Welcome to the New Macheesmo!
Over the last few months, I’ve been working with a wonderful designer, Lindsay, from Purr Design to come up with a new layout for Macheesmo and it’s finally launched!
I must say that there’s something to be said for working with an expert. Rather than trying to piece together random bits of knowledge and hundreds of Google searches like I did when I last redesigned the site, this time around it was a lot easier.
My goal for the redesign was to just clean up the layout and make it easier to read and interact with the content. Hopefully you’ll all agree that it’s an improvement!
The Highlights
There’s a few really cool featured on the new site some of which will take me a few weeks to get fully up and running.
1) Archives! The recipes pages (check out the Appetizers page for example) on the new site are awesome. There’s a nifty recipes dropdown that should make it a lot easier to find recipes based on category. The pages themselves are really slick and formatted with thumbnails of each recipe. Some of the thumbnails might not show yet, but they will over time as I go through and format the old posts for the new template.
2) Ingredients! The new ingredients page is exactly what I always wanted in an ingredients page! I’ve tried to do a good job over the years at categorizing ingredients in recipes as I write them and that makes this slick page possible.
3) Shop! I’ve had a vision for a shop page on Macheesmo for awhile now and so I finally took the time to make one with this new design. The page only has stuff on it that I’ve used. If you ever buy something off of the page, then you help support the site also because I make a small percentage from each sale.
4) Printing! The recipes with the new format are finally formatted nicely. Check out the pumpkin muffins from the weekend for an example on how the recipes will look moving forward. Also, the printed version is cleaned up and shows just ingredients and directions and not the full post. (This was true on the old site also, but I think this version is even cleaner.)
The Lowlights
Any time you make a change to a website, there’s always a few snags. I made the decision to move away from some of the old styling I was using on posts which, I think, in the long run will make the site a lot better as a resource.
In the short run it means I have to go back and reformat all the old posts!
As you might guess, this doesn’t thrill me, but it needed to happen and I’ve been putting it off for months. While I’m doing this incredibly tedious process, I’m sure I’ll be cursing the fact that I’ve posted six times a week for three years. But assuming I don’t jump off a cliff before I finish with the formatting, I think it’ll be worth it.
Feedback!
Of course, I’d love any feedback (positive or negative) that you have on the new design. We worked hard on it and I want to make sure it’s humming along nicely. If you notice broken crap or just stuff that looks wonky, I’d love it if you shot me a line or left a comment!
Suzanne - "I made this for lunch, and it was delicious. I used what ingredients I..."
Chris - "Time to make some sausage!..."
Amy - "You are awesome. I've always been too afraid to fry anything because I..."
Rob - "Thank you so much for sharing you experience! I almost had this same p..."
Lindsey C. - "amazon. yes. I love to filter and sort them if I know nothing about th..."
Hey Nick- You guys did a fantastic job! The site looks so freaking good! I love the archive pictures, the recipes and the shop! It was so smart of you to foresee future improvements and list ingredients, all your planning and hard work has paid off- very professional looking Nick- LOVE IT!
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The new site looks great! Good luck with the reformatting of old posts- you should probably keep a beer or 7 handy handy for that process… just sayin.
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Jul replied: — October 18th, 2011 @ 7:14 am
LOL- good tip!
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Brendan replied: — October 18th, 2011 @ 12:04 pm
ditto
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Love the new layout, Nick! I like how clean it is, though I do wish the text on the side was a bit bigger….guess I’ll just have to press Command+ to zoom in. ;-)
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Julie E. replied: — October 18th, 2011 @ 7:26 am
I too love the new site. I agree that the text on the right side needs to be larger but add… Your adds are more prominently placed (read larger) and this bums me out.
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Nick replied: — October 18th, 2011 @ 7:35 am
That’s funny. There’s actually less ads on this layout. They might be popping a bit more just because of the white background, but they are the same size as on the old template and I actually removed one ad block.
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Nick replied: — October 18th, 2011 @ 7:34 am
Thanks for the feedback on font size. I’ll play around with it… might be able to bump it up a bit.
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ps replied: — October 18th, 2011 @ 9:10 am
This is my only complaint, too. My eyes aren’t what they used to be ;). I like the new design! It’s easier to find the recipes.
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Great new design, Nick!
