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If you stumbled upon my humble little corner of the blogosphere this weekend, you likely reached one of about 452 incarnations of my current design. You might have wondered why, or you may have chalked it up to my usual shenanigans (the latter probably being your best bet), and moved along. Luckily, I am still in love with the design that Hazel did for me in terms of heading, colors, etc. But layout, fonts, headings, placements? That’s a whole different issue. So I am here to explain how a person goes about a (moderately unhealthy) design obsession.

Step One: Stare in discontent.

If we’re being honest, this is probably part of some procrastination that was happening long before you decided that your site looked like a fourth grader set it up. You were probably trying to write a post but ended up just looking at the screen or something. But you notice it. At first you’re just kind of bored and apathetic about the look, until it grows into an inappropriate level of hatred. And now, something needs to be done.

tina

Step 2: Assess the Situation

What is the actual problem here? Do you hate the font? The colors? The heading? The whole freaking thing? You need to figure out what needs to be fixed. If it is the whole thing, you’re going to have to prioritize. And come to terms with the fact that you’ll likely be up all night, because how can you sleep when your blog looks like this?

fix

Step 3: Realize you don’t know how to fix it; commence internet searching

Unless you are some kind of coding and/or design wizard (which I assure you, I am not), you’re probably not going to know what to do unless you just want to fix some basics. But since you’re obsessed, you definitely don’t want to just fix basics. I spent about two solid hours searching for something that I am not even sure can be done on my blog. Seriously, no clue! Get a pretty solid case of the sads when you find nothing that makes you happy.Everything-Hurts-and-Im-Dying-Parks-and-Recreation

Step 4: Make some changes!

Play around with stuff until you confuse everyone who visits your site, because it looks different every three minutes. Some examples of stuff to mess with:

  • Number of columns
  • Page width
  • Layout in general
  • Sidebar and widget placement
  • All the fonts
  • All the colors
  • All the image sizes
  • CSS that you know frighteningly little about

Just make sure that you really get in there and mess with enough stuff that there is no going back.

Step 5: Realize that you hate whatever you did

failed

Step 6: Repeat Step 4

Step 7: Make (temporary) peace with it

So, you have to eventually call it a day early morning or you’ll go mad(der). So you find something you can work with, that doesn’t bring shame to your family, and hope it is good enough. You look at it, not entirely happily, but not completely disgusted. That is the point when you consider it a huge win, tell yourself it’s really okay (really!) and collapse into a quasi-coma. ross

And now, a poll! Do you go through this with your blog design? Or am I the only one obsessing over such trivial things?

 

Posted September 17, 2015 by Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight in Discussion, Discussion Challenge / 68 Comments

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68 responses to “Let’s Obsess About Blog Design!

  1. I know how you feel. At first I tried the simple template, but then I searched the free template in the internet but it was so hard to add a widget in there or adjusting something which made me crazy , so I deleted them all and just started again from the very beginning. I’m satisfied with the result but it was months ago,and now that you mention blog design, I want to change mine again.

    • Oh no! I am going to bring you back down the rabbit hole! That was me too, especially when I had Blogger! I must have changed my Blogger template like, 100 times. Then I bought a template from Etsy, which worked well… until I decided to switch to self-hosted WP. Then back to square one 😉

      Incidentally, I really like your design- especially the color, that shade of blue is kind of my favorite of all time!

  2. You know I can relate. Hazel did mine and while I liked it, there was something that was bothering me. In the end, I realized it was all the dark colors. I asked Erica if she could just use the Tweak Me v2 theme and edit everything with colors I wanted and right now, I really really like my design. I love how it is simple with my fave colors. I hope you can figure out what to do 🙂

    • Oooooh yes! You had kind of the biggest struggle EVER with yours. I agree, the lighter colors are so much better! I think that’s why I liked mine, because of the bright colors! I still love all of the stuff Hazel did (and the stuff that I lost when I lost my entire blog template and re-did it myself, but couldn’t recreate some of the coding stuff that was too far out of my grasp. Such sadness) and I *might* have come to peace with the whole thing in general. As soon as I can fix just… one or two things… 😉

  3. This whole post is me to a T. It’s the reason I’m terrified to splurge on a professional design…I’m sure one night in an exhaustion induced stupor I’m going to decide I hate it and CHANGE ALL THE THINGS. That being said, I love your blog design, so you must be doing something right 🙂

  4. When I went self hosted 2 years ago, I spent many months of tweaking my design to get it exactly how I want it. So I’m scared to change it now and to begin the process again! So therefore, I leave it now lol. Wouldn’t mind a change though!

