A new look for Domestic Imperfection

So…notice anything different?! That’s right, Domestic Imperfection has a whole new look! Isn’t it so pretty and calm? I love it.

I’ve been working behind the scenes for the last two months or so to get the new site up and running. I’ve had the old design for over four years now and it was definitely time for a change. Technology progresses so quickly and my website wasn’t only outdated visually, it was also a mess on the backend. The new site is up to date and mobile responsive, which means that whether you are reading on your phone, tablet, or desktop, it should format itself for the best user experience. The desktop version is my favorite though, particularly the home page. (Oh, and if you are an email subscriber you will have to click over to see the changes, obviously nothing looks different for you.)

The design was done by Amanda of Alpine Lane, she did a fantastic job and was so great to work with. Not only did I end up with a website that I love, but the process was smooth and painless. She was super intuitive about what I was trying to achieve with the redesign and so patient with my ongoing lists of tiny little (and not so tiny) changes. I would definitely recommend her to anyone looking for a website designer!

To start the redesign I sent her a terrible sketch of what I wanted along with my house colors, and she got back to me with a few different options…

blog sketch

 

blog design option one

blog design option two

blog design option three

 

Then I had her combine the elements that I liked and ended up with the design you see now!

new blog design

 

Navigation has also been improved and it is much easier to find things on the blog. When I went and took a look at my blog analytics I saw that about 75% of my traffic comes from people who have never been here before, so I wanted to make it easier for them to find the meat of the blog (I also discovered that 25% of my readers are men…who knew?!). I also redid all my categories and am still going through and cleaning up old posts and pages, a slow but worthwhile process.

So go ahead and check it out, and if you see anything that doesn’t work correctly, error pages, or things that are just off please let me know so I can fix them!

I also wanted to give a public shout out to all the people that help me keep this blog up and running.

First is Bobby, owner of my hosting company. I have used Precisely Managed ever since I moved to a self-hosted website, and Bobby is truly one of the good ones. He is so helpful, quick to respond, has great prices, and really goes above and beyond. His company is smaller (but growing!) and if you need hosting you should most definitely look into Precisely Managed.

Next up is Adthrive, the company that manages my ads. Adthrive was started back in 2012 by my blogger friends Kelly and Andy (y’all remember View Along the Way?!). They took the fact that Kelly was frustrated with her ads and were able to transform that frustration into a huge thriving business. It’s truly amazing how far they’ve come and I’m super proud of them.

I know that nobody likes ads on blogs (myself included) but they are a necessary evil. I used to spend many many hours managing my ads each month, perfecting the ad waterfall and a bunch of other techy stuff that I hated (there is so much more to ads than just throwing them up on your blog!). Adthrive makes advertising completely hands off for me and gets a much better rate than I was ever able to accomplish on my own. They also ensure that the ads are family friendly and they don’t charge you for their services. Seriously, not a single penny. If you are a blogger with over 100,000 pageviews a month then you need to apply ASAP.

I feel like I just made an Oscar acceptance speech with those thank yous, but I honestly couldn’t run this blog without their help.

That’s pretty much it…I just wanted to introduce the new site so that it wasn’t super awkward that I never mentioned it :) Just for fun though, let’s take a quick trip down memory lane…

Here is my very first header, made by yours truly back in 2011.

first blog header

It’s terrible and very amateur, but at the time I remember being so proud that I figured out how to place text on an image.

My next design was when I was still on blogger, and I paid someone to do it for me. I don’t have a screenshot of that one, but I do still have the blog button on my hard drive. Anyone remember when blog buttons were a thing? Ahh, the good ‘ol days…

second blog header

Then in 2012 I moved from blogger to WordPress and the website looked like this for about a year –

third blog design

That one was mostly designed by me…slowly but surely I’m getting better at this.

In 2013 I hired out another blog redesign, and this is what it looked like for the last four years –

fourth blog design

 

And that brings us to now! Curious to see who remembers those old designs…I feel like I should give a prize to the reader that has put up with me the longest. Tell you what, as a reward I’ll send you my kids for the rest of the summer and you can ship them back when school starts, haha. What a great prize right?! There can be up to four winners.

Seriously though, thank you all so much for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you so much!

 

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21 Comments

  1. Your site is freakin gorgeous! I love how simple it is, but still easy to find everything. Props to you and Amanda for the beautiful result! (And thank you so much for the AdThrive love! Seriously, so appreciated.) <3

    1. Thanks girl! I’m so excited that y’all picked Austin for the AdThrive conference, I will definitively see you there! I’m going to try and bring that husband of mine too (depending on how childcare works out).

  2. Ashley, not sure how long I’ve been a follower, but you have inspired me in more ways than one to be more hands on when it comes to doing things in my own home. Hubby gets a bit put off cuz I do it when he thinks he should, but I just tell him “you know I love doing this kind of stuff so don’t sweat it!” and then he just leaves me alone to do my thing. :)
    One thing I do want to say is love the Green dress (I know it’s your fav color, mine too!) ! I live in Western New York state, near Lake Erie. If you wanna send the kids, I have a camper set up where we can have a great time for the rest of the summer. :) Seriously, enjoy them while they are small….. they become a bigger nuisance as they get older….no matter how much you love them. I have 4 children, the oldest is 41 and the youngest will be 34 this October. It’s a fun ride. :)
    Keep up the good work, love seeing all the changes to the new house and when I get my macrame done, I’ll send you a pic. I totally missed the deadline for your blog.

