Change is good – And DSB has evolved to DailyBloggr
First off, happy Valentine’s day to all. If you’re reading this post on email / rss feeds, I strongly suggest that you head over to the blog and check it out. Because, guess what ? There’s a brand new design in place. And I’m excited because its not just a design change but a complete revamp of the old DailySEOblog as you know it. DSB is now DailyBloggr and here’s why.
We’re not moving away from SEO, but with SEO as the core strength, its growing into many more related fields like Social Media, Web Master info, Web Trends and all that come in between. In fact, most of these categories and articles already existed, but the SEO label was kind of over powering it and some of them went un-noticed which wasn’t fair, I thought. So we have the same content, in fact better content, more articles, more categories, more news, more reviews, more user participation and a whole new brand – DailyBloggr.
I’m really looking forward to your feedback on this, positive or negative, feel free to scribble them down on the comments area.
Oh and by the way, while you drop by you’ll see a lot of changes. Here’s a brief idea about them.
First off, the new design has been done by Aravind Ajith of The Design Superhero. He did a great job in fulfilling my expectations. We’ve been trying a lot of experiments for the last few days and having a great time learning new stuff with the challenges that came across. I strongly recommend Aravind for any WordPress related gig, design, coding or anything. He’s very good at it. Feel free to let him know of the bugs/suggestions you find on the site.
Overview New Features Added.
- Better Comments with social integration.
You’ll see a new, clean and structured comment system in place where facebook and twitter has been integrated in a very simple yet effective manner. I’m not a big fan of third party integration in comments so all those tools have been avoided, and I wanted something simple and fun. So we added two extra fields into the comment form namely facebook and twitter IDs. Which users can use if they wish. Those who are social media mavens (many DailyBloggr readers are) will find this useful as filling these info will add those social network profile links to your gravatar. People who don’t want to use it can ignore it though – same old comments style.
The comments show up in a sort of tree structure where each reply can be seen right under the parent comment, visually distinct and making it easy to figure out how the conversations happened.
- Social Media integration. If you liked the article, everyone else will know for sure.
If you RT or Facebook share the articles, there is a small (rather) box on the top right of every article, where all the recent retweeters will be shown. A better RT button and Facebook share button too. This is an experiment, and not quite fool proof, so please feel free to help me test it.
- A better homepage layout.
No big deal actually, but a faster loading homepage with snippets and one click access to all major stories is always nice.
- Better focus on the article content and lesser distraction elsewhere.
The most important change is that now the focus is on the content more than anything else. Not the logo, not the other stories, not the fan badge or anything else, but the content. But if you wish to look around, there are other stuff as well.
- A speculative placement of ad banners.
Here’s the thing. The blog makes money only through ads. And I wanted a better ad placement, with a better click through ratio and better visibility for advertisers not compromising on the content readability. The 125×125 square ads are so 2008, so I wanted to try something new. We have a new ad area above the fold, near the navigation area, with excellent visibility (can’t get better than this), and reduced Ad-Blindedness, if you know what I mean. Ads in no way are obtrusive to the content, but at the same time promises a better visibility for the advertisers. I’m sure you’ll get along with this feature.
So, that’s pretty much it. I hope you all like it and stay with me for the endeavors ahead, I bet its going to be thrilling times.
Meanwhile, I’m leaving the site in your hands now, its all yours to test and rip off, play with it and feel free to let me know of your thoughts and opinions. Cheers !
Hey.. Now this is amazing… The designis clean and superb. Only I think that you should have a prominent logo…
Don’t you think “subscribe to” option should be above the fold.
btw, why have you changed your domain name…. ???
Hi Popular Web Geek,
The logo is something I purposefully took to the second row. The brand is all about content more than a logo, but yeah I agree we need a logo, and its going to be prominent at places where its supposed to be, that is elsewhere, on other networks where you’ll be able to recognize it. Over here on the site, you’ll notice the content first more than anything else.
Reg: subscription – I agree. We have a twitter profile and RSS subscriber feed right above the fold on the sidebar. The one you spotted was an additional one, just in case someone missed it in the first place.
Reg: domain, I had been testing the new domain name for quite some time now, successfully changing over to it over the last few weeks. Its part of the whole re-branding.