  5. I have just redone my blog again, and I do for some reason always decide to start changing it quite late on at night, so I end up still there in the early hours or the morning, and seem to have just made it worse! Thankfully I still quite like the latest incarnation of my blog, so hopefully I won’t have to go through that again any time soon.

    • Hahah WHY do we always want to do this at night!? WHY!? I don’t get it! Maybe that’s some sign that we should really just go to bed, and think about it in the morning? There should be a late night settings lock for people like us 😉

      Your design is VERY cute, by the way. I love the typewriter, and the blue, and how it just looks so CLEAN! But more than that, I just have to tell you that I LOOOOVE your hair. It is so gorgeous!

    • Well now. Some of us do not have that luxury! Tell Karolina to call me when you’re being an unhelpful non-designer 😉 Seriously though, that is how I am too! NO ONE else would notice some of the nonsense I was worried about, yet I was up all night messing with it anyway!

  6. It’s like you are IN MY HEAD! (get out while you can. we are all mad here)
    Yes to everything you said, except, I feel like I can do a bit of CSS. My problem is that I don’t know what to change to make things better. I think change is usually a good thing. I haven’t had a design for more than 1 year since 2009. (i partially blame this on being a gemini, and also the fact that everything new looks so nice and shiny. i want to be cool and have all the right clothes on my blog).

    • Hahhaha it’s okay, it’s madness over here too 😉 I can do only VERY minor CSS right now. Maybe someday I will get better, I am trying! If I had more time, I know I’d be able to do it. But you are so right- it is FUN for things to be new and shiny! I definitely haven’t gone more than a year with the same design- considering I have had 5 in the past (almost) 2 years!

  7. I actually don’t do huge redesigns often. I normally do them to mark significant times, mainly because I’ve had so many ideas pile up and I want to make it look prettier. But at random times I’ll discover a new CSS snippet or want to move something and I’ll make tiny tweaks to the navbar, or to the h2 font, or something. Still, I’m quite happy with my current design, so I am now at the temporary peace stage.

    I like the new background of ISAM! The header, though, that’s totally fabulous, so keep that. I think the navbar changed too, but I’m not very certain about that … have fun tweaking!

    • Peace must be nice, I’d love to achieve it 😉 And thank you!! It actually ALL changed, because I lost every single bit of layout/format/font/design. I dont know what happened, I think it was a WP update. So everything but the header and the social media buttons were designed from scratch by me. It was a looooong and tedious process, but I think there are actually some things I like MORE now, but a few that I wish I could bring back!

  8. Oh girl, right there with ya! I’m CONSTANTLY tweeking little things with our design. The emails/texts to Becca saying “what do you think about this?” are probably a bit obsessive, and probably also a little annoying. lol! Becca totally humors me though, and goes with the flow. I normally despise change in my life… but with the blog, I feel like I need little changes here and there to freshen things up a bit. Right now, I think your design looks wonderful!! But I can totally understand how you feel… so change away!! I’m sure ours will look a bit different next week too. LOL

    • Hahhaha that is too funny! That has to be harder actually, because you have two people’s tastes to worry about! And oh my goodness- YES- I HATE change in life, but for some reason I MUST change my blog! Kind of like paint color and stuff in my house- if it wasn’t such a PITA, I’d have new wall colors every season! Glad I am not the only one who will have 10 new blog items by next week 😉

  9. I obcess about blog design too! I hope that you find one that you like. I’m still in the process of redesigning mine, trouble is I don’t know what I want. My computer died this spring, so I can’t really do anything until I break down and buy a new one. (Which is why mine is driving me nuts)