    1. Thank you Noreen, you have been a faithful reader for a long time…thanks for sticking around :) I’m doing my best to soak of my kids and all their sweet littleness this summer, but 15 hours a day with someone (much less four needy people) for months on end enough to make you a little crazy.

      Looking forward to that macrame, and thank you about the dress! It’s cute AND feels like pajamas….the perfect combo.

    1. The dress is from LuLaRoe, it’s of those MLM companies that people buy from like Tupperware and Avon. It’s called the Amelia dress and is $65 from a LuLaRoe consultant…but I bought mine on ebay for $30 new. It’s crazy comfortable.

  3. Have followed your blog and site for some time – and love the new look You may have caught it but when viewing your post on an Apple in my Mail app. The text is formatted so I need to scroll to the right, same with some of the pics. Just thought you would want feedback so they can make correction. I love your blog because it is the only one I have found to give a realistic view of how the creative process works in home design/decorating. Thanks!

    1. I’ve had a few readers email me about the text in their email, I’m working on fixing that issue before the next post goes out. I have no idea how to fix it, but fix it I will! Thank you for making sure I knew about it, and thank you about the blog!

  4. I never comment, but I have been following you for around 5 years. I stumbled on your site when I painted my first piece of furniture and was looking for tutorials online. I found you, and the Dirty Cowboy (Lol, that sounds a little suspicious) and I have been a reader ever since. I have a little fixer upper just outside Chicago and have used a lot more ideas from your blog since that first coffee table; planking walls, painting cabinets, open shelves, stencils, and whenever anyone has asked about my coffee table my husband (also an Adam) loves to tell them I gave it “the old dirty cowboy”. Lol. Anyway… the blog looks great! It looks super pretty on my iPad. Thanks for continuing to share your ideas, and a little window into your sweet family’s life.

    1. That’s funny that you mention the Dirty Cowboy, one of the items on my to-do list for this weekend is to make a tutorial video of the process to add to that post. My husband loves it too, every time we do a piece of furniture and I’m brainstorming what to do with he’s like “just give it the dirty cowboy!” Not sure if he likes how it looks or just likes saying it, haha. I love love love that you have done all those projects, I never know if people are actually using my tutorials or just like reading about the process. Thank you about the new blog and for reading for so long!

  5. I love the new look, always enjoy your writing/ideas and look frequently for new posts!
    May you be blessed as you continue to invest in your family and home as you do.

  6. I haven’t been following the blog for long but I have read the whole thing (I literally started at the first post and just clicked next…yay breastfeeding “freetime”) . Just made it to the present post and now I need to get off my butt and do with two kids what you can do with four. Also yay Texas glad to have a blog to follow with the orange peel texture walls!

    1. Dang girl, you read every post?! I love it….sorry about all the crappy ones, lol. I literally just finished putting up some fabric wallpaper in my boy’s room today and it looks great…except for all those orange peel bumps. Oh well!

  7. I like the new look of the site, and I get that you’re excited about not having to spend time managing your adds, but I for one do not like the add service you’re using.

    I run Chrome OS, on a 13″ Chromebook, and I HATE sites with adds of the at-the-bottom-banner-type.
    I don’t have a ton of screen real-estate, and I’m not willing to give up an inch or more of it, to get annoying banner adds which I manually have to close by clicking on them.

    On top of that, I’ve found that there are several blogs (yours being one of them, so maybe all these blogs are using the same add service, I dunno) where that banner add specifically totally bogs download speeds for me. Sometimes it will cause it to take several seconds for a page to load, other times the page won’t load at all, and I have to manually refresh it (sometimes several times before it’ll load properly).

    Several months ago (not due to your blog, but annoyance with this banner on blogs in general) I looked for a solution, and installed Ghostery.
    I regret doing it, because I LIKE supporting the blogs I read, and I don’t mind adds on the sidebar, or mid-post. But this banner add is making life impossible for me.

    Now I take the stand of whitelisting (allowing adds and trackers) on every site which displays properly for me, and blocking ALL adds and trackers on sites which give me trouble.
    Yes, I could go through and figure out which trackers and adds you’re using which are actually the issue, and only block those… but seeing that I’d have to do that for every site, and you are running somewhere around 80!!!!! trackers (+/-70 of which are specifically adds, and add trackers) it’s really unrealistic for me to do that. The number of possible configurations to test out would run in the billions.
    Seriously, considering that you’re basically putting 80!!!!! different trackers to work on my hardware, just for loading your page, it’s no wonder you end up bogging my system down. I’m not on old hardware, or slow internet either (just dealing with the limitations of the Chrome OS) but I bet that some of the people on older hardware, and slower internet, are having the same issues, and have likewise either blocked the trackers, or have given up on reading your site.

    So instead all your trackers are blocked. :-(
    And all your adds are blocked. :-(

    Too bad, because I’d love to have a way to support you, as I like your work.
    But at this point, I have to choose between not reading your blog at all (because it’s unloadable and aggravating most of the time) or reading it, and having the only way I support it be the occasional affiliate link I click.

    Seeing that I have no way of complaining to your add provider, I do hope you pass my comments along.

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