Site updates

I decided today was as good a day as any to make some changes to the blog and liven it up a bit after talking to a couple of readers who said it was to plain. Which of course translates to boring. So with a little bit of blood, sweat, and tears I managed to liven it up a bit. At least I hope so.

What was changed?

First thing changed was the color scheme so the different sections would hopefully stand out better and not blend in so well with one another. Hopefully that will draw attention to the unique parts of the site and things won’t run together as badly.

Next I decided it would be a good idea to get
so I added adsense code to the top of each page, but only on the individual article pages. If you view the site from the root (www.ablogaboutnothing.com) you still won’t see any in-post ads. I also added bidvertiser ads at the bottom of each individual post.

Finally I rearranged the sidebar and increased the width a little bit so things didn’t seem so crowded. To be exact the rearranging entailed putting the My Blog Log widget at the very top. Followed by the RSS Email opt-in and the main RSS feed link. Reason for these changes is that A) people like to see themselves and their friends and B) I’m hoping by putting the RSS stuff up near the top it will encourage people to subscribe to it.

The next change was actually done several days ago and that is the rotating ads on the sidebar. I wrote a little bit about the plugin that allows me to do that in this post from a couple of weeks ago. In the line up of rotating ads I also threw in a banner made using Paint.Net which tells visitors they are appreciated. Just a small gesture to build brand loyalty, but more importantly I do infact appreciate all of my readers.

That is pretty much what was changed up to this point. I’ll be keeping an eye on things over the next 3-4 weeks and deciding if anything else needs to be reworked. What changes if any would you make if you were given the option?