Version 4.0
If you’re a regular visitor of Eruantale, you might notice that the website looks quite a bit different. Yesterday afternoon I took it down for an hour or two while I switched over to version 4.0. I’m very excited about this new design. It’s the first one I have made for this site since 2008, and it was desperately in need of an overhaul.
New Features
First and foremost, Eruantale is now on Facebook! If you like the site, head over and like it on Facebook as well. I have also made it easier for readers to share posts on Facebook and other social bookmarking websites. At the bottom of each post, you’ll find links to Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, and StumbleUpon—as well as a link to subscribe to future posts.
Just below that is a blurb about the author of the post. I have a few guest posts planned in the future, so this should make it easy to find out more about who is writing the post. Finally, I have switched out the Lifestream plugin for a simple Twitter feed for now.
New Pages
Eruantale now has a mission statement that defines several of my goals and my focus for this blog. I have also typed up a comment policy. All of the comments posted on this website are moderated, and the comment policy merely explains the guidelines I take into consideration when I am moderating comments.
Finally, I have added a subscribe page that explains what RSS feeds are for readers who are unfamiliar with the technology. You can also subscribe via e-mail on the same page.
About the Design
If you’re super nerdy like me, you might be curious about several elements of the design itself. It was inspired by the color palette “Familiar” on ColourLovers and designed in PhotoShop.
The icons are by Icon Dock, and the fonts used in the design are Learning Curve and Ripe, while the fonts used in the copy are Palatino Linotype and Trebuchet MS.
Troubleshooting
The new design has been tested in Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari for Windows, and Internet Explorer 8. If you see anything that looks weird or seems to be malfunctioning, please contact me. It’s possible I have missed something.
I hope you enjoy!
About the Author
Shawna is a twenty-something year old English major living in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, Matthew. She enjoys reading old books, writing novels in a month, listening to Regina Spektor, watching British TV shows with her husband, making tasty treats, exploring Portland with her friends, making self discoveries and blogging about her adventures as a college student. Find the author on the web at http://www.eruantale.net/.
Great job with the new layout! You should consider allowing the content area to grow for those of us on widescreen monitors. I should visit the actual site more instead of just reading the RSS ;)
Thanks, Travis. I had initially planned for the content area to be fluid, but then I had issues coding it because of the rounded edges. But I will try to figure out a way to make it work.
I use Google Reader on my iGoogle home page and all I see are the headlines from my RSS feed. I usually try to open up the articles that sound interesting in a new tab on the actual website. I like to see the discussion too.