    • Ohhh no! That is awful! On the upside, it can give you time to think about what you want? The thing that seems to work best for me is finding one thing I HAVE to have, and then working around that. I seriously hope you get a new computer soon, that has to be SO hard 🙁

  10. OMG you just captured my complete essence from the past week. My whole family is sick with a nasty cold so I started poking around. Suddenly I realized I am not happy with my footer widgets! Does my blog look to fluffy? I need to change the color, borders, size, font, and now 3 days later I’m about to lay someone to scream the shit out of it. I do love my blog but only certain aspects. I think I want to go more like a clean classy but then again I don’t feel like that suits my personality. *begins pulling hair out of scalp one at a a time* help me!!!!!
    ❤️Britt
    *Who will lose half her hair at this rate*

    • Hahhaha dying! This is my thought process too! Because that is how I felt- I wanted it to be clean, but I am just not a “subtle” person, so I wanted BRIGHT and FUN and all that jazz. Sorry that your family is all sick though! I hope everyone feels better!

  11. Great post! I redid my design like two months ago and I’m starting to dislike it again. I wish I was better with designing and coding, but alas, I’m not very good. Nor can I afford to have someone do it for me. I’ve become obsessed and aggravated because of my own inability. Maybe I’ll understand everything a little better soon! I love your design! SO pretty!

    • Aw thanks! You are too sweet 🙂 And I LOVE your design! The colors are awesome, and your header is PERFECT! (I LOVE the coffee ring, that is genius!) But I DO understand that itch to do something new and fresh. There are actually a LOT of good tutorials out there, if you have the time. I wish I did, I’d love to get better at this stuff too 🙂

  12. Yeah, you’re not alone. I try to limit it yo one redesign per year but that always fails! LOL in my case though, I change the blog background, my features headings and duch but I have kept all my fonts the same. ☺️ And yes, google is my best friend when it comes to css.. Hehehe

  13. YES! You just summed up my life right now, Shannon. Hazel did a few minor things for me a while back… when I was just dipping my toes in the water. (I think it was you her recommended her to me so THANK YOU!). But now she’s taking a break from her design shop and I am at a loss. I want to change things! I want to have options! And I don’t know HOW! LOL I keep reading these @#$^! tutorials on how to add Google fonts but then it starts in with CSS and my eyes start to cross and I get the tremors. It’s quite frightening to see. I want to have a better sidebar, I want to have a button, I want, I want… but 99% of want I want is so confusing to me that it might as well be NASA code. Woe is me. And woe is you, too. We are woeful. Sigh…

    • Oh NO! I am so sorry, that is really hard, especially when you were kind of in the middle of something. I feel you with the Google Fonts- those things are a mystery to me. I really wish I’d saved my info from when I had Blogger, I ended up being able to do *some* stuff (not a lot, mind you, but enough to get by!) with tutorials for the menu and sidebar and such. I could totally make you a blog button though, if you had some idea of what you wanted it to look like! I did one for Holly @ The Fox’s Hideaway and Amber @ YA Indulgences, just for the hell of it 😉

  14. Story of my life. When I started blogging I bought a really cheap theme from Etsy, and I taught myself a bit of code to tweak it a little bit. Yeah, I’m proud of what I did by myself, but I would love to pay someone to design something for me. I’ve been trying to figure out how to make my header go across the entire page. I can’t for the life of me figure it out. Every time I look at my blog it drives me nuts XD.

    • First, your design is FABULOUS! Like, so fabulous. The header thing CAN be done, I know I did it when I had Blogger with my Etsy design (yep- we took basically the EXACT same steps!) but it took a ton of searching. Like yours, my header didn’t span the whole page, but there are pretty easy ways to do it, you just might have to try a few codes. Just basically Google the crap out of it, and then it’s trial and error- but I KNOW it CAN be done! It’s so frustrating though, when you just want to do something and it is driving you nuts that you can’t!

