New Blog DesignPhew! We made it through the blog design change without crashing my site thanks to GoDaddy’s extremely supportive team. Where do I start from? I should have done this long before. When I first purchased my domain and hosting I was only thinking about getting a decent site and nothing major. The more time passed the more I resented my site despite the fact that I had put so much effort in customizing the look ( which honestly was a messy job )

And I know that I wasn’t helping you either to easily navigate through the site and find my DIY projects because you had to scroll down through the entire page for the next button and forth. I chose to go with Masonry layout to solve this icky problem. I also have an archives page up in the menu so you can access all of the projects done till date. I have left behind the fancy Catalina font family to embrace this gem ‘Antartida’ that I purchased long ago but never used it. My overall look is clean and minimal compared to the hot pink & gold so now we have the focus on the posts. Last moment, I was dreaming of a floral background behind the logo but I had to have a monolog with myself that distraction is what I was trying to avoid in the very first place. I did reserve some pink in the form of my tagline ” Stop wondering, DIY” which guess what I was inspired by President Obama “Don’t boo, vote” weird much?  

Tips

Hosting plan

To any of you bloggers considering changing blog theme’s make sure it is compatible with the standards set with your hosting plan so you can be sure that it can take the load before making the purchase ( if not your site most probably will crash ). I wasn’t aware of the standards, and as I was on windows hosting plan, I had to change to Linux not only because my theme required a strong hosting plan but also that in the future I would have trouble with my site due to their limitations. We went through 4 days Database and site file migration which I thought would be a scary situation but it went well as I let the experts do the tough job. Needless to say, it was totally worth it. And lastly, don’t forget to backup your site files and its databases to a local PC or hard drive before beginning to update your theme. I did my back up through copying files from through FTP access and downloading my site Database through the option available in Plesk/cPanel. And now for regular updates, I am considering to go with either Vaultpress or Backupbuddy as I had issues with the free plugin BackWPup. I am lucky to have had no problems with my site so far but it’s always better to be on the safer side.

Theme + Fonts

I recommend Theme forest for highly customizable and quality themes and most come with a price tag of $39-$69 for a single license. This should be a good start if you are not ready to splurge on hiring a web designer to do a total custom work yet. You can either buy individual fonts from the creative market ( they also have bundles every month ) or Design Cuts. Mine are from a 15 professional font bundle that retailed for $15 which is a major steal. You may have to keep checking their site for new design or font bundles as they have expiry date of 14/19 days ( the current one expires in 3 days )

Also, I have something very exciting to share with you guys, hop on and join my e-mail list to make sure you don’t miss on this!

What do you like and not about this new blog design, let me know in the comments section!