Thanks for the suggestions.
You had two very powerful keywords “seo” and “blog” in your domain name…. why would you change that…. I know maybe becoz content in king and not domain name…
I saw the change some days back…. I was astonished…
Agreed – Content is the King, but for a first time visitor to the blog, above the fold only ads are visible. How is the Bounce Rate looking with the new design?
wow! change is good indeed. Loved the header design a lot! Thanks for the amazing reference of ajith, will be contacting him in near future.
He’s great at it and a nice chap to work with. My vote.
Yes, I like the change, Cool new look, i think you have already changed the url ?.
Best Wishes friend.
Thanks Anish, yes I had changed the URL some weeks earlier, just to ensure smooth transition.
I already noticed it (change in url) , Mani are you online now ?, i have some problems with my sites in Opera Mini, its not opening in Opera mini, me on VPS hosting and Main site in php, blogs are in wordpress and forum in mybb. lot of people reported me the same. any idea about this ?.
So, this was what you were referring to sometime back when I sent a DM on Twitter regarding change in URL & adsense ads! Really cool. Happy to see a non-thesis blog
Exactly Raju, in fact a few ppl like you had already noted the URL change and notified me. I was still testing at that time and couldn’t give you answers. But now its all up in front of you.
Thanks for the feedback.
Hello Mani,
Looks clean and awesome! Content is easy to read and the mess in the sidebar (which the other theme had) is gone.
Couple of Thoughts:
1. The absence of Prominent Logo is obvious. IMO, any standard WordPress theme will look unique if it has a unique logo. With reference to your reply to @PopularWebGeek, maybe a bigger logo on the homepage and the smaller one on the content pages is an option.
2. The black color of the “Subscribe to Updates” tab on the footer makes it hard to notice. A brighter color might be an extra reminder to subscribe.
@AravindAjith has been a friend on twitter for quite a long time. Never knew he was insanely talented. I am a fan
All the very best.
buddy the blog is looking awesome!!!!!!!
Won’t your page ranking be affected.
Regards
Temporarily yes. But it should bounce back soon.
Its just rankings, what matters most that the readers are still here =)
You Mean for the theme change or domain name change ???
Domain name changes are done via 301 redirects … which hardly matters…. esp since this blog will also get lot of linkbacks on the new domain too.,…
But, I TOO ask .. if theme changes (basically link structure) affect rankings or not …
btw , the big RT and FB button is a good Idea…….
Also I know this is your blog… But I think you Must add add “Subscribe to” in a better pos. … the best is to show it like problogger (below posts with reasons to subscribe)
Hey!
First of all I love the layout. Its clean and easy to move around.
Secondly i agree with your change in the domain although I love the old one. However change is a good thing. Moving on to a few topics is a good move.
Will you have guest authors too?
Thirdly I love the the comment =) Wil have a question to ask later.
Fourthly “I hope you all like it and stay with me for the endeavors ahead, I bet its going to be thrilling times.” of course I’ll stay with ya! =)
Hey Aaron, thanks for the honest comments
I agree that DSB was a more recallable name. It was a tough call, but I’m sure you’ll like the new one too as it grows on ya.
)
I haven’t decided on having guest authors but that’s where the blog is heading. ( let me know if you’re game
Hey Mani,
First of all, let me admire your guts to change the entire domain, which i don’t think anyone have in this industry fearing the loss of so called ‘google juice’ and ‘adsense smart pricing’.
Congrats!!
In these days with all those canonicals and 301′s it’s possible to get back google juice in few days, but what about adsense…any problem of low revenue with all those smart pricing myths associated with new domain..what’s your point when it comes to adsense and domain change?
Renjith, I might have been bothered if the sites income was primarily AdSense. But luckily no, so I have the luxury to take the risk. But even then, I don’t consider it a big bottleneck as it is known. CPM ads are very low paying and I don’t think they are good enough a reason to keep things in tact. On the other hand, I might come across the loss of “contextuality” on the ads, because the domain name have changed. But again, its only a matter of bouncing back.
So if you’re game to take the temporary hit, there’s no issues at all. But that’s the fun isn’t it ? Thanks for asking the Q though.
