If you used my RSS Feeds you will not notice that the website looks pretty and new. I was up half the night last night getting it to look and behave correctly, and most of this morning reimplementing the features I previously had on the site.
Firstly you will notice that the main page is much simpler, with things like archives, recent entries, about, blogroll etc. being hidden in a “shelf”. I realise this is either going to be a very big hit or a very big miss, so I am relying on feedback from the readers to tell me if this suits you or not.
Also the color scheme is very different. For the moment I like it, but I also realise it is very plain and I will probably get rid of it. Feedback here is welcome too.
Right now it’s 5:10pm and I am really tired, I’m going to go for a jog to pep myself back up and then I am going to be doing some reading. That’s Mitch, over and out!
That really is the question. I’ve been working on redesign ideas late at night for several weeks now, tossing around ideas and different themes, trying to find one that fits what I want the site to look like, but nothing I seem to do feels right. I usually work between midnight and 4am on nights when I have trouble sleeping and by the time I get close to a design I like I end up disabling it, going to bed and then hating it in the morning.
As of tonight I am beginning to work on some updates to the site. I am pretty confident that the style I am going to stick with is the Hemingway style from Warpspire and the color scheme will probably mirror that of the Ubuntu color scheme. I really love the simplicity of the Hemingay design and I really think the Ubuntu guys have an awesome color palette that I just may steal from.
I will be disabling a lot of the plugins and a lot of functionality will disappear from the site while I work on the updates and reintegrating them, but at the end it will be sexier than ever! So everyone bare with me over the next few days/weeks while I work on getting this site to a new, improved version. It’ll be BonT v2.0 to suit Mitch v2.0!
So I’ve made some minor updates to the site, most of which are purely cosmetic. Firstly I have changed the color scheme slightly to give the pages a little more life - all the colors are now a lot brighter. I also added in a search feature to the right, along with archives to go back into past entries and some other links to make navigating past entries a lot easier.
I think one of the best things about designing websites is choosing the color scheme and adjusting it to perfection. Without a good color scheme the website will give a totally wrong feel and the site will constantly look out of shape. Generally speaking the mood I am usually sets what color I start off with, but the colors I choose to compliment it will always vary. Since my first ever website I have gone through several color schemes, most of which used a black base. Personally I think the color scheme I am on now is the best I have ever used.
Website Redesign, originally uploaded by bananasontoast on flickr.com. Click the image to see what the site looks like if you have a good resolution and/or a widescreen like mine!
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I finally did a small update on my Colophon page and I’ve made some minor updates to the theme - Mushrooms anyone?! Enjoy.
Update: Also added some contact info.
Both bananas on toast and Mitch Malone dot COM have had some minor updates. bananas on toast has new, updated headings that give a little more cleanliness to the design and make the headers make a bit more sense while MMdC has had a new background added which, again, makes the site a little cleaner.
Please return to your toilet, that is all.
Update: I have also made the weblog a little narrower, some feedback would be terrific!
On the right hand side I have added an extra heading called “Must Follow.” It will house a random link of sites that are most important to me. Although only three links currently exist there, it will be a growing list of sites that simply must be visited.
Lik-Wid - The Independant Artist
Surely everyone knows how important these guys are to me. They are an inspiration and some of my best friends, you must go to their site and you definitely need to buy their CD when it launches, it’s not too far now!
The Writing of Ryan K. Lindsay
One of my best friends and a talented writer. More to come about Ryan later, but for now it’s enough if you check it out and buy his book!
Movember - Grow a mo’ for a charity!
Definately a worthy cause, if I had of know earlier I’d definately be entering a team for work!
… well not quite!
bananas on toast and Mitch Malone dot COM have finally been upgraded and are both now powered by Wordpress. I have chosen to use Squible on MmdC and triSexual Standard here on bananas on toast and I am mostly pleased with the results. I had desperately wanted to go with some more color here on the weblog, however as much as I tried I just couldn’t come up with a theme that I liked.
While the designs are mostly complete, I shall be tinkering and reshaping for quite a while until I find a design that I am really happy with. In the meantime, any constructive criticism on both the sites are much appreciated. I hope to have the sites looking 100% over the next week or so, but I am back to work tomorrow so updates may be a little slow.
It’s that time of year again when bananas on toast has a birthday and gets a face lift. To commemorate the 3 year anniversary of the bananasontoast.org domain name and just over 3 years of the weblog the entire site is getting a rather drastic redesign. The site will be down for approximately 48 hours in which MMdC, bananas on toast and all the subsites will be revamped, so it’s a good time to clean out any old bookmarks you may have lying about.
The upgrades are beginning now in the background, but won’t be viewable to the public until around the 12th of October, the sites official birthday. I’ll be working on themes, full redesigns, graphic work, hiring and collabing with other artists and designers and generally working my ass off to make the entire site a seamless piece of perfection.
What do I need from you? Two things:
1. I need to know which layout you think suits the site more and which layout you like more. The choices are the current layout by Michael Heilemann and Chris J Davis, Kubrick 2, Scott Jarkoff’s layout, triSexuality and Squible by Theron Parlin. Decided.
