You may have noticed the new design! Yes, The GG Blog‘s New Design is finally live.

I started this blog in Oct. 2009. I wanted to design a new look for it, especially after my main portfolio website got a redesign this April. Read more and find some detail about this new design!

A New Look

What’s new about this redesign:

• New logo – I’d like to give it a fresh look all the way. so a new branding is necessary. New Logo, new Twitter, new Favicon, new iPhone icon,new default Avatar, etc.
• New Icons – I used iconSweets from Yummygum & function_icon from Wefunction. Also there are my own RSS & Twitter Icons.
• Colorful Heading Background – I assigned an unique color for each category.
• Wider width – Nowadays many sites are built with a 960px width, however a lot computers have screen resolution wider than 1280px. The new design has a min-width of 990px, so there’s more room for content.
• Wider Sidebar – A wider sidebar features popular and latest posts with thumbnails.
• Nested Comment – In the last design, I was using InstantDebate plugin. Now I am using my custom styled comments. Learn more in the Under the Hood section below
• Web Font – I used OFL Sorts Mill Goudy TT font for headings. Learn more in the Under the Hood section below.
• There are a few more small design changes, go find out yourselves.

[Click to view a larger version]

Under The Hood

Here are some technical changes:

• WordPress 3 – Although I’ve always been using WordPress, I am now using the latest WordPress release. Some of the new features that I’m using are: Featured Image, Visual Editor Style, etc.
• HTML5 – Most of my personal projects are coded in HTML5.  I think it’s a great idea to future proof my websites.
• CSS3 -  I love CSS3! In this new design I used Text-shadow, Box-shadow, RGBA, Transition…
• CSS Sprites – I want to make site load faster, so I use CSS Sprites technique when I can.
• Google Font API – Earlier I told you that I am using OFL Sorts Mill Goudy TT for headings. I used Google Font API to accomplish it.
• jQuery & AJAX – I also used jQuery to enhance my blog design. Some of the jQuery plugins I used are: Colorbox, LazyLoad, Validate… There are also some AJAX actions for comments.

This is how I use CSS Sprites.

Some Feedback Please

I wish I could finish this redesign earlier, but I was working on some other projects. I know this design not perfect yet. I will be defiantly keep working on it. In the mean time, my friends, please share some of your thoughts on the New Design. Please let me know what you think of this Design by drop a comment below.

Thank you! I will write more great article in the future!