Ian Landsman is Starting From Scratch, January 14, 2007:
New Blog Template
If you're in the market for a powerful and user friendly Help Desk solution, please take a look at my company's flagship product HelpSpot.
So I gave in to you, the readers, and came up with a new template. Nobody seemed to like the “un” template though it really did help clear my mind a bit.
The new site is based on this oswd.org template with some colors insired by www.bartelme.at and the Seattle Seahawks (though I’m not a fan of theirs).
It’s a pretty standard layout. I’ve added a little photo carousel of me and my family to the top as well as a carousel tour of HelpSpot as an experiement.
I’m still looking to do something interesting with the footer. I’d like to put the articles in one column which would free up a column, but I have nothing I want to put there currently. Idea’s welcome.
Let me know what you think.
Oh, and the current personal photos are:
1. Tyler eating a carrot
2. Tyler all dressed up with no place to go
3. Me and Ty playing with leaves
4. Jamie and Ty playing with leaves
5. Tyler learing to program
6. Me and Jamie on our honeymoon in Hawaii
7. Me in our hotel room with a view of Diamond Head in Hawaii
Discussion
This is better. What I like: the layout, the HelpSpot carousel. What I dislike: dark background, blue font: it's unreadable and hurts the eyes, family carousel (it's not I don't like your family, but this is supposed to be a professional blog, not a family one). I don't know if your articles will get more visits by putting them on the footer. I liked their position on the sidebar because I often reread them and they were handy there. Just my humble opinion.
Created by fbm on 01.14.2007 5:25 am
I mostly agree with the previous commenter. The dark background makes too much of a sacrifice in readability.
I *do* actually like the family carousel. Even in business, we're all people and it's nice to see something more of the person whose business views I'm reading about.
Created by Kevin Dangoor on 01.14.2007 9:04 am
Thanks for the comments. I've actually wanted to get some personal photo's up for a while. This blog isn't 100% business, I do venture into other areas and even in business I think it's nice to get a little sense of who you're dealing with. We are still people! Plus, once you've subscribed to the RSS you don't have to see it ever again which is the case with most of my readers.
Yes, the blue is slightly less readable. On the other hand, as above, most regular readers will rarely be on the site itself for long periods reading. I'll experiment with adding more line height, that should make the reading easier, and perhaps a little lighter color for more contrast.
As for the articles on the bottom, it's not my favorite either. I like the footer though, but need something to put down there. I'll probably move things around a bit once I have some more ideas.
Created by Ian on 01.14.2007 9:33 am
I like the new layout but I definitely think you should get your popular links back to the top-right. And add more contrast between the text and background colour.
To fill the empty space if you move the popular articles, you could put your own recommended articles (the ones you believe should be read more often).
Created by Alex on 01.14.2007 11:17 am
OK I made a few changes. Changed the font to Helvetica which seems a bit more readable, fixed some broken images, put the articles back on the side nav, added some other isv resources to the footer. I think it's shaping up.
Created by Ian on 01.14.2007 12:26 pm
If it doesn't come in a feed, then it ain't worth the fuss.
Created by Chris on 01.14.2007 12:27 pm
Cute kid. Mine are cuter 
Created by Doug Martin on 01.14.2007 4:09 pm
Looks good Ian, a marked improvement from the bare bones template! I also find the blue background does make the text a little hard to read but it's not a major issue.
Created by Scott Carpenter on 01.15.2007 1:25 am
I think that saying that all your readers will see it only in RSS feeds is wrong. When I find a really good blog (like yours), I typically use the post by months to go back to the beginning and read from there so that I can get some more great information. I have done that with your blog before. Reading about the design of HelpSpot gave me a lot of insight into why you chose an outside designer for your logo. Made me think about that, and for my project I will probably be using an outside designer also.
But the black background, blue text, and links on the side in grey? Very hard to read for too long of a time.
Created by Michael on 01.15.2007 10:18 am
Blue on blue!! come on. No the dark background does not work.
Having said that, I mostly read the RSS, so will hopefully not have to see this too often.
Created by Neil on 01.16.2007 10:04 am