I love the new design, it’s pretty funny that you mentioned heading over to the site if your in a reader because I might have just skimmed past it. Loads fast, it’s clean and looks great.
Its looking really clean. All the best for your new domain and wishing you a great new start. it wouldbe interesting to read how you migrated traffic to your new domain.
Sure QOT, I’ll give a detailed post on the whole migration process sometime soon. Thanks for dropping by
Very Good Theme, I like it and i hope get one like it…
Really glad to see all the positive feedback.
Thank you very much Mani, for the opportunity and the kind words
Bro, Congrats First of All
Blog is Very cool & design is more than web 2.0
You
Commenting looks very cool too
Footer needs to be improved
Sidebar & others are excellent & the writer here too (
Dude how much you paid for this theme to Bro Aravind ?
He is simply superb
Thanks Athul, you might want to check it with him
@Mani Killer idea.. loved the rebranded look and feel of the blog.. and @Aravind does a fantaastic job as always.. I”m officially jealous of not shifting to WP.
Thanks for dropping by buddy. Abt WP, when you decide to migrate, do let me know. Can do my bit of help
Mani,
I am a regular reader of your blog for the long time and never added any comment. After seeing a redesign, i thought of writing a comment. Keeping the +ve’s aside, i would like to tell few suggestion’s.
1) Logo – i feel the old logo was good than this new. It will be good if that catches the eye.
2) you may add a “search here” default text in the top search bar
3) The categories text in the top bar looks too dull
4) I found sometimes the subscriber count shows ’0′ or N/A
5) Social bookmark links are missing on posts
Overall, I like this redesign !
@Mani…. Mindblowing Theme and Great Idea In action. But the logo is too small. The footer is awesome.
Your comment section is one of the best I have ever seen. No clutter yet so much options..Best of Luck
Tip: Why show the recent posts in sidebar on the homepage? The user can see the recent posts from the left column. Why not utilize that space for something creative?
Nice clean layout. The content part will surely achieve some extra attention. But the URL change part is a bit tricky, I mean what about the keyword authority that you gained with that earlier one ? Whatever on an ending note, I’m lovin it….:)
Perfect layout for a perfect blog that gets thousands of visitors each day. Awesome plugins and features added. It’s perfect. No -ves
Well, Goodbye DailySeoBlog and Welcome to DailyBloggr!
Hi Mani,
Really This is very impressive Template and very nice idea to change your way from DSB to DB this is better compare to latest Social Media Trends.
Best Changes.
Keep it up.
Hi Dude,
First of all, Your new WP Theme looks Cool and Easy-to-Navigate. Good Internal Linking and Calm Feeling (Which is important for a blog).
BTW I hope you’ll overcome the SEO/PageRank Problems regarding your Domain move. 301 Redirect from your Old domain (dailyseoblog) will surely bring back your PageRank 4. Don’t worry about PageRank.
But please do Take care of Seach Engine Positioning. Your old domain blog was receving a Lots of Traffic from few good Search Engine Keywords. huh? Now I can’t find any of them
Best of Luck for your New Start!
Keep Blogging!
Jijo, you are both right and wrong. Right because, as you rightly said the risk of losing your ranks remain, however I think I’ve managed to get it all back to normal now. I’ll be posting the metrics soon. So you are probably wrong that the ranks are missing.
Yeah! you are right. As a SEO professional, I hope you can overcome every problems Regarding SERP. Go ahead.
Best of Luck. Happy Blogging!
Congrats Mani.
Hey Mani
I read your blog viz feed and when I landed into your blog at first point I thought I landed into some new place..But after reading these article I realize you changed your domain name..
To be honest I still love your previous domain name, coz that created a brand till now….but since its your decision to change domain name…Im sure you must have taken it after thinking of all the aspect,…..
The only thing which I would like to change here is making your blog sidebar more prominent…
May be by changing the colors..
Another suggestion..just checked your blog into my iPhone and realize its not mobile friendly…
try some plugin or Google reader method to make it mobile friendly….
Best of luck !!
Congratz on upgrading your site, Mani! This site looks better than DailySeoBlog.Nice work. The templates and design are great. Best of luck for you and your site’s future.
Merry Christmas!