Stuff is happening. And I'd love your input!
Several weeks ago I invited you into my mess.Rather than unveiling a beautiful site, we're doing this renovation, right out there in front of everyone.
Kind of messy, insulation falling down. Not really comfortable, but that's okay. But, stuff is happening. And I'd love your input!
So far, here's what we've done.
1. Switched from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress site.
This gives me more control, flexibility, and it means I own my content. For more on this, check out this post by Michael Hyatt. Although Michael has a great tutorial, "How to Launch a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog in 20 Minutes or Less," I hired someone to help me with this process. And it definitely took longer than 20 minutes.
2. Adjusted the color theme.
The original palette for the Get Noticed theme was navy, red, and gray. Here's the palette I'm switching to.
(Photo at Adobe Kuler)
Sorry the picture is kind of fuzzy, but you get the idea.
In researching website design and color, I stumbled into Design Your Own Lovely Blog, and downloaded the free e-book, 3 Ways To Rock Your Blog Design. In this ebook, Marianne has a great section on color with lots of links. I recommend it!
So, the basic three colors will be the darker teal, the lighter teal, and the orange-red color. The orange-red will be primarily for accent. The text and all will stay black and dark gray. I'd love to know what you think about this palette.
3. Added a subscribe button.
This is a bit of a glitch. At this point, I've lost all of my subscriptions from the old site. Ugh.
So, before you read any further, please go click on the subscribe button and leave your email address and first name, even if you've subscribed before. Thank you very much!
When you subscribe, every time I post, it will be sent directly to your inbox. I will never, ever, ever give your name and email address to anyone else.
4. Put my picture in the sidebar.
As I've shared, technology is not my thing. But I'm kind of proud of this. I used a text widget and pasted in the HTML code of my profile picture, and voila! Google is a magical thing.
5. Focused my purpose.
I'm narrowing my focus to helping women make lasting impact. I believe that we are empowered to impact our world when our identity is rooted in Christ and we cultivate intimacy with Christ.
So, you'll continue to see themes of identity and intimacy, but with the purpose of encouraging women to make lasting impact in their marriage, mothering, ministry, and marketplace.
Helping women make lasting impact. How does this hit you? What does it communicate? Let me know.
So, what's coming?
1. Designing the header
I'm envisioning a geometric header with a sort of a tag in the middle including my name and the tagline. Something like this.
(Photo by Tody Design)
But this is probably just a stop-gap until I can get some more pictures taken and do something like what my talented friend, Amy Carroll has done.
But, I just don't know. I want to convey the idea of impact. I thought about building in an image something like this.
But, it feels pretty sterile. I want the banner to say, "Welcome!" But, I don't want it too cutesy. I would love, love, love your thoughts!
Oh, and I don't have the skills to do this. But, my daughter, Adelyn does. So she's helping me out with this.
2. Updating content
Over the next few weeks, I'll be updating all the pages. Here's how you can help out with this. Let me know what you'd like to know about me, about our family, about my speaking ...
3. Developing a newsletter
Some time in the fall, I will launch a monthly newsletter for subscribers. It will have content that you can't find on the blog and provide another means for us to communicate. But you have to subscribe. So go subscribe right now ... please. And thank you you very much.
So, stuff is happening. And I'd love your input! Please let me know what you think, what you'd like to see, what you love so far. And even what you don't love so much. Can't wait to hear from you!