As you can see, I’ve moved the blog to a new WordPress template and it’s own domain. What do you think?
I bought both askkalena.com and ask-kalena.com and even though the first one is the most obvious, I decided to use the latter as it’s easier to read as a URL. I made sure to park the other domain to this one so I get the traffic from people typing in the more obvious URL. I spent a long time searching the WordPress cellars for a template I liked and then I had to bribe the author to turn it from a 2 column into a 3 column, but I’m really happy with the result.
I thought it was going to be a nightmare moving from Blogger FTP hosted to WordPress but it turned out pretty simple in the end because I decided to keep my archives in place at the old domain and merely redirect the main blog page. If you ever want to scan the archives of the old blog, you’ll find links to them on the bottom left of the nav menu. Archives prior to January 07 are available from any of the old archive pages.
So I’ve been absolutely blown away by how feature-rich WordPress is and by all the incredible plug-ins designed for WP by clever developers. I can’t believe I waited this long before migrating from Blogger to WordPress.
I’d love to hear your feedback on the new blog design, so please leave your comments. If you’re new here, please subscribe using my shiny new red RSS button on the left. Make yourselves at home!
I love the new look and feel. I would make a couple changes though.
1. The blog buttons at the bottom of each post are a bit jumbled and I like the old site feed button also.
1a. There are some great JSP tools out that make for a much less crammed feel or in your case spread out. You can look at cnn.com’s blog button to see what I am talking about
2. The banner ads to the right might take away some of the professionalism of your blog.
But I love the new look.
Thanks Chris! What screen size are you viewing the site at? I’ve got mine at the largest and those chicklets display in one neat line for me. Even if I reduce to 800 x 600, they wrap neatly over 2 lines. Not sure what button you are talking about on CNN. As for the banner ads, they replace my old AdSense code and are very common on most professional blogs (see ProBlogger.net and Shoemoney.com as examples). A girl’s gotta make a living! cheers
I am viewing at 1440×900 kind of an odd size but I am kind of an odd user. On the bottom of a cnn.com article if you click the share button it pops-up (probably a bad usage of words) a social media sharing options. Maybe if I had my resolution set to normal standards it might view that way.
As far as to banner ads. I get to read the internet and post responses because of such ads. So I guess I had better love them. Right!
I just played around with my screen resolution and set it. My fancy new computer did not like the change. It didn’t make a difference for me. I guess I will just have to get over it and select each individual button.
I bookmarked your old site a few days ago, and just logged on to the new one. I like it. I use WordPress too and am really happy with it.
Kalena — major improvement! Nice choice of themes. Might I suggest using the Sociable plugin or its cousin, the “AntiSocial” plugin for your social bookmarking links? It automaticaly nofollows them and hosts the images on your own site so slowness on digg or somewhere else won’t effect your load time and the images won’t break if a visitor’s organization is blocking access to one of the sites.
Best!
R.
@ Rob - Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll look into that plugin.
@ Liz - Nice to see you! Thanks for bookmarking
@ Chris - the plugin Rob is suggesting may solve the issue. Give me 24 hours!
Ok so I noticed some changes a while back. One thing I don’t like about it. It doesn’t open up in a new window. Can you add target=”_blank” ? Or I have some pretty cool java script that makes for cool pop-up’s and it is cross browser compatible. Tons of it on the net also for free.
Since I do not know how to track comments on your blog if you want me to share the code shoot me an e-mail.
The above is in reference to the share features.
@ Chris - I’m using the anti-social plugin and it doesn’t have “open in a new window” on the icon links. Why not just right click with your mouse and choose “open in a new tab/window”?
nice theme. Download from wordpress.org? Can you tell me download link.Thank you. johnhoma
It’s the Double Stardust theme by Tommaso Baldovino: http://www.tomstardust.com/. But I paid him to turn it into a 3 column for me.