Welcome to the new face of 10,000 Birds! Those of you reading this via a feed reader or e-mail are missing a dramatic revision of the layout and look of our modest blog. The most obvious change is the color scheme; nothing says “badasses of birding” quite like charcoal on black. We’ve carried over the dark and light green tones but like the way this dark layout sets off our photos. We hope you will too. Here are some of the other fun features we’ve incorporated:
Dynamic Random Header Images
Long-time readers know that random bird photos, specifically OUR photos, have been part of the 10,000 Birds site design through many iterations. And why not? We’re really proud of our birds as well as what we’ve written about them. Every bird photo in the header will link to a post about it so if you see a cool bird, click through. The variety should be a lot of fun too: with just 100 photos in the mix in each of the three slots, we’ll have a million different looks. That’s only 300 birds… wait until we get closer to 10,000!
Power-packed Front Page
The layout of our last front page was rather ineffectual as it did little to help new readers navigate our tons of content. This new theme presents an array of options front and center. First comes the post tabs displaying the two newest posts in eight different categories. That’s followed by a slick Features gallery showing off the three newest posts deserving, in our opinion, of extra consideration. After that are excerpts of our two newest posts followed by a synopsis of just about everything that we have to offer. Consider this our welcome mat. Come on in!
Focused Post Structure
You may have noticed that we’ve thrown out the fluid layout in favor of a fixed width that, in conjunction with the color scheme, really accentuates the way posts are presented. You’ll find the celebrated ShareThis function after every post and page to facilitate all that e-mailing and social bookmarking you want to do! That’s followed by searchable tags, which would be a lot more useful out of the gate if the newest version of WordPress hadn’t thrown out all our old tags. Not to worry though. While we go back and retag our approximately 1,650 posts, you can benefit from the Related Post recommendations along with the random Blasts from the Past that follow every post. If you can’t lose an entire afternoon clicking through this cornucopia of content, you’re not trying hard enough!
Author Bios
Too many readers have complained that they don’t see enough photos of Corey, Charlie, and me. Despair no longer. Every post now includes an author bio that enables you to search for posts solely by that author. Finally, Charlie and Corey’s fans can avoid my incoherent drivel.
Loaded Sidebar
There are many schools of thought regarding what a sidebar should do; we just want ours to do it all! Whether you’re looking for links to our 10 latest or most popular (someday) posts, our many pages, or our current year lists, you’ll have them at your fingertips no matter where you are in the site along with plenty of other resources.
Phenomenal Foundation
While I did my share of tweaking to get things in order, the lion’s share of the credit must go to Justin Tadlock, creator of the amazing Options theme. Once the team here decided that a magazine style theme would be the best way to present our avalanche of insight and images, I reviewed just about every free and premium theme out there. Justin’s work is head and shoulders above the rest in quality and functionality. The fact that he tirelessly supports users (gratis, I might add) speaks to the pride he must take in his remarkable work. I, for one, am extremely grateful for his efforts.
So here it is. Play around with the new site, explore all the different options, and please, please let us know what you think. I’m sure we’ll be fixing problems for months so be sure to contact me if you spot anything egregious.
Wow, that’s a lot of change… Congrats, it looks neat! I’ll have to do some surfing / playing to find my way around, but surfing the site appears to be easier now.
Looking good!!! What a way to celebrate Tax Day.
Looks great! I love the new layout. The comments are a lot easier to find and read too.
Very nice and easy on the eyes, too. Good job!
Like it! A big improvement over the previous look, which itself wasn’t bad. Nice job, Mike.
The theme looks very good. I especially like the tabbed dynamic navigation at the top of the sidebar. That should make it much easier to find older posts. (Of course, the real test will be if I go looking for something.) It might be helpful to add a tab for tags or categories to the four that are already there.
I generally find it hard to read light text on a dark background, but does not seem to be a problem with this theme.
One problem I noticed on the “About” page is that the title text on the images is longer than what gets displayed by my browser. (This is in XP/Firefox; not sure if this is true for other OS/browser combinations.)
Thanks, guys. Keep those compliments coming!
John, I will add links to categories once I tackle a backend navigation snag. The problem with the img text on the About page is related to Firefox, not this theme. The full text shows in IE, assuming anyone is still using that (speaking of which, I hope the site looks ok on that browser!)
Very nice, It’ll take some time to get used to exploring it I think. But that’s a good thing!
Okay, the img title problem has a solution.
Very snazzy looking! Mike, your love and dedication to this site clearly shows.
Very classy! Love the welcome stuff with all those handy links in one place.
(FWIW, I’m another one of those readers who has a problem with reading light type on dark backgrounds.)
How do I get my picture over there like John and Pete Scholtens? That would be awesome.
Looks great, guys! I always knew you guys were dark at heart! -llm.
Nice find, John.
Liza Lee, you’re clearly an excellent judge of character.
Nate, I meant to mention this in the post. Our comments are Gravatar-enabled. Sign up to get yours.
I think the new look is great! Keep up the great work!
The site looks fantastic – great job!
Wow what a change!! A lot of information to see all at once but it looks cool. Light text on dark is somewhat harder to read (I don’t think I’d want to read an entire book).
Overall, great job.
Nice job – gives it a classier look! Keep up the good work.
Way Cool! You guys are the badasses of the Bird Blogging world. Normally I’m not a big fan of light type on a dark background but this seems to work. Must be the charcoal.
The theme looks great!
I do have one request. I’d like to be able to scroll through the most recent posts. I haven’t seen a traditional “Previous” or “Older Posts” link. It may be there and I just haven’t found it.
I had no idea you all had such sophisticated taste in web design. Very impressive!
Grant, down below the comments are links to the next and previous posts.
Hey Mike, everything looks crisp and organized! (speaking as a librarian!) Great job. I’m just wondering, though, why would you put yellow bars behind white type for one’s email address and website. At first I thought it was blank until I started typing in my email address. Or is this an OS/IE color issue? In other words, am I the only one seeing yellow bars behind white type?
Hi Mary, I had the same problem and we tracked it down to my using the Autofill feature in Mozilla which automatically colours the fields yellow. I suspect you may be doing the same/similar? Would you be kind enough to let us know if this is the case?
Very nice and professional looking site design! The dark, neutral color scheme really does make the colors in your photos pop.
Hey Charlie – thanks! I saw your message and wondered what I should/could do. First I went back to your web site and saw it was still yellow. So I went up to my Google tool bar, clicked on “settings,” and that brought me to Toolbar Options with 3 tabs, the first one called “features.” I clicked on “Autofill settings,” and saw in the lower right corner where it says “Highlight” and the box was checked. So I unchecked it, clicked OK and went back to your web site where now I see white on black/charcoal. So it’s not only an IE “issue,” it happens in Firefox/Mozilla, too. Well, I’m glad I wasn’t the only one seeing yellow. ;o)
Mary – that’s such an instructive and detailed answer we may have to post it (with your permission of course)! Glad things are easier to use now…
T. Beth! Long time, no hear.
I think you hit a home run out of the park with the new colors and layout. Well done.
Peter from It’s About the Journey
Hey, congratulations on the change! (Must be something in the air this week.) I agree that Options looks like the best of the current crop of magazine themes, and it’s great to see it being put to use here.
Sorry to hear about the loss of all your tags. What a bummer.
To be honest, I’m not sure whether i like the dark background. I find it harder to read but maybe it is because I’m not the youngest anymore so my eyes do give a bit. I have seen this theme used with white which was nicer. Have you considered this?
@Lucia: We did consider a light background but decided that the dark background would make our photos “pop” more.