Garry Conn dot Com Gets A Makeover
Sunday, June 10th 2007 12:16 P.M. CST:
Wow! After a long night of burning the midnight oil, I have managed to get the new theme totally up and running! Here is a brief summary of the elements and thought process involved with the new design:
Table of contents:
The Sidebar: Summary
This sidebar has been moved from the right side to the left side. This has always bothered me since day one as I know that people read from left to right and it makes sense to have your navigation menu and various site section menus on the leftside. After reading this article, it just added to my desire to place the sidebar on the left.
The Sidebar: Sections
I want to explain in more details about the sidebar and the sections within the sidebar. Below is more information about each section included.
The Top Contributors
I really enjoy reading comments on my site. Since I launched the site, every month traffic continues to increase. With the new site design in place, I am not going to be making a place for my site, category pages and individual post pages in the search engines. This will increase traffic even more. As my site gains more and more traffic I intend to reward my readers and contributors even more. The Top Contributors section is located on the very top and left side of every page within my site. I want to share my traffic with others as well as share the indexing ride on the “Googlebot train”. To get on this list, all you have to do is comment!
Recent Visitors
The recent visitors section combines BlogCatalog as well as MyBlogLog, delivering you a very accurate scope for who is visiting the site. The more I blog, the more I realize how such a close knit group of people we are. I want to display the names and the faces of the bloggers who visit my site!
Recent Articles, Comments and Categories
It is pretty clear what the purpose of these sections are. I do have some logic to their order. I display the articles first because this list constantly changes by providing new links to new pages being created on the site. I want search engines to pick up on these links fairly quickly. Having the comments below that compliments my sitemap.xml file which is ranks the posts based off comment number. The categories are made available too because in the long run of things, I am training web bots to index these sections for newly added content for inclusion into their search engines.
Sponsored Sites
Who doesn’t like icecream? I have a very small “Sponsored Sites” section up on the sitebar where I allow Text-Link-Ads to sell text links for me. The end result is nice, I can take my family out to a very nice dinner and icecream. Every site has to have a little bit of “money love”.
Blogroll
I never thought I would do it. But it is long over due. My blogroll is now my “Links Page” and it has its own section. The links page is very nice. It contains a collection of other amazing and awesome blogs that link to me! It is categorized and very organized (or soon to be!). I totally intend to market my links page very heavily, in fact my links section has its very own SITEMAP registered in Google Webmaster Tools. Additionally, I will be providing many links to my new Links Page in order to establish tons of backlinks and increase the section’s Google PageRank. You will start to notice that I will be doing many various internal promotions for my Links Page, including a soon to be link on my soon to be signature which will be featured on the bottom of every article I write. All in all… if your site isn’t in my Links Page you are going to be missing out on great traffic and added backlinks!
The Meta Tags: Summary
Meta tags, despite what many people say, place a huge active roll in aiding search engines with proper indexing of your site and individual posts and pages within your site. By use of proper meta tags you basically give the web crawler such as the Googlebot suggestions as to how it should display your site and pages in their search results. I have invest a ton of time learning how to write php code and have modified my Wordpress install to display unique sets of meta tags on every section and every page within my entire site! How did I do this??? I am not telling just yet. But I will as soon as I prove this this is a successful method of optimizing your Wordpress blog. More to come on this, I promise!
Sunday, June 10th 2007 03:09 A.M. Update:
Great news! After moving the sidebar to the left I have now made the once limited 800px theme into a very beautiful fluid width design. Regardless if you use a WebTV or a Wide-screen Laptop, I am hoping that you will enjoy the flexibility of having a fluid width design. You shouldn’t have to scroll left or right and I have also adjusted the font size to a comfortable level that should look pretty good in all browsers and screen resolutions! This is great news, because I have always had trouble doing this modification and this morning it went flawless!
I have a little bit more work to do here and there… but over all WYSIWYG. If you don’t like it, view my site in RSS!
I am joking… seriously, if there is something you don’t like or want to offer some feedback, I want to invite everyone to chip in with their opinions. Goldcoaster was hesitant to… and I don’t want anyone to feel that way. Your comments, feedback and suggestions are totally welcome and don’t worry about wondering if you will offend me with your opinions… “I need them, in order to determine how things are going.”
10:44 P.M. Update:
Thank you Planet Apex for this. I have made the adjustment and this really helps and aids my initiative in rewarding my readers for contributing and commenting on my site by displaying the “Top Contributors” and “Contributing Authors” section on the top left. Garry Conn dot Com is all about providing a very high level of quality in the articles being published. The articles are geared towards helping bloggers become successful blogging. I am NOT really about making money online via this site as I have many other sites that I own and place a ton of strategic efforts to do so. This site is more less an online archive of my thoughts and a visual representation of what I do online to make money online. I own many various dot Com sites most of which use Wordpress, and this site delivers most of the “what I did to do this…” and “what I did to do that…” to make money online and find success with my many online ventures.
