Welcome to the New Look 2 Feet from Freedom

I know it’s been a while. There’s been a lot going on, what with starting a new job and trying to find the perfect theme for the site, but I’m finally ready to launch it. I thought I’d use the first post here to talk about some of the changes that have happened here, what they’ll mean for you lovely readers and where I’m planning to take the site from here.

The New Look

Firstly, the theme. Finding a decent looking WordPress theme that is actually SEO-friendly is surprisingly difficult. For ages, I’ve been trying to find one, but I didn’t necessarily want to compromise aesthetics for Google in the end, I decided to opt for the Genesis Framework with a slighty modified eleven40 Child Theme. I’ve become a bit of a fan of the framework; the guys at Studiopress have done a great job with Genesis and I urge anyone to check it out (affiliate link, but I think it’s worth it). I’d also like to thank the lovely Sally from Engage Creative for her help with the CSS changes – I’m sure you’ll agree, it looks really good. If you’ve got a new browser, you should see some nifty CSS3 elements too.
It’s not quite finished yet, and there’s still plenty to be done, but I’m really liking the way it’s looking.

New Ways to Interact

One thing I really wanted with the redesign was to encourage more interaction. I get quite a bit of traffic, but I don’t get as many comments as I’d like, so I decided to ditch Disqus and switch to Livefyre. I’ve been very impressed with it on other blogs I visit, so I thought I’d give it a go.

There’s also going to be a new mailing list. Don’t worry, I won’t spam you or send you any of the drivel a lot of other blogs do, just notify you when I put a new post live, so if that’s something you’d be interested in, please do sign up. As you’d expect, it’s completely free.

I’ve also gotten rid of the Wibya bar at the bottom. I’m sure there won’t be any tears over that, but there are still plenty of ways for you to share my posts if you feel like it.

New Categories

Time is a bit short these days and I struggle with putting together big, in-depth posts as much as I used to, but I always have plenty of ideas for things to talk about. The ‘Musings’ category is going to be used for that. I can write those pretty quickly, so there should be fresh content pretty regularly while I work on the big posts.

I’m also looking to put together some Q&A type posts, so if you’ve got any questions about SEO, copywriting or social media, please feel free to drop me a line on one of the contact forms. There are going to be a few more of them getting dotted around. Again, no spam.

Guest Posting

I’m interested in having a few guest posts on here from time to time. I’ll be writing up a formal policy for these soon, but in the meantime, if you’re interested, please get in touch.

I think that’s about it. I hope you like the new design, there’ll be a few more changes coming soon, but bear with me – they’ll all be worth it. If you have any suggestions, leave me a comment and let me know.