This post is hitting the presses pretty late tonight, but I wanted to finish it up before the end of the night in honor of today being Blue i Style’s SECOND BLOGIVERSARY!
Last year, I celebrated my first blogiversary by compiling a round up of my 10 ten most popular post from my first year of blogging. But since I just recently looked back at all of my top posts of 2014, it seemed to soon to do another top 10.
So instead, I thought, why not give the blog what any of us would enjoy on our special day… a makeover!
For a few weeks now, I’ve been working some changes to refresh the look of the blog and to increase its functionality, but I didn’t roll any of it out on the blog until this morning. If you visited earlier today you might have noticed a few odd things as I was working out the final kinks {sorry about that}. I still have a little tweaking yet to do, and a few more upgrades planned, but I’m pretty happy with her new look!
If you are reading this post in your email or on a mobile device, I encourage you to hop over the full blog site so you can see all the changes. And make sure to visit the home page, because that’s where you’ll find my favorite new feature, the slider that showcases some of my favorite projects to date {and gives you a pretty good idea of what Blue i Style is all about}. Here are a few examples…
If you visit the blog frequently, there are a few things you’ll notice right away. You’ll no longer find full blog posts on the home page. Instead, you find the title, featured photo, and a short summary of 10-12 of the most recent posts. Below each, you’ll see a button where you can click to read more.
I know that people have mixed feelings about “truncating” posts in this way, but I’ve finally accepted the fact that I am a very wordy person and my posts are looong. That’s good news in that I am sharing detailed tutorials with you, but bad news in that you’ve had to scroll endlessly to find anything other than my most recent post on the home page. I am hoping that this new set up will make it much easier for you to find new-to-you content and posts that you are interested in.
You will also notice that the blog now has a few ads. When I started blogging two years ago, I never had any intention of including advertising on this site, but as the blog grows, so do the expenses that go with running it, so I’ve decided to include minimal ads to help recoup some of those costs. I did a lot of research regarding which ad network to use, and I’ve chosen one that works with a lot of advertisers that are specific to the home decor and DIY niche. Of course, however, there is no obligation on you part to click on any of these ads, and I’ve tried to place them so that they won’t be too obtrusive.
Along with these changes come lots of features that I hope will make the site easier for you to navigate! The project gallery was getting to be a bit cumbersome {with over 275 published posts to date}, so I’ve created new topic specific galleries and broken the posts down within those galleries to make it easier for you to find what you are looking for – whether that be decor and DIY project, organizing inspiration, entertaining ideas, or kid specific projects.
You can access all of these new project galleries at any time from the links in the header, or from the new links I’ve added to the sidebar.
There are lots of other changes you may notice – some aesthetic, some a matter of function. But overall, I feel like the blog is now much more user friendly, and I hope you’ll agree. If you run into any problems or notice anything that isn’t working properly, please leave me a comment or shoot me an email!
One last thing before I call it a night… As I was updating my Features page and compiling the logos of all the places this little blog has been featured in the last two years, I was blown away!
Forgive me a bragging moment… but I’m pretty proud of what I’ve accomplished thus far! I could have never imagined all this when I started out. Heck, I didn’t know if anyone but my husband and my mom would even read it! But you have read it, and for that, I THANK YOU! None of this would be possible without my readers. THANK YOU! And did I mention… THANK YOU!