So, long story short… I love feedback, I love comments, and I love answering questions. My goal is to successfully be able to communicate to the blogosphere what I do and what I have done to find success online and show the blogosphere how I am doing it.
My readers are extremely important to me. Unlike many sites, I don’t treat my readers like cattle. My readers have names and not numbers. The only number attributed to my readers is their individual value of importance to me. With that being said, that is why I have moved my sidebar to the left and that is why I place my “Top Contributors” and “Contributing Authors” on the top.
I want these two things, aside from my content, to be the first thing people see. Additionally, I want to help spread the power of link love. I am very happy to have traffic to my site… I have worked my butt off to attain traffic. And now that I have it, I want more than ever to share it. Secondly, I know how difficult it is to get indexed in the major search engines. Placing such a high value on these two sections will allow for web crawler bots to index the links on these lists quicker.
Garry Conn dot Com hold a huge treasure inside. I have this site so in tune with the search engine’s frequency that I am getting fried from the microwaves. Over the next 3 to 6 months is going to be so much for to witness. From day one, I have generated every single visitors by way of social networking. I have my crowd of people that visit, and I enjoy them all. Now, I am in what I call a stage two of development. Garry Conn dot Com is 110% optimized to recruit new readers from within the search engines. This site is totally my baby and really a site has to grow as at the normal rate of a baby. It is totally time for this… I just hope you all are ready!
I will post more when I near completion of the new Garry Conn dot Com!
10:00 P.M. Update:
I have got all my previously written articles filed away in their new categories. I am not working on some site structure maintenance and also will be working on my stylesheet css file to modify the font size, style and type.
8:56 P.M. Update:
I have got the new theme updated. And I am in the process of moving my previously written posts into new categories. Once this is done, I am going to be doing some work on my stylesheet css file and do some modifications to the font styles and colors.
Also, sometime tonight or tomorrow, I will be publishing an article that talks more about the new design and all the special things I have done that will help me take things to higher levels in the search engines.
When I am completely done with the site update, I will delete this post and continue on with normal blogging. This post is here to keep my readers updated with progress.
6:30 P.M.
Don’t mind me… I’m just doing a little bit of maintenance. For the last week, I have done most of the work offline… but now, it is time to roll my work over to the site. You might experience some weird things happening. During this time, I would recommend that you view my feed in your favorite RSS Reader. Click here to subscribe to my feed!
When I am done performing the maintenance, you will be presented with a brand new Garry Conn dot com, sporting a very stable design and packed full of carefully written code that will help the site reach new heights in the search engines, which ultimately is my goal for finding and helping bloggers learn more about blogging and how to be successful doing it.
If you should have any comments, questions or suggestions… please feel free to leave a comment in the comment form and wish me luck!
Best Regards,
Garry Conn
Popularity: unranked [?]
34 comments
Off-Topic.
Gary, if you get a chance take a look at my most recent post about my friend’s new business. Would love if you would participate in the private beta.
Goldy
Hey Goldy,
Wow! That is a really cool project. It isn’t often that I shack up in a hotel, but I am sure that there will be many people that read my site who will be interested. In the next day or so I will mention it in a mini review. I will probably include it in my sponosored section on my next “Successful Blogging Tips” article.
I have to say, I am totally impressed with your friend’s business concept. Looks pretty wicked! The best of luck to you guys.
Thanks Gary. Would love to get a few “traveling types” in to the private beta.
In due time, I will be a traveler… I want to travel the world. I work hard so I can put my kids through college. After that, I plan to travel the world. I want to see every thing our beautiful Earth has to offer. I want to see different countries and visit difficult cultures.
Tell you who comes to mind on offering an invite to would be EveryDayWeekender. Not only will you find some of the sexiest MBL avatars being used, but I think he is into traveling??? Might be a great reference!
Thanks. I will check with him.
p.s. When you travel to Prague let me know as I lived there for 5 years and am married to a Czech Woman. I’m a good resource
In fact I am going to pick her up from the airport (she was home) right now.
It will be years before I start traveling. I am hoping to start my traveling adventures when I turn 40. That will be 9 and a half years from now.
That makes you about a year and a half younger than me. I feel old.
Yeah but at least you are traveling!
So that Planet Apex study would mean ads are better on the left side that the right?
I like the new layout, very neat. it is much more standard in the look though, much like most blogs and you have gone back to a 800px wide format again – this means that a lot of your pics are now too large (eg blog tips#6) and the text must be tiny for your 1600 resolution. I don’t know if it the smaller text font (it looks to be about 8 in size) or the font itself but it is not as easy to read as the old blog.
Please don’t take my thoughts as negative, remeber they are my thoughts and I am not trying to attack.
I do not feel you are attacking me. I feel that you are being kind to take the time to submit feedback. And it is very appreciated. Without my readers offering their opinions on things, how else can I asses how I am doing, or how pleased they are with things on the site.
So, without a doubt. Feedback, criticism, and opinions are always welcome!