  15. I only obsess when I make a change. Worrying that no one will like it or that somehow the change will affect whether someone can post a comment or see the site or something wacky like that. When I moved to WP Self-Hosted and moved my IP, I was freaked out the most. I couldn’t see my site, but other people could.

    I’ve moved from red, to blues/blacks/greys to just grey. I’ve switched up my buttons and header image to be based on photography instead of a vector image/clipart. I did pay for the image I use in my header, but all the other button images I’ve found on Pixabay (free!).

    I usually make my changes on a Sunday afternoon and end up at my computer all day just tweaking and not moving from my chair. I pay for it the next day! My shoulders ache and I’m exhausted.

    • Hahah I do that too- the not moving from the computer part! It’s not fun. But it’s also so easy to get sucked in!

      I would be freaking out if I couldn;t see my site! The few times mine was down, there was this strange thing where US people couldn’t see it, but overseas readers could, and then the opposite! It was frustrating!

      And I think grey is a good choice- you can never go wrong with grey!

  16. I find that I’m a fix it and forget it kind of person. Once we got our design agreed on and were all happy enough with it, we haven’t touched it lol. I’ve done that with my personal “lifestyle” blog too. Agonized over the details at first, and then I haven’t touched it in a year.

  17. I know how you fell. Last week my design went al crazy, basically, the whole design was deleted and my background was all full of exclamation marks and I tried to fix it and is now just dreadful. A friend will make me a new one, but I have to wait and I just cant stand looking at it like that 🙁

    • Oh my goodness! The same thing happened to me a few weeks ago, actually- minus the background thing. The design was just gone and was reverted back to some random, pre-set template. And I had paid for my design and the only thing left was the header and social media buttons! So I had to recreate it from scratch. It’s AWFUL- because like you said, you don’t want it to look like that! I really hope you get it the way you want it to look soon!

  18. My log is hosted by free WordPress, so my nightmares are not like yours, BUT YES! I agree it’s DIFFICULT to feel good about everything on the blog. I just… sigh, I have to be patient, lol.

    • Is free WP limiting? I have heard there aren’t a lot of tweaks you are able to make- like, changing html or CSS or anything. On one hand, it’s easier for sure, but on the other, it might be even more frustrating because of the limits. Although, yours definitely looks different from just the pre-made theme, you can definitely tell you made some great customizations, so maybe it’s not that limiting after all!

  19. I used to be a web designer (until the stupid software I used to make the designs stopped working a little while ago *scowls*), so I am huge on design – especially on WordPress. It’s so hard to make your design absolutely perfect because you’re always coming up with new ideas and seeing areas for improvement. I really love your design though Shannon! ♥

    • Oh NO! 🙁 That is awful that it stopped working! ANd thank you, that means a lot, especially coming from someone who actually know what she’s doing (I just ummm hope for the best!) And it’s true- you always see some new vision, it’s hard! I do hope you can get back to designing soon!

  20. Oh gosh, this happened to me a couple of months ago. I think I changed my layout about 4 times within one month! It’s not like my initial design was bad either. I determined its because I was procrastinating on every other aspect of my blog– the creating and writing content part, mostly. So, in order to feed productive, I gave my blog a bunch of face lifts.

    • WHOA! That is a lot! But I feel you with the changing design instead of actually posting- this is something I am VERY bad about. Like, it’s more fun sometimes to play around with fonts and colors than it is to write an actual review so… that’s what happens 😉

  21. When I look at my blog, all I see are the things I wish I had time to change. But the thing is, in order to do that, I’m going to have to buy my blog. The problem (but not really) is, purchasing my blog is not my current priority in money management. So, I’m so limited to what I can do – I want to learn to code just for the day I can play around with things as much as I please!
    – Krys

    • Ohhh I feel your pain- it’s like, we COULD pour money into our blogs until the end of time. Like, if you were self-hosted, then you could pay for coding and themes and plugins.. basically, it could be limitless. So it is VERY good that you know how far you’re willing to go. I think learning coding for when you can do it is a GREAT idea. I wish I knew it before I’d started all of this, it would have made things MUCH easier!

