Blog Makeover: Fitting It All In

Hey there! I hope you had a delightful weekend.

I may have overdone my weekend a tad bit at a chili cook-off and am still recovering…

At least me and Mr. Dave won.

Anyways…

I have another blog makeover story to share with you today!

I had the opportunity to help out Clare from Fitting It All In refresh her blog look.

It was honestly kind of an honor that she responded to my shout-out that I was doing discounted blog design work in exchange for reviews. I’ve followed Clare’s blog for a few years now and even jump in on her Friday Five link-up every once in awhile.

I have always admired her ability to blog about touchy subjects in the healthy living world and deal with criticism like a boss. She has the most interesting followers (based on the comments section) who are either head over heels for her and those who basically pick apart her every word. That would drive me bonkers, but she definitely takes it in stride.

Blog Makeover: Fitting It All In

Clare hadn’t had any design work done for 3 years, so it was high time for a refresh.

Details to take into account:

1. Clare wanted a clean, simple layout.

2. She was tired of her current header.

3. She likes greens and teals. (this also makes sense to do greens for a healthy living blog)

4. She wanted readers to be able to see more of her posts on the home screen instead of scrolling down through each post.

After about 20 designs, we landed on a round graphic where the words were kind of “fitting in” and mixing cursive and sans serif fonts. The green in the header was similar to the green on her blog previously, but with a touch more blue. Someone on Instagram described it as “retro” and I can definitely see that!

Clare has been blogging for about 5 years (as long as me), so I was honestly a little unsure of how much she knew about the behind-the-scenes stuff.

Like I was kind of worried that she would know just as much as me and my services would be invalid.

Nope. It turns out that when you focus more on the actual posts…you don’t learn as much about the nerdy back-end blogging stuff. (Yay me for spending all of those hours messing with blog stuff when I should have been writing or promoting posts!)

The Simply Pro Theme

For Clare’s blog, I decided to go with Studio Press’s new theme Simply Pro. It’s super clean, sleek and is a very minimal theme which seemed perfect!

The thing is, that it was very minimal so Clare and her readers weren’t used to the format. I think I will do a full review of the Simply Pro Theme later, but it is essentially missing some of the details that most of us seasoned bloggers take for granted.

For instance, the header area was itty bitty. I ended up pulling out the blog name text and sticking it in the tiny header area and then putting her logo in the footer of her blog. She can still use the logo for business cards and other things, but that was one of the few surprises with the Simply Pro Theme.

After some tweaking and adding some plugins, it was good to go. At one point I also realized why I don’t do much coding…I still have a lot to learn in that area.

Overall, Clare was happy with her blog makeover and that’s all I could ask for. She’s even been using the branding in her blog graphics which makes me super happy.

[Tweet “Check out @fittingitallin’s blog makeover! #iheartblogging”]

She also did a review on her blog, so you should check that out, too.

Check out her full review of my services here.

In other news…

-beta testing

I feel like I’m learning more and more each blog I do (I know, obviously), so I’m really glad I decided to do the whole beta testing thing. I’m going to keep the 50% off around for a little while, but I think after about 5 more bloggers, I’m going to switch to 25% off. Then eventually full priced.

-Facebook page

I finally created a Facebook page, so I’d say this site is now totally officially real. 😉 Of course I would love some new likes if you get a chance!

-Name

I have been playing around with the blog name…AKA I want to change it to something more professional than “Amanda Loves Blogging” and I’ve landed on ALB Designs so far. The thing is…this blog isn’t ONLY about the design part, so I’m a little torn. What are your thoughts?

Hope you have a great week!