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If you’ve been active reader of 1stwebdesigner, you may have heard I have been planning big redesign for a long time. I think I’ve spent several months analyzing other similar blogs, thinking about features we need to include and just to understand which ones just don’t work.
I consider new redesign will be complete site relaunch, we’ve got a lot of positive feedback about new redesign already, when we tweeted about it and gave a sneak peek insight in new design, you can still see it on my Deviantart profile (not final version though, we are making small improvements all the time).
Just to let you know few days ago we discussed all details and Daniel from PushingPixels (he wrote few awesome coding articles before some time if you recall) started to work on site to get it live and working! Very excited to see how this whole collaboration will work out, but I am pretty sure you will be impressed as well!
Planned relaunch date will be August 30
Subscribe to our newsletter now to get more info:
– that’s right we will celebrate our 2 years anniversary and completely new look will be one of the biggest gifts from me to you together with a huge list of giveaways, new features and more! We are patient and we think we will get everything ready in 2 months, we want to test everything for your best experience! 
I made a lot of mistakes in previous site designs and actually just modified themes or used frameworks, I think we’ve got 3 different design versions already. Now I understand how important look and design is and I want to give appropriate look to our site to prove we know what we are talking about. No more dark backgrounds and we will keep it simple and really easy to read! New design will be really light – for example, we won’t use tagging at all from now ( at least not visible one, though for inner search and Google we will still use it). Why is that? Simple – people just don’t use tags anymore, much more powerful feature is related, most commented, tweeted posts allowing people to easily filter which are the most important points for them. What do I mean with clean look? – let me show you, I did huge research about minimal objects in webdesign short time ago.
What will change here? We will allow you to see last month most active discussions and most tweeted posts because we believe those both values are the best way how to make estimated value of each post. Why we need it? Simply because we release now ~12 posts per week, ~50 posts per month and it may become hard for usual reader to keep up and read all of these articles. Of course, we are working hard with all the guest authors to maintain high quality, but maybe you are interested just to see which articles have most active discussion – to join in there, or which articles took the most attention on Twitter? We will have handy featured article field at top of page to let you know just that! From now on we will focus just on the most important social media sites to let you evaluate each post a lot easier. If article has been bookmarked 200–300 times, there must be something worthy right?
We are working on completely new categorization because now just it’s impossible to find something, we have 430 articles published where many of them just fall very deep into archives and we wanted to make your browsing through our site much easier. We will have also self descriptive icons for each category for better user experience since we know how powerful visual memorization is. And now to two most important changes in my opinion:
Yes, 1WD will be going premium as well, because we believe we have a lot to teach and offer to you and small compensation for premium content would be just fair. Ok, what we mean with premium membership and what we will offer? Since almost everybody in our audience are related with design, we will provide you with everything you should need:
Before deciding about going premium I bought all the possible premium memberships in design field I could find to investigate how much is it worth? I was myself surprised – looking at that all quality stuff I get there just for paying monthly fee was amazing. I just compared the same things if I would buy them separately in theme shops or icon shops, I am saving money even if I download just one theme! Of course, there is another question – do you need that premium content if you can get so much things free? But that’s why it is premium – you really receive the highest quality in big chunks! People work on premium content so much more and I am planning to do the same – it’s like working with client where you really need to work on giving out the best!
Yes, and finally I wanted to talk about E-mail newsletter at most! We will be starting to write regular insights about what’s happening behind the scenes allowing you to feel like you are inside our team – you will get the chance to know everything before others will! Question – Why I wanted to start newsletter right now? Answer is easy – I just feel we own yet another ordinary design blog and don’t want to allow that! I believe e-mail newsletter is great chance to get in touch with you guys even more, maybe find new friends, collaborations, give you some more exclusive information..but what’s in it for you? Okay, I will make myself clear writing down bullet points to show what I want to include in newsletter:
We are starting our newsletter from today and we welcome you to subscribe to it right now! We promise we will never share your email to third-party people and send you just quality information! If you want to unsubscribe you can do it in any moment, but I hope I will not make you so bored and disappointed! :)
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Dainis Graveris is 23 years old blogger and designer, founder of 1stWebDesigner, now more silently managing everything behind the scenes. He usually hangs out in Twitter tweeting design related links and chatting with people. If you have any questions or feedback that's the best place to start! Cheers!
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 20:53
The new design looks great. Congrats Dainis & All the best.
Monday, June 28th, 2010 00:25
congrats on new design will be waiting for the new design. well this new design will be cool as being mentioned by you in this post and one thing not make all the necessary tutorials in premium membership like tutplus network.
