I’ve finally finished the redesign of Making it Lovely!
Well, that’s not entirely true. There are a million and one little tweaks and additions that I’d still like to make, but the changes are ones that don’t impact the overall look and function, so I can add them in over the next few days/weeks.
I do all of my own designing and coding (I used to offer web design as Smart & Lovely), and this time around I built these themes off of Standard Theme for WordPress. It’s been been great to work with. I made a lot of changes visually, and a few changes to the core PHP files, but for the most part it gave me the structure I needed. And as for the pretty? I have Moglea to thank for the custom floral illustrations in the header, and I used a couple of elements from Pugly Pixel as well (the glitter and the honeycomb). The background floral pattern is a licensed image, and the logo and all the rest were done by yours truly.
Hold up, did I say themes in that previous paragraph? Plural? Yep. Remember the whole minimal vs. maximal debate I’d been having in regard to the new design? Jessica left a comment suggesting both with a theme switcher, and that was a genius idea. I’d forgotten that was even a possibility! So the default is the “Lovely” theme, full of pattern, but if it’s a bit much (and it may be), you could choose the “Minimal” theme instead. You can switch between the two themes at the top right, next to the social media links. Everyone wins! *
* Well, everyone will win. Eventually. It’s a bit buggy right now (I’m working on it), but you should be able to switch between the two themes with a hard refresh.
So what’s still to come? More organization of categories on the backend, making the design responsive (resizing to fit smaller screens for the 7% of you that need to scroll left to right a little on the site as it is now), more post layouts for different types of content, fine tuning the sidebar, perhaps adding to the footer, some changes to the social sharing options, and on and on. Good stuff, but not essential to launching. And I’ve been dying to launch, so it feels good to push on ahead, right on schedule.
And now, onward! Onward with bigger pictures, interesting new layouts, and different post formats. Onward with a select few new contributors (soon)! Onward with more content, and more awesomeness. And thank you for your patience as I’ve devoted myself to all of this design work lately. Hopefully you’ll love the new look and everything to come as much as I do.
Oh, yes, Nicole, it’ is LOVELY!
This whole blog redesign is just absolutely wonderful and well lovely! The floral illustration is so striking and modern. Just love it all. Oh I accidentally highlighted a word and I was so excited to see pink! Such a cool detail and when you take in everything together it is the perfect bit of color.
I simply love the design/s. Well done!
Holy wow, this is absolutely gorgeous!! You KNOW I’m gonna have to click through every time now!
So fresh, it’s a pleasure to read! Well done you! Also, snaps for allowing a choice in theme ;-)
Congrats, Nicole! Love the two options! I’m in the middle of my own site re-design, yours is giving me even more ideas! :)
You’re so clever! This is really fabulous. Adore the header and the honeycombs. Honeycomb circles for the little comments icons is really cute, too.
OMG. your blog is LOVELY and the max/minimal options are perfect!!
Oddly I can only get the theme button to work when I am in comments…
Lovely indeed! You did an awesome job!
LOVE IT!!!!
I originally voted for minimal but I was so wrong. I’m totally in love with the maximal version. That’s going to be my default!
Gorgeous. I love, love, love the background. The colors are nice as well.
Hmmm, I am on google Chrome and the the theme change does not work for me – it’s maximal regardless of what I choose.
Also, since I’m providing feed back, the pink color you’ve chosen for some of the headers -the ‘Leave a Reply’ above is one example – is so faint it’s barely visible.
I just checked on Firefox and the the theme change works there, but the colors of the header are just slightly better.
That said, I like the design change!
Nicole, I simply love your blog redesign. It’s so very pretty.
Hooray! Love it, so happy my suggestion worked out. I love the maximal, it’s so you!
It looks incredible! What a beautiful space to come and visit. Thank you for putting all the hard work and energy into it! I’d love to learn more about how you learned about coding, etc, and if you took classes or taught yourself, or have and tips for people who want to customize their site more (I know that’s not exactly what you blog about, but your site is so gorgeous, I’m sure I’m not the only one wondering how you do it! :) ).
Congratulations! Love seeing your new logotype up top! Looks good. I’m gonna stick with the maximal. That’s how I roll too.