I’m wondering about the proportion of the screen from left to right that is for your text, and I’m wondering if @CGCouture is wondering the same thing. What I noticed is that when you scroll down the page, the blue band on the right and the white space beyond it seem to take up a lot of space. This makes your amazing photographs seem smaller. It also makes the text space smaller left to right – even though the font itself is not too small, in my opinion.
Happy reformatting – where there’s a beer, there’s a way!
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Nick replied: — October 18th, 2011 @ 7:48 am
Huh. I might play with it a bit. It’s an optical illusion though. The main content section is the same width as before. The only difference is that there used to be a sidebar on the left and right, but now there’s just one on the right. The total widths though are the same.
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Heather replied: — October 18th, 2011 @ 10:09 am
I agree that it feels like the actual content itself is smaller and that the right bar is larger (and the top add seems MUCH more distracting). I do like how clean everything looks though! :D
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Lovely redesign, Nick. All designs take a bit of tweaking, so my advice is to live with it for a few days, then take a look at the whole, and fine-tune. Sometimes things grow on you — at least that’s what happens to me.
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Nick replied: — October 18th, 2011 @ 10:11 am
Good advice Lydia. That’s what I’m going to do. :)
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Site looks great to me. Keep the recipes coming!
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Oh everything looks so clean and modern. :)
I didn’t know you were working with Lindsay. She is designing my site as well. Well, we won’t start until January, but I’ve already reserved my spot.
I love your site.
Wendy
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Nick replied: — October 18th, 2011 @ 1:01 pm
Yep yep. She’s awesome to work with. Good luck with your site!
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Nice design, Nick. It makes search easier and I’m especially fond of the featured content at the top of the page. Two things, the color of the social icons (right hand nav, excellent placement) makes them blend a little too well. And, I’m on those pumpkin muffins tonight. Breakfast!
Ally
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I love the new look! It’s very clean and streamlined now, which is my favorite look for a food blog. Let’s all the focus be on the food :)
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I love that you can search recipes by ingredient!!!!
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I agree with Rosie -Easy to find my favorite recipe (Brussel Sprouts in Red Wine Reduciton) now – perhaps I will one day actually print it out.
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I like the new site and also really appreciate that the posts can be formatted to print, that’s great!
It looks like the sidebar ads are covering up some of the text, however. Right now it’s a Subzero ad that is covering up some of the text on your “My Most Recent Articles” text. It looks like all of those ads and text should only be on the blue area but have overlapped a little onto the white. Maybe it’s just my screen?
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Great site. I feel for you with the reformatting I have to do some of that, plus put in all the images and I lost my comments. But, moving forward. I thought I would be done in 30 days, but it’s a slow process. I’m sure you’re thinking like me, “if only I knew then…”
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Nick replied: — October 18th, 2011 @ 6:52 pm
Yea… I’m trying to be realistic. It’s my goal to have all the old recipes done in two months. I’m trying to not lose my mind while doing it.
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No next post button? or am I just blind :)
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Nick replied: — October 18th, 2011 @ 10:08 pm
Ha… Yea. I took those off to keep the design a bit cleaner. Thanks for the feedback though. I didn’t realize people actually used those. I’ll think about adding them back. :)
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Anita replied: — October 22nd, 2011 @ 9:24 pm
thank you,
I also can’t log in from my facebook… did you get rid of that too? :)
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Nick replied: — October 22nd, 2011 @ 10:17 pm
Yep! Sorry about that. :)
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I love the redesign! I think it looks a lot cleaner and the drop-down under “Recipes” is amazing. :) And the ads don’t seem bigger to me at all.
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Beautiful new design! I love it. Looks clean and professional.
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Loving the new look and the new functionalities! Way to go, Nick!
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Looks Great! The recipe dropdown menu is not working well. You can’t see all the subcatagories.
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Holy ingredients page, Batman! Best ingredients page I’ve ever seen! The new Macheesmo looks fantastic.
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I like it, especially the searchable features of your recipe page. My recipe page is a weakness of my blog.
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I miss the ‘next post’ and ‘last post’ too. Often reading on my phone or Nook, smaller area to see, and sometimes I am far enough behind that the ‘recent post’ column isn’t long enough. Looks great though, and will have to check it out from my computer soon!
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