Sunday, June 27th, 2010 02:03
Very Professional design. I love it :)
Saturday, June 26th, 2010 18:29
The redesign looks very good. However, isn’t this a good time to also change your logo? Or at least spice the current one up a bit and make it a bit more professional looking?
Anyways, looking forward to the launch of the new website! ;)
Saturday, June 26th, 2010 20:28
I didn’t mentioned everything in this report..but yes, logo redesign is planned as well..:) Completely new and professional look is what I want to achieve!
Thank you for support :)
Friday, June 25th, 2010 10:54
Amazing..! Congratulations to you and your team. Its a welcome change for 1stwd readership. I will wait for the relaunch.
Friday, June 25th, 2010 11:49
I really hope so and very excited myself to see how readers will react on changes..:)
Thursday, June 24th, 2010 14:47
Excellent Dainis!, the new design looks awesome!!!. also adding some excellent new features. Congrats to you and all the people behinf 1STWD!!!!!
Friday, June 25th, 2010 11:47
yes, joining you – thank you for reading and also for all guest writers..and people working here and proving trust to this site :)
Thursday, June 24th, 2010 13:46
Great news! but sign up sidebar box not appearing well. It appears beside 125*125 ads. I am using firefox latest version with windows7. You can add clear class to fix problem.
Friday, June 25th, 2010 11:43
oh, sorry – didn’t check it in Firefox – next time i will be more careful..:) and thanks for support :)
Thursday, June 24th, 2010 14:14
The new design looks excellent. It looks and feels fresh and I am getting a bit jealous;-).
Good luck with implementing it and I hope you don’t keep to many things behind the premium membership wall, so nonmembers can enjoy the site as well!
Friday, June 25th, 2010 11:46
hehe, don’t be jealous – you will enjoy design soon yourself :)
working now very hard on it yes as well as features..:) On the overall content won’t change, just there will be something more offered for people, who want to know more, get premium stuff and discounts to software they maybe would want to buy anyway. When I bought premium memberships in other sites, definitely seemed worth little prize ..:)
but we’ll see how it will turn out, I think overall improvement you will feel definitely!
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Martin
Thursday, June 24th, 2010 14:14
The new design looks excellent. It looks and feels fresh and I am getting a bit jealous;-).
Good luck with implementing it and I hope you don’t keep to many things behind the premium membership wall, so nonmembers can enjoy the site as well!
Dainis Graveris
Friday, June 25th, 2010 11:46
hehe, don’t be jealous – you will enjoy design soon yourself :)
working now very hard on it yes as well as features..:) On the overall content won’t change, just there will be something more offered for people, who want to know more, get premium stuff and discounts to software they maybe would want to buy anyway. When I bought premium memberships in other sites, definitely seemed worth little prize ..:)
but we’ll see how it will turn out, I think overall improvement you will feel definitely!
naveen
Friday, June 25th, 2010 10:54
Amazing..! Congratulations to you and your team. Its a welcome change for 1stwd readership. I will wait for the relaunch.
Dainis Graveris
Friday, June 25th, 2010 11:49
I really hope so and very excited myself to see how readers will react on changes..:)
Ashely
Thursday, June 24th, 2010 13:46
Great news! but sign up sidebar box not appearing well. It appears beside 125*125 ads. I am using firefox latest version with windows7. You can add clear class to fix problem.
Dainis Graveris
Friday, June 25th, 2010 11:43
oh, sorry – didn’t check it in Firefox – next time i will be more careful..:) and thanks for support :)
Franco
Thursday, June 24th, 2010 14:47
Excellent Dainis!, the new design looks awesome!!!. also adding some excellent new features. Congrats to you and all the people behinf 1STWD!!!!!
Dainis Graveris
Friday, June 25th, 2010 11:47
yes, joining you – thank you for reading and also for all guest writers..and people working here and proving trust to this site :)
Nikunj Tamboli
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 20:53
The new design looks great. Congrats Dainis & All the best.
Vivek Parmar
Monday, June 28th, 2010 00:25
congrats on new design will be waiting for the new design. well this new design will be cool as being mentioned by you in this post and one thing not make all the necessary tutorials in premium membership like tutplus network.
Michael Burns
Sunday, June 27th, 2010 02:03
Very Professional design. I love it :)
yb
Saturday, June 26th, 2010 18:29
The redesign looks very good. However, isn’t this a good time to also change your logo? Or at least spice the current one up a bit and make it a bit more professional looking?
Anyways, looking forward to the launch of the new website! ;)
Dainis Graveris
Saturday, June 26th, 2010 20:28
I didn’t mentioned everything in this report..but yes, logo redesign is planned as well..:) Completely new and professional look is what I want to achieve!
Thank you for support :)