  22. I think I’m finally happy with mine. I did a major change when I moved to self-hosted 9 months ago, and then a number of more minor ones after that. But now that I finally have my new header, I like the way my blog looks.

    It helps that I don’t stare at it a lot. I got it looking a way I liked, and then I only view my blog after updating a plugin/WordPress to be sure nothing broke. Or right after a post goes live to be sure it looks as intended. Then I close the window and do something else. Less time staring at it, less time to be nit-picky and find something I don’t like! *grins*

    • That is awesome! The feeling of contentment has to be a good one 😀 I like your idea about looking at it less too. I think I end up spending too much time looking at it while responding to comments! And then the page refreshes after I post one, and I see it all again… that is the issue! No more replying 😉 (I kid, I kid!)

  23. This post is so freaking reletable!! Even if people tell me my blog looks good I am never satisfied with it. I’ve made some minimal changes with it weeks ago but I’m still not okay with it. So I’m planning to spend 1-2 weeks of my sembreak next month to fix everything.

  24. I just now saw that you changed your blog a bit; I really like it! Hopefully you’re satisfied now??
    I have months where I don’t think about my blog design at all, and then a day will come where I just want to change the whole thing and do something completely new…. it’s a vicious cycle. Right now I don’t have the money/time to change anything, so I’m just sticking with it!

    • Hahha NOPE. I had to change it all because I lost most of it, and then was able to fix it myself, but definitely not as good as when Hazel had done it. So now I am still looking for… something 😉

      And I know what you mean- money and time are basically my two biggest struggles, so I feel your pain. But yours is SO cute, I can’t even imagine how you could make it better!

  25. Yes! So much yes! I’ve been in a continual state of unhappiness and redesign since I started lol. “Just make sure that you really get in there and mess with enough stuff that there is no going back,” is killing me, haha. Really though, my issue is not so much not being able to figure out the code but not really knowing exactly what is it that I should change to make it better. I’m too conservative with my designs. But yes, the redesigning always happens in the middle of the night. It’s like one of the Murphy’s laws.

    • YES! Always about 5 minutes past the time you should have just gone to bed, it’s like “well, if I just change this ONE font…” and by 7am you’ve got half a new blog design and are sobbing in the fetal position.

      I think I am not conservative, but that’s part of how I mess up ALL the things. SO it’s probably better that you are conservative 😉

  26. I am hopeless when it comes to design and coding myself. I am even utterly useless with HTML! *hides*
    I get what you mean. Before I contacted Hazel to do my blog design a few months ago, I went through some free template designs here and there which I constantly kept changing. At first I had this watercolour theme – which I loved – but for some reason decided to change it and went for a theme which was supposed to feel whimsical, but instead, looked childish:) Thank God, I decided to spend my savings on a design!
    I am happy with my current design now. If I ever make a change, it would probably be the header, which I’d make a little less girly, maybe, but other wise I am totally in love with the rest of my design, especially the colour palette. I love the selection of colours Hazel and I came up with, and I think they work perfectly. So I guess I am in this for a long haul!

    • Your blog is GORGEOUS. I seriously adore your design so much, definitely don’t mess with it. It’s one of my favorites in the whole community- probably because I am a huge fan of the colors too. Some of them are quite similar to the ones Hazel chose for mine, just in a bit of a different distribution, so now it makes even more sense 🙂 I like the header too- to me, it’s perfect for fairy tales, so it works! BUT, you could change some of it and keep the rest, which is apparently the mess I have gotten myself into 😉 In my defense, I didn’t initially want to change it- I lost the entire design except for the header and social media buttons, and had to recreate it all myself. Which… wasn’t great.

  27. This post is literally me and SO TRUE. I’ve changed my blog design so many times and for the first couple of months I’m like “Oh my gosh, I’m so in love, it’s absolutely perfect” and then 6 months down the line like I’m like “Ew no.” and start noticing aaalllll the things that’s wrong with my blog. I really want to get my blog professionally done but I know that I’ll get bored of it fairly quickly and end up wanting it changed so yep >.<, totally get where you're coming from! I love your current blog design though, it's gorgeous! <3

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