Design Review: Problogger.net
30 One of the best ways to learn is by learning from others. Design reviews look at the ups and downs of a blog’s design, leaving you to take away best-practices for your own blog.
Problogger is the site for professional bloggers. For years now, Darren has been consistently giving out the best and most up-to-date advice on making money blogging. Over that time, he has accumulated nearly 30,000 subscribers, so naturally, when he released a complete redesign of his blog yesterday, done by Ben Bleikamp, there was a lot of buzz. What better candidate could there be for our first design review??
What has been done well?
In short, alot, but some of the very best aspects are:
- It’s bold. It is a huge change from the previous layout, and from reading the comments, it has taken at least a few readers by surprise. There are thousands of blogs on the same topic as Darren’s, and Darren stays ahead of them by constantly being at the head of the game with his content. This design is no different. It throws caution to the wind with the homepage, and steps away from the standard blog layout.
- Architecture. There is a wealth of information in the Problogger archives, and due to the sheer amount of it, often the only way to find an older article is when Darren interlinks his posts. The new homepage separates the video and the text, the sidebar of every post lists recent posts, and the long category list is well spaced in the footer, making it much more friendly to use.
- The color scheme. It’s modern, and it’s interesting. The layout of the new design is extremely modern. A normal, monotone color scheme simply wouldn’t be good enough here. Being unique is difficult, but it has been well pulled off here.
- Room to breathe. There is a lot of information on every page, but it doesn’t feel that way. The layout is wider than previously, giving a lot more space to work with. Instead of cluttering that space, Ben has used ample padding.
- “Best of Problogger” links. Ajax has been used magnificently to allow four different lists of links to be placed into a small space. It has even been integrated with Alex King’s Popularity Contest plugin. One of the best uses of Ajax I’ve seen in a blog.
- It looks good. In all designs, there are some aspects that simply “feel right.” Problogger is no different. In particular, I like how it feels layered, with different sections in different coloured boxes, and the lighter ones being on top.
What could be changed?
- Grid structure. Darren’s design is fantastic. It really is, and that is the reason that taking the time to use a strict grid structure in the beginning would have been advantageous. I don’t think that the actual design could be improved upon at all, but the page’s flow could. This can be best seen on the homepage. Do you see how the 3 main columns are all different sizes? Look at the category links. The columns there have no correlation to the rest of the page, and then look below that, where the 3 evenly divided columns look a little off because they don’t fit with the rest of the page.
- Comment Count. The comment links have been placed near the post titles. That is fine on single posts, but when you are reading the post straight out of the blog section, you read right to the end, and there’s nothing. If you want to comment, you have to scroll back up to the title.
- Add a slogan. The old design was very friendly to new-readers. It even began with a “What is a blog?” link. The new design is fantastic for returning readers, but bringing back the slogan wouldn’t hurt, and with all the space around the logo, there is certainly enough room for it.
All in all, the Problogger redesign was one of the most drastic, and most well executed redesigns I’ve seen in a long time. Whatever Darren paid Ben, it was well worth it!
What do you think of the new design? Thumbs up or down?
If you have a custom themed blog that you’d like to have reviewed, just drop me an email.
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Hi Michael, Darren’s new design looks great. I agree on the slogan though.
In ProBlogger I like the idea to have “Home” and “Blog”, which opens some space for the “important” content in “Blog” and gives some space in “Home” to give visitors an idea about “what where is”.
It is well organized but as graphical design I wouldn’t rate it very high. It is not something extraordinary. Still I like it very much :D
Two-thumbs up on the change. Very clean and easy to look at. Way to go, Ben.
Very true Truden, that separation was important. From reading comments on the site, I think that a good few of the regular readers will appreciate the “blog” page, so that they can continue to get the latest posts in the manner they are used to.
Thanks for the comments Rose and Matthew! Seems that the redesign has gone down well. :)
Hey Michael – thanks for the review.
I agree I should have followed a grid structure more closely, but the dynamic content made that very difficult – adjusting for perfect column heights would have been nearly impossible.
In regards to the comment link at the bottom of posts – check out the “What’s Next” section – at the bottom of that there is a link saying “Leave a Comment.”
Everything else I agree with :)
Hi Ben – Thanks for sharing with us. :)
I can see that the grid would have been extremely difficult to do (Especially with the video preview, and even the lengths of some of the category names!). On most designs, you wouldn’t actually think of the grid itself in a review. It’s a testament to the quality of the design that the underlying grid was the only real complaint I had about it. :)
As for the comments, I didn’t mean on the individual pages. I meant the category ones, like this.
yea, Darren’s new design looks more professional, i really like the look neat and orderly. The look are match with the blog name as a problogger.
