PlanetJune Craft Blog

Latest news and updates from June

blog redesign

Finally! 2 months after I announced my new logo, I’ve finally launched the new blog layout today. (If you’re reading this in a feed reader, please click through to get the full impact!)

Hopefully this won’t look too new and strange to you; the purpose of this redesign wasn’t to give my blog a new look, but to make it easier for you to use, and to incorporate the new logo.

Here’s the old look, as a quick reminder:

PlanetJune blog - old look

And here’s the new and improved version:

PlanetJune blog - new look

The new layout is slightly wider, which gave me space to add an extra sidebar down the left-hand side with quick links to the things people most often look for on my site. The actual sidebar contents are still in progress – I’d like to add some more prominent links to my Ravelry group and Flickr group, a link to an as-yet unwritten page for my crocheted art, and other things as and when I think of them – but that can wait until I have time.

I think the biggest improvement is to the header area. Gone is the ‘patchwork’ of images at the top that confused people into thinking they were all pictures of crochet patterns:

PlanetJune old blog header

Now there’s just one large clear photo, but if you refresh the page (or click to a different page on the blog) you’ll see that the image changes – you get a random one each time – so it hopefully still gives a feel for the variety of my patterns.

PlanetJune blog - new header

The almost-invisible main menu located above the header is gone (did you ever even notice it was there?!), and these impossible-to-find text links in the sidebar (I finally realised that a heading called ‘Pages’ means nothing to non-bloggers!):

PlanetJune blog - old links
Ugh, big block of random text links (circled in blue)

All replaced by a more complete menu bar below the header. Everything you need to navigate my site is organised into drop-down menus, and there’s a more prominent Search box on the right.

PlanetJune blog - new menu

I still have to redo the rest of PlanetJune to match the new blog design and make it all more useable, but that’ll take a lot longer – I’d anticipated I’d need 2 weeks to complete the blog redesign, and it’s taken 2 months! I also need to figure out a better way to organise my crochet tutorials – now I have lots of photo tutorials and a growing collection of video tutorials, I’m going to need to find a clearer way to present them to you. Piece by piece, I’ll keep working on it all in between everything else – my goal is to have it all completed by the end of the year.

But, for now, I hope you’ll at least find the blog much easier to navigate! I’ve built up a lot of excellent resources on my blog (crochet and craft tutorials, free patterns, videos, etc), but they aren’t much use if you can’t find them 🙂

17 Comments »

  1. caren said

    love the redesign! very sleek and funtional, too.

  2. pam said

    Just gave it a test run! working beautifully! The site is pure eye candy and easy access to all the crafty goodness you have given the world.

  3. Subtle changes that look fantastic and reinforce your brand in a great way!

  4. It looks great!

  5. It looks perfectly clear… and nice!

  6. Monica said

    Awesome! Looks Great! I love the new layout! Nice work June!

  7. sue said

    Looking very slick and easy to use, lovely!

  8. Haley J. said

    It looks great! Well done!

  9. Simone said

    Brilliant design! Love it!

  10. Gillian McMullen said

    Great changes, June, the hard work really shows, and like Birdie, I too love being able to change the photo at top right – a little interactive feature! Thanks for sharing all this with us.

  11. It looks great, June. It feels much more organized.

  12. Alison said

    Awesome!! Much clearer how much great stuff is available here, and much easier to get to it all!

  13. Birdie said

    Hey, nice job! I like how the photo changes each time!

  14. Love it! Great work 🙂

  15. Shannon said

    Great job. Looks like it will be definately worth the hard work. Love the rebranding of your logo too.

  16. Ginger said

    Excellent! I like it.

  17. Corvus said

    Very nice! Some serious usability points there.

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