Thanks for all your feedback, I’ve tried to implement most of them. There were thoughts and ideas from all sides including readers and my clients, some of them contradicting and some very sensible. I’ve tried to put together a clean, easy to read design, while keeping the basic layout as the old one. There are changes though, on the interface as well as layout. I’ve tried to reduce clutter and have used more space that was un-utilized, at the same time following the trends and industry standards.
Visually, I think it’s a good design now, and functionally, there are a few good changes, like the comments area, which has the avatars now, and is more aligned for a seam less commenting experience. The comments area might show a bit differently on some browsers, as the code is not yet fully bullet proof. The sidebar is more neat now, I’m yet to find something interesting to do with the email subscription form and the widgets are all in place.
I think there are still more loopholes to plug in the code, as I’m testing the design on various browsers now, but I’d appreciate your help in spotting them. If you find something strange, please let me know.
Hope you like the design. Suggestions and ideas appreciated. 
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Hi, I'm Mani Karthik, Pro Blogger & SEO Consultant from India. I blog, I Tweet, help websites with SEO. Loves working from home office. Quit my day job as SEO consultant 4 years ago, to pursue full time blogging and consultation. Living the dream now.
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Looks good now, except that the header is a problem, red and gray do not go together.
It makes reading text in the header a bit more difficult, the rest looks great though and it loads much faster too.
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Hi Mani Karthik, Design Looks nice, I my view the header color(Red), is a big too bright, and also the text is not easily readable over that color,
A color change is what I would suggest, I liked the RSS icon and the sidebar is really simple and good.
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Black letters on red background at header is painful to read. And better the RSS link at the top of sidebar above sponsors. Apart from that… really cool…
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Hmm yea..the header text seems to be difficult to read. Should do something about it.
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My suggestion, move that picture of yours to the header, that was something I liked about the previous theme as well. Apart from that everything great.
For header you can go for a white text.
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Header text color is a problem as others said. The subscribe now button is left aligned in the sidebar. I am also one of the fans who liked the your photo on top.
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Design Looks nice,
if it possible you just change the header menu in to web 2.0 concept and also change the background color.
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Hi Mani,
First of all congrats on your re-design! I would be fair in commenting.. I don’t like the color combination you have chosen… Black + Red!!
Black + Red are mostly used in Porn & Illegal sites…! I understand Coke and Major brands use this color and are successful but we are here discussing a lot about Organic SEO… “Organic” means being natural.. Yellow/Green was always a good choice and would make visitors feel good!
Both UI and Psychologically light colors will attract people! Bright and dark colors too.. But sometimes looks a way out of sight! The dark red you have used looks kind of cheeky to me.. But that’s me.. Someone might like it!
It’s good you got your image down to footer.. You need to have aim.. Brand ‘yourself’ or brand ‘product’. Yourself being ‘Mani Karthik’ and brand being ‘DailySEOBlog’. You have done a good job in optimizing your Brand better and again crediting it to creator at footer (if you know what I mean!).
Logo looks sweet, neat and simple – I like it! Slogan/Tag line is definitely not up to standards.. looks kiddish.. I was expecting much better one though… and again views here are just mine.. you might like it.. so you can go ahead!
DailySEOBlog.com logo should have gone to top left of header and text beneath that should have gone to right. Remember when a visitor/user lands on your page.. the first thing is you welcome with your brand image.. which is currently lacking… well for those reason anyone who visits a site starts from Left… (I assume).. atleast I did that!
Black text you have used to describe the blog is not quiet visible.. looks so dim.. and out of sight and possibly many can skip it..!
All in all.. good attempt to re-design your blog.. but I would only say you have succeeded fairly.. I do love the red-gradient. on header.. but you might want to consider it again mani!
Love the RSS Icon..! I can provide more suggestions if you need.. lemme know.. ping me so I can provide a prototype of my suggestion with present layout.
I would rate 6/10 for the re-designed process of yours! And also wanted to let you know that… SEOmoz have branded their blog as ‘Daily SEO Blog’ if you have noticed? Was surprised to see that when they unveiled their new re-design and launch of LinkScape!
Good Luck Mani! Expecting more from DSB!
