If you visit Pop Critics on a regular basis, you’ll notice that we’ve changed our look today. We have an all-new theme, with a few enhancements and changes to hopefully make things run a bit more smoothly around here.
Our traffic continues to grow (thanks to you!) and thus the amount of work our servers have been doing gets larger and larger each month. This forced us to re-think what we’ve been doing in terms of Wordpress plugins and other features, like our story snippets with thumbnails that you usually see on our homepage.
For the past month, we’ve been working on something that will hopefully be quicker, but still look snazzy. Today we reveal it to you guys and are very excited with the new format.
Some of the highlights, just so you don’t get lost in the transition:
New Sidebar Stuff
We have two sidebars to the right, the left and the right. The left has some cool stuff, like features whenever we have something awesome we want to highlight, a link list for quick access to recaps and other topics, a guide to our writers and contact information, links to our favorite websites, archives and some advertising stuff.
The right one has links to all our latest stories and a list of recent comments.
The Frontpage
We got rid of our thumbnails and the excerpts on the frontpage and went with a traditional style of blog posting. It’s easier, allows room for larger images and loads quicker.
Articles
Nothing much has changed with our stories. We still have the quick links at the top of each article to read eitehr the previous or next article. We have related posts at the bottom and the comments section as always.
The Logo
We’ve done a tiny bit of work on the logo, mostly increasing the size and adding a black “splat” in the background. It lies just to the left of the search function, which is used quite a lot on our site.
Hope You Like It!
That’s about it. I’m personally pumped to put the new theme out there. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now, so hopefully it’s all beta-tested and ready to go.
But if anyone has any problems or thoughts on the theme, please let us know! We love feedback.
Did you really use the word “Snazzy”? Impressive! Love the new layout!
Yes I did, and your reaction to words I choose to use isn't anything new to me
oooooooooooooooo the new site is shiny…… me likes shiny!!!! =)
Me like-y.
i love the new logo! very sreamlined…. looks great!
I just want to know how many points Snazzy would get you in Scrabble?
Well, 10 each for the Z's, I think a Y is worth 4? So around 30? Also I'd for sure save it for a triple-word score and net around 90, so that's some awesome right there.
Thanks Julie!
Snazzy!
That new pair of slacks you’re wearing is snazzy. (I’m trying to use as many old-people words as I can in one sentence.)
Thanks Julie!
Those slacks are covering up my black, old man socks
People could see my slacks if I wasn't still in my housecoat.