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Changes to kenreynoldsdesign.co.uk

Posted 28 Apr 2010 - 5 Gratefully received comments

Hopefully you’re all seeing what you are going to read in the following article, but I thought I’d take the time to explain what I’ve done with my site. I think it’s interesting to know about the thinking behind how a personal brand/website can develop,

What’s New?

Site Heirachy
The biggest change is focus of the site. When I first designed the site it was primarily to promote my freelance business, with a blog attached. The blog was originally built into the site so I could easily display my new work without actually updating the portfolio section.
This ethos didn’t last all that long as I began to realise that I had constructed my own sturdy little soapbox, from which I might begin to shout from.

Over the last year my site has become a blog site instead of a portfolio/business site. I still want it to function as these things, but it can no longer be the main focus because those aren’t the reasons people actually visit the site now.

This was probably the most difficult decision to make. I have always extolled the importance of having a strong brand message on the landing page of the site, which is why I developed the design that is now the ‘services’ page. Now I hope that same message will be projected through my blog articles.
I now believe that any prospective clients will be able to learn quite a lot about the sort of designer I am, and what I might be able to do for them from reading a few of my blog posts.

Advertising
You will see that I’ve amended the site layout to include some advertising space. With any luck these spaces will fill up quite quickly, and when they do I believe that they will not interfere with the site too much. You can never make web advertising complimentary to the site design, but I believe I’ve struck a good enough balance so they don’t interfere with my content.

If you would like to advertise on this site, or who a company that might, please follow this link to find out more details: BuySellAds – Ken Reynolds Design

Footer
To make space for the adverts I have decided to make a footer on the blog pages, this includes a lot of the helpful yet administrative links for my site. You can find my article categories, and archives, as well as my little bio.

A new feature down in the footer is a list of places on the web that I like and think might be of interest to my readers. If you run a site that you think might be helpful to my other readers please contact me so I can consider a link exchange.

Sidebar
With the addition of the adverts I’ve tried to refine the contents of the sidebar. I’ve increased the list of recent articles so the last 10 posts now display.
I’ve also included a search bar too. I figure there is plenty of varied content on my blog now as I’ve been writing for almost a year now. Hopefully my readers will now find it easier to find something they are looking for.

Articles Layout
Another addition to each article is that I now have a selection of links at the bottom of each post to encourage readers to spread the word if they have found the contents of the post useful. I hope plenty of you will take advantage of this feature in the hope that it might attract a few more people to the site.

There is also a new way for me to respond to your comments. Hopefully this inline comments feature will help me to interact with you better, and keep the flow of the discussions clear.
You can also ask to be notified by the site if new comments are added to a thread after you have had your say so you can come back and reply.

I believe that’s everything for now. I hope you enjoy the new features and like the way they have been added to the site.

I owe a big thank you to Andy Kleeman (TBWCF) who has been instrumental from day one in getting this website up and running. A lot of the new features we have implemented were suggested by Andy and he intergrated them beautifully.

This is a small milestone in the life of my blog, if you are reading this article I hope you will keep coming back to see how it all progresses in the future.

Thank you for visiting, and while your here why not tell me your thoughts by commenting?

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