I’ve finally completed the new website design and with a bit of luck you should be seeing it now. It was time for a change to get things up-to-date in regards to viewing on mobiles and smaller screens, on which you should now be finding things easier to view and navigate.
I’m working through the old posts and images making them compatible so you may still see some issues there, and there’s additional text to be added and filled out.
No doubt I’ll be tweaking and tugging at bits over the coming weeks as I find things which annoy me, so if you spot anything that seems odd or have any feedback, please feel free to comment and I’ll look in to it.
We felt a simple, crisp design was the way to go to help the content become centre. It’s also to give us a good platform to expand on. The not so mysterious ‘Premium’ section will be evolving over the coming weeks, so it’s back to video editing now for me.
As a final note, due to growing numbers our email updates have been switched to a new premium service so we hope you’ll see the improvements. Again if you have any questions, queries or missing emails then let me know.
Good job guys 😉
Cheers Ken 🙂
Mobile compatibility is very valuable. The new look works great from my phone.
Nicely done! I particularly like the lettering on the logo.
Richard & Helen, It looks really good. I agree with Jim the lettering makes a difference, and I have always liked the Logo, this is just simpler. Keep up the great work and look forward to the next installment.
~~Dolly
Very nice and clean, love the new look!
Nice modern look.
If I wanted to browse your products, how do I do that?
Jim
Thanks Jim, our products will be incorporated back in, but for the time being I can direct you to our bench website. This is in need of an overhaul too, but it functions!
http://www.rm-workbenches.co.uk
Aw, purdy!
Mr. Paul Sellers ……watch out
New webpage is clean and neat, and works great on my iPhone. Simplicity is a wonderful thing, I enjoy your blog a great deal.
Mike O. Valley Head, Alabama, USA
I do like the clean look, especially the single column mobile layout – reminds me of an old book.
couple of points,( you are probably onto these, so ignore this if you are) – seems odd to have two menus, as a user I would look for “contact at the end of the main menu.
and perhaps it is just me but “rugged” and “fine” seem like opposites to me like there are two sides to your business, perhaps there are ?
Peter – yours is my favourite woodworking blog by the way
Hi Peter, many thanks for your feedback, it’s much appreciated. I’m being caution not too make the contact link too prominent, but I do see your point and will mull it over.
With the wording, this is deliberately opposite, and it’ll be interesting to see what people make of it. It’s probably more of a fusion rather than two separate sides of the business; like chocolate in your curry or a ballet dancing hippo!?
One is the result; quality, traditional woodworking. The other is the journey and the attitude.
That is cool Helen – I like a story behind something and now you have explained it that combination of rugged and fine is perfect.
I am busy sorting out a new site on tumblr – so many decisions and an ever evolving task
best
peter
Quite spare. Spare is nice. I like it.
Helen, I am not sure if this new site is only for your blogging or if it should also letting customers know about your services and products. If you do want customers to find you via this, I would make it very easy to link back to them. It wasnt obvious how to do that for me, but maybe that’s not what your are trying to do or maybe I am just slow.
Hi Steve, many thanks for this. You’re not slow… I haven’t added any links yet 😉 We consider the blog very separate to our workbench business but I will ensure that it’s easy to find through an updated About page and sidebar links. Great point!
Is there no end to your talents !!
Hi,
I like this clean design.
Two remarks from my side if appreciated.
My first impression was that the teaser text in relation to the picture not well balanced.
I’m quite sure you have played around with that. Maybe I have to look at it for a while.
And my second topic is that I find the social items a bit – hm – clunky?
Cheers,
Stefan
Looks good. My only comment is that the webfont you are using may not be fully working. On chrome it doesn’t anti-alias very well, making it quite hard to read, and a file appears to be missing, which may be the reason.
See the image which has a screenshot of the missing google font.
http://i.imgur.com/itJSVvs.png
Hi Dave, many, many thanks for pointing this out to me! It’s now on my to do list.