The fonts I am working on as we speak. The width, I am going to have to tackle that after getting the fonts worked out. There is a solid reason why I went with this theme. It is very customizable and almost a perfect match for what I need.
I still have a mile list of things to do, but I will get them done one at a time… I am just going to keep pluggin away. Also when I am all done, I plan on publishing a full article about the new Garry Conn dot Com and talk about all the changes I made, and show everyone how to do what I did. The last parts will come later though, because I have made some code changes to my Wordpress install that I am hoping will improve how my site, pages, categories and individual post pages are indexed and ranked in Google. Once I prove to myself that my code modifications work, then I will publish what I have done and offer support to those who want to modify. This could happen in a few weeks to a few months.
Thanks again for your comment and feedback. Very much appreciated.
Hey Garry great layout!
I’ve been trying to come up with a suggestion but I really can’t find one!… I think the font is great like this.
Well that is pretty good if you are having difficulty with offering a suggestion. That would lead me to believe that enjoy the new design!
Thanks for dropping me the comment with the compliment!
Ok, I have a small problem…there are no links on the posts to add a comment. I can see, for example, ‘12 comments’ but it isn’t clickable nor is there an add comment button. To add this comment I needed to open the post a scroll to the bottom to get to the comment box. Was this on purpose? If so ignore me but I would rather be able to click on the add comment button up the top of the post.
I like the rating scheme , I see the fonts have changed and is now wider. The cropped posts on the front page is good although I am guessing there will never be any pictures now, pics are good to break up an all text style page. Plus maybe a little more than 3 1/2 lines of text per post, I would rather a good feel for the article rather than it cut down like an RSS feed.
Not trying to negative…the layout is very, very neat and tidy.
cheers,
– GoldCoaster
Wow this is like a complete makeover at least on my widescreen display. The layout looks perfect and so is the font. If I have to suggest anything, it would be on the font size. It just makes the big posts look more big (especially the font size of the comments)
Hi Garry,
I am happy you found that post useful.
Please keep on writing.I have learnt a lot from you.
regards,
GoldCoaster,
Yes, I did remove the comment link from the title of the post from the home page and category view. However, you are right and I thought the same thing as I was doing it. The reason why I did that was to reduce the number of hyperlinks per page. But somethings just aren’t worth it. Having the comment “link” removed was terrible. I have it back up and “linkable” now. As far as the rating goes, I might do away with that system as it just adds to being one more thing that could break on the site. Most important, is that I have opened the home page back up to display the full article.
The category pages are a little different. These pages are soon going to be the pages the supply the search engines with the posts. I am working on teaching web bots such as Google’s where to find my new content. Yes, I do want them to find the new content within the home page, but more importantly I want them to find the already ’sorted by topic’ content within their categories.
I have reduced the font size down by 20%. I think you are right and I appreciate the feedback. I too think it looks better now, even still in wide-screen.
That is awesome to hear! Thanks for reading what I write. I am glad that you find the content, site, and writing helpful.
Not to spoil the feeling of youth you felt after reading Goldy’s.. but that makes you a year older than me Garry!
Excellent work Garry! I’m sure the ‘Blog spotlight’ will be up there in the sidebar soon.
I am in fact in the process of redesigning ShanKri-la as well. It is not done by any means yet.. but the layout is there to stay. I would appreciate your feedback to if you get a chance to stop by.
And are you traveling…
LOL
Yes, thank you for the reminder. I will definately get the Blog Spotlight back up on the sidebar.
I would love to travel but I guess the far-off ones would have to wait until either when I win the Mega Millions or retirement whichever comes first.
Hopefully the mega millions come first for you!
Hi Garry,
Nice Makeover really looks cool now. I really liked the ideas menu it looks quite creative.
Keith
I like the makeover you did. Keep up the good work!
Garry, on some outgoing links it says, say, “20th most popular link” – but other links don’t have it, how come?
– GoldCoaster
Nice work Garry , clean and simple .
I like the makeover. It looks really good.
Keith,
Awesome man! I am glad you like it. Thank you so much for the compliment.
Tharsos,
Thank you so much for the compliment. I broke out a little sweat on this update and I am excited to see it pay off. The pay off is actually contributors starting to see better results on their sites by contributing on this one. I have a very unique code applied to every section of my site that allows for a very search engine friendly haven.
That is calculated by my MBL traffic stats. MyBlogLog keeps a record of any and all clicks for the day and when you roll your mouse over a link it will tell you how popular that particular link is.
That’s what I am looking for! Glad to hear you say it. The bells and whistles are found within the treasure of the site. The content, link love and indexing. If my works has been done correctly, I will have created a halo around Google and anyone here within will benefit. Only time will tell, but so far things are looking great. I am seeing a lot of shifts in how my content is being indexed in Google. I had tons of content that was in their supplemental index that is now being shifted to their main index. I see all the things that I don’t want listed in Google starting to drop off… so things are headed in the right direction.
I am glad you like it!
Thanks for taking a moment out of your day to submit your compliment.
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