A New Blog Design and Other News

Some of you may have noticed that Books In Bloom is donning a new look today! I’m so happy to announce that I have finished my blog design. When I first started posting, I knew what imagery and graphics I wanted to use, I just had no idea what theme to pair them with so I just used a default theme. After a long search, I am finally at a design standpoint I can be proud of. In this post I just wanted to go over some of the features of the new design and also outline a few things coming in the future!

QUOTES. One of the newest and most beloved (on my part) new features is the new quote scrollers in the footer. I only have about 50 quotes added so far, so there may be some overlap for a bit…but soon I’m hoping to have hundreds!! You’ll never see the same quote twice….or that’s the goal anyway!

INSTAGRAM. I added a lovely Instagram slider in the footer also. My own Instagram isn’t quite ready to see prime time yet though so I have it set to a few hashtags instead….but soon you will see my own photos down there!

SIDEBAR. I struggled with keeping the sidebar clean and minimal looking while still adding everything I thought was necessary. I decided to go with the intro section, a community section and then the reading section, which has recent reviews and current reads etc.

LAYOUT. The layout of the post is what I’m most excited about. The first post is full width and includes three related posts. The rest are in two columns, under that. Such a genius layout I think! What do you think?

FEATURED IMAGES. One thing that really bugged me was how all the featured images were askew. I made up some new graphics and cropped some of the existing images to be uniform in size. There are still a few that are off…mainly because I didn’t know how to proceed… but soon things should look lined up much better.

I also have a super amazing announcement! I was chosen as a Moderator over at The Classic Club!!! YESS!! I will be managing the twitter, new member emails and the members lists. We have 3 other new moderators also, so if you are a member of the club, expect to see a few new things.

Well, so tell me what you think of the new design! Also, if you have quote suggestions, add them in the comments.