Maybe (no, really!) you noticed 1stwebdesigner site has got completely new look! I was working for a while to that design, tried many different color schemes, did a lot of testing, talked with my friends about best solutions and finally came out with this version.

I promised new look some time ago actually, but it is really hard to keep up with regular and big posts, a lot of social networking and in meanwhile creating new design. I hope you noticed posts are becoming much more frequent and hopefully article quality is just becoming better and better!

There are also few questions which must be answered here:

Why I am not creating freebies and tutorials frequently?

Honest answer is – such tutorial and freebie creation takes a lot more time then usual list posts, but if I want to try deliver new content daily I need to keep up with not so creative, but more resource type posts.

But don’t worry I am really not planning my site to be one of the bunch similar list article site featuring same things over and over again. You’ll see more tutorials and freebies in next few months I promise!

Why there are more advertisements on site?

Yes, that’s true I’ve added more BuySellAds banners on the site thinking about advertising in non intrusive way. I am starting to be full-time blogger, but to continue I must get something back too. And one more thing – I am hoping to get new sponsors so I can hire and actually pay to guest writers to really cover much more wider field and I’ll get more time then creating new tutorials, working on freebies and actually put more value in blog at all!

As you may know now I only can offer exposure (and it’s pretty good now ~360,000 monthly uniques) , full credits and friendship if you choose to write here, though I really want to pay guest writers, so yes, my plan is to get that money from advertisements.

Actually if you are designer/blogger yourself I will be more than happy to get contacted with you, maybe we can arrange interview or you could write something here in future? Really in our days it’s all about networking and to get known over the blogosphere you must really put some big effort!

Feel free to e-mail me to dainis@1stwebdesigner.com , add to Gtalk to chat directly or tweet me about your purposes, suggestions, I just love to find new friends sharing same niche!

About New Design

In short – with this design I wanted to show people, I am really serious about this blog, previous design was horrible, funny but I didn’t find time to recreate it for a long time more focusing on social networks and actual articles.

I was looking for new theme and found the best fit to be Justin Tadlock’s Hybrid new theme with is fully customizable with really good support for a very low price.

Now this site is getting nice comment reply function, which I really love and will use regularly to reply to your beautiful comments!

I must say sorry, I wasn’t replying everybody, I really appreciate your comments and good words, will try to change that from now on!

And by the way my author comments will be now a lot better observable, they are now light blue, while other user comments are simply gray.

Now on the right top sidebar you have these two buttons, I decided to take of all Stumbleupon, Digg buttons, because they really don’t matter. The most important thing is RSS regular subscribers and Twitter is really good for community.

Now RSS button is a bit bigger and more observable, hopefully it will encourage more people to subscribe to feed and follow on Twitter. I will watch how these buttons work and then add counters too, now I took off them.

Also now you can check Archives page too, to gain access to little bit older articles, I am planning to add more popular stories with little images on footer in future, but I need to still figure out how to do it in good way. Yes, I am still thinking how to create footer area much more usable.

Finally I wanted to mention soon 1stwebdesigner will be 1 year old and I will reveal this year timeline then and soon I will start e-mail newsletter, which will be sent to e-mail subscribers telling what I am doing, planning to do so You really can know what’s happening behind the scenes and hopefully take part of it.

Today I am also celebrating my 21′th birthday and I worked to this design until 3 AM, so I am considering this as present to myself and you all, who enjoys this blog and want to see it growing!!

Please inform me about what you’re enjoying and what seems to be missing in this design! I will really appreciate every opinion and comment!

Cheers!!

I created this page to summarize good web content for designers, web-developers and freelancers – just like me.

Okay, that`s it for now and once again please comment if you notice some mistakes! :)

Good luck!