Updated and Improved Site Design
Thursday, October 30th, 2008by Gary Keorkunian
Posted in General | 2 Comments »
If you visit the site often then you’ve probably noticed a variety of small improvements made to its design over the past few weeks. Of course, because I do all of the work on the site myself, its evolution is perpetually ongoing.
The most obvious change to the site is the layout of the home page. I’ve moved the Recent Blog Posts and Featured Deal sections to the top of the page. This gives visitors a quicker look at those items that change most often. I’ve also laid them out side-by-side for a three-column look. This keeps them both at the top and makes them a bit easier to browse.
Below that you will find a new home page feature, the Featured Video. I often view videos on small business topics from a variety of sources. I’ve decided to start sharing the most informative ones with GARA’s visitors. Sometimes videos will be news items from major outlets like MSNBC. Others may seem a bit dated, but I’ve chose them for the excellent information contain. You can expect the Featured Video to be updated at least a few times week.
The “signin” bar to the top of the page. This is more consistent with other popular site’s that I feel have the best layout. It keeps the login links handy but out of the way of the content.
To help improve your ability to find relevant content, I’ve added an abbreviated site map to the footer of every page. The search feature has been improved to make switching between search domains (i.e. GARA.com, Free Software Catalog, etc.) much easier. The Blog search results and archive pages have been modified to provide excerpts of results instead of the full text. This should make finding the post you want much easier as well.
In the coming weeks I will continue to improve the Current Deals page both in design and function. I also have some plans on improving the main menu in each page header. Stay tuned and come back often!! Watch GARA.com evolve.
I am very interested in feedback about the new site design features and open to suggestions as well. Please post your comments and let me know what you think.
Happy Halloween!!
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October 30th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Great update that really eliminates the multiple clicks and gives us more information in one page!
The new video feature is outstanding as well and the video you have up there right now talks about many of the things that Gara.com blog has been telling us for the past 6-months…nice to know you are keeping us informed with all the latest information for small businesses because we don’t always have the time to keep our fingers on the pulse of the technology world.
Keep up the great updates!
October 30th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Thanks, Bob. The video is actually bit dated - from 2007 - but the advice given is as good as ever.