2. I need to know what problems you have with the current site? Is it too slow loading, not easy to navigate, not sequential enough? Tell me what I can fix and any ideas you may have to improve the site.
Bear in mind that I plan on working my ass off so if you could take a few moments to drop a well thought out response, it would be much appreciated. The person with the most helpful comment and feedback will win themselves a gift either from their deviantART, Amazon.com, Thinkgeek or other wishlist, so get giving with the feedback!
Until a few minutes ago, my site was redirecting to this message:
bananas on toast is down for a few hours while it gets taken to the beautician. No, it’s not another redesign, I am just upgrading to Kubrick 2 and the latest Wordpress and tweaking the design a little. Please check back in a couple of hours!
- Mitch
This is because bananas on toast has just upgraded to Kubrick 2! This will make the site a little more seemless and give me greater (and easier) control over content. I’ve also included a new “Asides” subheader on the left, which will serv as a bunch of links to external websites that I don’t really wish to write an entire entry about.
If there are any bugs please comment on this entry, although I’ve worked my hardest to iron out the creases. If anyone has any idea why it’s screwing up in IE (not that I am extremely concerned) please let me know.
Comments and criticism is welcome as I am trying to get the design looking really tidy, so please feel free to comment. A few things from the old design have been taken out, so if you want them back, please let me know.
bananas on toast has been sitting in the back of my mind, nagging at me like a wife. I’ve really wanted to write, but I just haven’t had time, so here I am struggling to stay awake after a really big weekend with a few little things.
The website has finished all the major updates, the new look is complete and any future changes should be rather minor. I’ve included some nice 80 x 15 buttons on the right hand side which I like, advertising my favorite Open Source software, my news feeds, some things I use and my creative commons deed.
On the topic of creative commons, I just finished watching a movie titled “Star Wars: Revelations” which was released under a Creative Commons License. The movie ran for around 40-something minutes and considering it only cost a few hundred MB of download time, it was brilliant. The special effects are awesome, the plot was more than reasonable and the acting wasn’t too bad either. All in all, I think it’s a good show of the talent and selflessness that is out there, go download the movie and see for yourself. Tomorrow I shall be watching Batman: Dead End, so expect another report.
My website has always been very important to me. I registered the domain over a year and a half ago and my weblog has always somewhat defined me as a person. The designs have always been original and made by me, and the site currently hosts a slew of themes ranging from ones I’ve made from my own mind, to themes based on other websites such as $jark’s Yellow Alien dot NET.
I am currently holding a competition over at deviantART to get a new design for the site. With me getting a new job and making certain lifestyle changes, one of those changes is cutting back the weblog to a more manageable site and making MMdC responsible for a lot of the extras that were found here.
Tonight, while I had the cash and can afford it at the moment, I indulged myself in completing a project I have long wanted to do. I’ve always wanted to be the owner my name dot com, and now I am. My latest creation, Mitch Malone dot COM is basically an “about” site and launchpad. This will be from now on the page I will be linking to when people ask me about my website, because basically from this they can find my weblog, my art, buy my prints (and as you can see if you’ve had a look) find any links that regard me.
The actual site design itself is in it’s infancy as I have big plans for the graphical enhancement. Rather than my standard XHTML/CSS only websites, I decided to really branch out into some kind graphics intense sex-bomb of a website. Be sure to keep an eye on the site and update any “Mitch” links to this site please. I can’t wait until it starts getting some hits and I really can’t wait until the design has matured a little more.
Alright, for all you crazy kids who listen to my ramblings and post comments, in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “Here comes fun!” For those of you who do not know, one of the trendiest things to come out for us webloggers in recent times is Gravatar (Globally recongnized avatar).
Everyone has been to at least one forum in their life and seen users with avatars. And for those fortunate enough to become a part of such a community, you probably even had an avatar of your own. And for those who have not, well you still probably have the next best thing sitting on the right hand side of your MSN Messenger.
Sorry, I got on a little tangent there. Now, the point of Gravatar is to give you one avatar that you can use on any Gravatar-enabled website. For example if you create a Gravatar account and then upload your image, from now on when you comment here your graphic will be shown next to your comment. Or cooler still, if you go over to another site like Binary Bonzai, the same graphic will show up there too!
To quote the Gravatar website:
A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?
So, if you are a regular commenter, why not create an account and upload your avatar? Hell, if you want I will even help you create your own 80 by 80 and even help you with uploading it! So get cracking!
Wow, I just logged into movabletype and saw this:
bananas on toast
So geek it hurts!
Total Posts: 300
Total Comments: 362
And just for good measure, last months log stats:
Unique visitors: 2331
Number of visits: 10526 (average of 4.5 per user)
Visits to main: 5083
Unfortunately I must be writing the wrong things, because this is my top search responses, in order.
- cross dress
- bon scott
- stardate calculator
- bon scott s grave
- bananas on toast w00t
- new years eve photos
- photos of christmas
- bananas on toast
- cross-dress
- lpjz track listing
I am quite proud of those, apart from 1 and 9. Hahahaha.
