The Beginning of The Collective Loop

Well folks it's official now. I want to cordially welcome you to The Collective Loop, which was formerly known as Damion DJ & Producer Blog. There was a couple of reasons why I thought a change was needed.

Reasons for the change

1. The name was too long and was too personal
2. The design needed to be more clean and minimal
3. It needed a name people would remember easily
4. It needed a name that matched the ideas of what was being written
5. The link to the site was too hard to remember and too long
6. To have a more professional looking blog
7. To better understand the blogger platform and it's components

Here is what it use to look like:
www.damionscsav.blogspot.com



Here is what it looks like now:
www.thecollectiveloop.com

Behind the Design

In the new design I wanted to keep the same background colors and some of the same colors as the old site. I did however add in some new colors as well. I also wanted to have a new banner header that had a rollover image to give it a different feel to it. (I will be changing those every so often). Then came the navigation which I wanted underneath the banner header with some space between the post header and the navigation. So that it gives it a focus point and a cleaner look. I also added a new favicon to the Wibya search bar and to the site to give it a branded feel as well.

On the side navigation I wanted something that was also clean that had rollovers to give a clear idea of what you where clicking on. The idea for the Stay in the Loop section came from a blog that I follow called: Wanken. I hope he doesn't get offend that I used his well designed style. I also added ways for you to search the site to easily find other articles. I set the site up to be a 2 column setup to keep it from being out of control and messy.

In the posting section of the blog I decided that it would work better if I put the date underneath the title instead of being above. I then didn't like how they lineup so I added an icon to the title of each post. It's an indicator of a new post title and it dis-aligns the title and the date. I also cleaned up the footer as well. Not a lot of people were leaving comments and that might be because the comment section was so small and it could easily be missed. So I increase the size and color to hopefully grab the attention of people who want to comment. Then came the other options in the footer that needed a little sprucing up so I added some icons next to the options and also changed the colors. I then added a new sharing option because on the old site. It was being over looked or it was just not keeping the site clean and it was taking up to much space.

Well I'm going to stop rambling now. So I hope you enjoy the new redesign of the site and I look forward to coming up with new ways to better the site. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think and also share with your friends and family.