You’ve never seen Life Coaches Blog look so good.
She’s gone through a complete redesign, thanks to the Currents WordPress theme from WooThemes. This is how she used to look:
The previous, third-generation design of Life Coaches Blog.
This is how she looks now:
Life Coaches Blog, redesigned.
Why Revise a Dormant Site?
But you might wonder why I bothered revamping the site, since I’ve shuttered Life Coaches Blog since 2008 and have no intentions to continue posting there.
Over 100,000 Visits in 2011
The main reason is that Life Coaches Blog still gets a good amount of traffic, even though it’s nowhere near when the site was still active. On average, Life Coaches Blog received 11,816 visits per month this past year. Posts like What You Didn’t Know About Bruce Lee’s Kick-Ass Success, 9 Keys to Overcoming Difficult Times and Getting Your Life on Track remain popular.
Besides these three articles, there are over 500 personal development posts still freely available on the site. But the previous design of Life Coaches Blog didn’t showcase the wealth of articles very well, it simply showcased posts in a reverse chronological order.
The new Currents theme changes that, the home page layout shows you more posts at a glance across multiple categories, not just the most recent but also the most popular, recent category posts and highlighted posts. This should help new visitors find interesting posts around the site more easily.
Meet the Team
The second reason is that the previous version of Life Coaches Blog didn’t showcase the site’s team of authors very well. Now there’s a short list of authors on the site’s sidebar, and a brand new Meet the Team page where you can see each author listed. Bet you didn’t know that Life Coaches Blog had a total of 16 authors altogether!
Because it’s Better
The final reason for the change is a simple one: Because Life Coaches Blog is better this way. I’m fastidious about how my work looks, and I want it to be presented in the best way possible. This version of Life Coaches Blog is more modern and presents the material in a better way.
Leaving the Legacy
Still, there’s a limit to how much time I want to spend on revising an old blog. I’m conscious of the fact that I can go back in and tweak things endlessly, so in the interest of spending my time wisely I didn’t change much of the theme beyond its default settings. I’ve also left the written material alone, complete with mistakes and all.
It’s funny, while looking back at some of the posts I wrote I cringe inside. It’s been three years since I’ve closed Life Coaches Blog, six years since I started it, and with the benefit of added experience, I wouldn’t write some of the things I did then.
But I did the best I knew how at the time, and if not for having started Life Coaches Blog I wouldn’t have learned as much about writing and designing on the web as I did. I also wouldn’t have landed my first full-time writing gig, as Life Coaches Blog served as my writing portfolio.
As it is, since it’s seemed to have helped some people in its time and continues to engage the interest of some today, I’m content to leave it as it is, a small legacy of a younger self.