I will do the same thing next time, will inform you guys if i’ve done it.
Syiru,
http://onlinejob.motime.com
I’ve not been to ProB before their revamped look. :-) I went to have a look and I do like what I see.
But, maybe it’s just me, I’m so used to seeing all postings on the homepage, I do feel the page looks a little bare when they only make their latest posting appear on the main page. (all their previous posts are listed on the left sidebar)
Have a good day. :-)
Syiru – Cool. :)
Helen – You can see the old design here if you’re interested.
I know what you mean about the homepage being very different. It has certainly taken a lot of people by surprise. I suppose it’s just personal preference on how much you like that particular aspect. :)
Mike: Thanks for the linkage to Darren’s old design.
With respect to Darren’s old design, it was easy to find interesting articles to read, especially for beginning bloggers. The one thing about the old design that was not so good was the small font. Older viewers reading that small font would probably have a difficult time reading it.
The new design is just that, dazzlingly bold and radically different from what many expected. It’s a lot easier to read and I am already looking forward to printing out some of those articles so I can really relax and let the information really soak deep into my brain. This new design is just a joy to read. Welcome to ProBlogger.net 2.0!
Love the new logo, in fact I feel just a bit jealous lol.
I’m thinking about having Ben spruce my design up a bit in about a year or so……
Great to hear your opinions Mark. I agree entirely on the old design being harder to read (The orange links in particular). I read Problogger every single day, so the heightened legibility is the best improvement they could have made for me. :)
If you’re looking for a blog redesign, then I imagine you’d find few better than Ben. (Check out his portfolio. Loads of great sites on show there!)
On the contrary, I actually prefer the old design – the colour scheme, font (yes I know it’s small but I’ve no problems with that) and categories being placed from top to bottom rather than being spread from left to right.
Perhaps, I have not gotten used to the new design :P
I imagine you aren’t the only one that does. The old blog was certainly a familiar blog layout, which people are used to. In a week from now, tell me how you feel about it again though. You might have changed your mind. :)
(Or you might not have, and simply have a fixation with orange and white layouts. ;) )
Add this in – the colours should be smoothened and/or rounded corners. It looks a bit awkward now with the straight edges.And Ben is a friggin’ designer, so no probs for him, I expect.
Thanks for the comment TechZilo. :)
Personally, I like it with the straight edges though. For that layout, it allows the different sections to sort of “block” together.
Curved edges are certainly very popular now, but I think they’re of more use in less full layouts. They stop the page from looking like just a few rectangles.
I like the new design. It helps organize everything that was in his site.
Sly from Slyvisions.com
I love the new design, I think it is organised in a much easier way to find things- like how I found this blog.
Welcome Suzie! Now I’m very glad Darren has given me a few links on his blog then. :D
Oooh, links from ProBlogger. How much traffic are they sending you?
Quite a bit. Darren has linked to me a few times now, so I’ve probably gotten a fair few visitors thanks to him. :D
If I were you, I’d check you stats to see how many uniques/month come from ProBlogger. It would be cool to know something like that.
What analytics software do you use? I like Google Analytics, though pMetrics is kind of cool as well (I like the “Spy” feature).
I use Google Analytics as well, and I do check it, but I think Darren has linked to me nearly 6 times now? It’s great. :D
But aside from that sort of stat being pretty cool to know, there isn’t much point to it (Other than the fact that I own Darren a big thank you! xD )
Despite the fact that some users don’t actually come to Problogger for content (RSS subscribers), Problogger does get well over 100,000 unique visitors per month. For sure, a portion of that number are 56k users.Great i will visit again.Thank you.
Looks good to me!
I have seen the site and I saw that it really show a wonderful design and I must say that it can be one of the most best designs I have seen. For you, congrats because you have given a good review of the site.
Yeah your right, the best way to learn is through others review, from identifying the ups and downs of that design you can come up with a great design. Going to the design of the problogger site, I’ve notice the spaces between element and I like it. Because it distinguished each element.
two thumbs up to the new design. I really appreciate your designing efforts for creating a beautiful template. I also agree with the commenter above me problogger is the most seo friendly platform. Thank you.
Problogger has all the top level strategies to run a blog with complete website layout and one very interesting strategy is its footer section. Text links and ads in footer is amazing strategy to run navigation and advertisements at bottom of website.
Thanks for the info,,, I love it
Problogger design has inspired me a lot. I did some work on my blogger template to achieve something similar like it.