Made some major changes to my blog in response to today’s challenge ‘audit your blog’. From my ‘Day One’ assignment I realized that I wanted my blog to emphasize ‘travel adventure’ and look more magazine-like.

The short story: I added a Showcase page and new header to my blog.

The long story: My blog as it looked before I started messing with it:

I originally choose the theme Oxygen for its ‘Showcase’ home page but then I couldn’t get it to work. Today I spent several hours trying to figure it out and eventually succeeded. But not before I tried out another completely different theme: Twenty Fourteen (below). I’m not sure I like this theme; each post is run in its entirety, meaning one can’t quickly scan for posts that one likes.

However, I really like the mobile view of Twenty Fourteen. It’s more like what I wanted:

So now I’m back to the Oxygen theme and have my Showcase page working. I also changed my header to emphasize travel. But this particular header, with a white background, floats uncomfortably on the page, and overall I find my new home page too busy. I also need to shorten many of my post titles to reduce the clutter.

Here’s the final version but I still find it too messy. What do you think?

And what about my header changes?

original albatz header

al&batz adventures header on a white background; it sort of floats uncomfortably in this theme

this albatz header is all one colour in an attempt to simplify the look, and I’ve changed ‘Adventures’ to ‘Travel Adventures’ in an attempt to make the header more legible. I also like that I can easily change the background colour to match my ‘features’ on my home page.

another potential header…

For more on this assignment: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/201-branding-two/