Cheers,
Vinay
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Superb.
Red is My Favorite Color.
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Looks good, as everybody said abt the header text already, i would suggest change the color of the text to white.
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well, i love the before theme design but i like this theme color, look good,
*i very like The RSS feed degisn
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Besides the header text, I think the color combination used is too heavy for a site of your type. The earlier green was much better – vibrant and alive. This combination has got a more gory tone to it.. if possible consider revising the color scheme.
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Overall looks good. Congratulations!
I am no designer, no seo expert, and no usability expert. Still throwing a few cents (remember the economy slowdown!), hope it helps.
I don’t like the red color scheme. Black and grey are fine with me, but not the red.
, so had a copy in the notepad!
Marketing text – everyone commented.
I like the logo in white. I am with Vinay : looks better on the left with a lot of whitespace around it. Is that tag line really needed?
Have the Email subscription input box below or above the search box, and have an RSS button also there. Probability for people to sign up for your email service is much better.
You might want to optimize/reduce the number of words in your marketing text. Nobody would read it otherwise. Optimize it for reading and keyword. You can have the marketing text (if you need the text) as a single line below the logo and search/email boxes, but within your red header.
Include a privacy policy (adsense needs it, officially!)
Display categories and tags – if you believe in it.
You may want to change the blockquote image color to fit the new theme color.
Get your Theme XHTML and Stylesheet validated. It’s tough though.
Use some AJAX comments plugin for comments. I forgot to fill in the name and all first and submitted! When I clicked back button nothing was here in the box! I am too smart
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Looking good.
Like other i too fell that, the text color in banner is not perfect.
I saw the footer, its clean.
I think you made a mistake there, you have written “SEO/SMM consultant”. I think it should be “SEO/SEM consultant”.
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Have to agree with the comment about the font in the header on the very dark red background being kind of heard to read. Other than it looks very modern, well done.
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Thanks for the suggestions, I’ve implemented some of them as it got the max “votes”
1) Changed the header text to a more readable format. – Thanks to Keith,Avinash,Pavan,PChere, Vinay,Vino and Sree.
2) Added the fedburner badge to the top. Hope this should take care of feed subscription option not being above the fold.Thanks Sree,Pavan
Thanks Vinay and Sree for those wonderful, insightful review, in fact some of those points gave totally a new perspective, im definitely looking into it.
@Vino – It’s Social Media Management, SEM is so uncool, I’m not into it.
@Saptarshi and Vinay – I may not think about revising the color scheme now, as you will agree that’s quite a lot of work, but yes, the Red color is deliberate. Green, Pastels, Yellow, Off whites are all you’ll see on any corporate SEO/SEM website, and even though it’s cool, I wanted to break out. Im not trying to fit in to the “normal type” or the “oh yellow…that’s a SEO blog” type ! Who knows, may be someone is thinking – “Which is the SEO blog you can think of ? – DSB yes,,that red color..blog with the guys photo..with lot of articles” – And I think I’d be happy at that.
I think all of us will agree on the fact that the design is for the first time guys – ” First timers….5 seconds….Impressed or not ?” is a question to all of us with blogs.
Cos, the ultra cool, savvy, knowledgeable crowd..
- Will track down the RSS feed..
- WIll bookmark it even if there is no button.
- WIll subscribe even if it’s a bad layout.
So first timers v/s loyal readers – was a debate in my head while designing..and I think I’ve struck a good balance.
For the first timers –
1 – Out on your face colors and branding – Good brand recall value.
2 – Good amount of content spread out to convince.
3 – Easy access to “the hooks” – subscriptions, feeds and social network.
For the clever crowd like the bloggers out there –
I think I’ve revealed it all.
1 – Amount of articles spread out to convince you.
2 – Community in comments – The bandwagon effect.
3 – I take you for granted. Im not going to market anything to you, take it if you like it.
Jokes apart – thanks a lot guys ! Enjoyed it.
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Hi Mani, In IE 6 ur blog design broken. Its an older version, i understood. Bur still some peoples are stuck with IE 6.
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Can you still brighten the header text a little? And yes, what happened to the photo?
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Looks good
and one of my favorite color schemes 
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