
Nice clean design, not too much going on. Perfect for reading and especially for ensuring there isn’t too many distractions. For me I seem to lack as good skills as most of you guys operating these cool personalized blog.s
I checked and its coming up as an h1. Unless I didn’t understand your point. heheh
Hey Melvin,
I absolutely love the new theme. I really like how you kept the main colours/framework of your blog and integrated it with a new theme… sometimes completely different site overhauls on sites can throw loyal visitors off a little!
I’m still rockin’ the ColorMatic theme on my blog hahah… but I know I will eventually need a change sometime soon too.
I’ definitely with you on standing out from the crowd in terms of WP themes. EVERYONE goes for Thesis or Headway or something else… I’d rather go for something completely different. Having said that, I can’t code to save my life so I know for a fact that a Thesis theme wouldn’t work work for me.
Nice work Melvin!
Nice design Melvin, 🙂
Looks little more better than the previous one. 😉
Hi Melvin this is really nice blog design. very clear and web 2.0 look like.
Wow.. the new theme is really cool mate! A very clean design.. i like it 😀
I like the fresh new look of your website, however I already spent a lot on my site’s theme. How I wish I have discovered themeforest a little earlier 🙁
Im liking the new look Melvin. Looks fresh! I’ve been searching for a good theme for awhile now too ><
looking forward to more posts!
I guess your old blog’s look before is better in colors. Just my opinion though.
I’ve also just revamped my sidebar and some parts of my blog. I’ve cleaned it up and make it more “2.0” looking. lol I just left the important details and links there. More links and things to do would just bring up confusion to the reader.