A new design and features for MacYourself’s 1st anniversary

This week marks MacYourself’s first full year on the web and we couldn’t be happier with how well it’s gone so far. Today we’re unveiling a new and improved site to better serve our loyal visitors.

This is a day we’ve been looking forward to for quite some time. It’s been many months in the making (yup, we’re terribly slow) and now is finally the time to let it loose! We are really appreciative of all the people who visit this site on a regular basis and hope you find even more to like now. With that said, MacYourself’s new layout was created with a few things in mind, so let’s go over some of the improvements:

Visual facelift

First, the site was in need of a visual facelift. The original design was headed in the right direction, but never quite looked finished. So we decided to start over again and incorporate some of the things that worked originally. Think of it as our Snow Leopard – not radically different, but certainly a lot better. The pieces were mostly there before, now they’re just refined and polished to create a better overall product. And, even better yet, the site is leaner. Each page is 10-20% smaller in size than before, which means faster loading times for you.

Showcasing older content

Second, there needed to be a better way to showcase older content. We’re proud of the articles we’ve published over the past year, and just because they’re no longer on the home page doesn’t mean they should be hidden from our readers. Now there are Macintosh, iPod & iPhone, and News & Opinion links on the main navigation to filter out the stuff you’re not interested in. The featured content section in the sidebar now includes the most popular posts, some of our favorite posts, and the most recent posts in one easy-to-navigate place. The search function has been improved to display more accurate results as well.

Subscribing to MacYourself

Third, we wanted to make MacYourself’s RSS, email, and Twitter subscription options more prominent. Some folks still prefer the manual “bookmark and check” method and that’s just fine. For everyone else, there are now 3 buttons that make it easier for you to stay up-to-date with our latest articles right on the top of every page.

Adding interactivity

Finally, our goal was to increase the level of interaction readers have with us and each other. The key to any website’s success is an active and enthusiastic community. We’ve always allowed (and encouraged) comments on our articles, but they were a little hard to follow before. With the new layout, the comments section of each post has been overhauled to be more condensed and easier to read. Another thing we’ve added is a poll in the sidebar. It’s interesting to hear other peoples’ points of view, so every couple weeks we’ll be updating that poll question and inviting you to voice your opinion.

Share your thoughts

There are a ton of other little improvements and changes throughout the site, but you don’t need to be bothered with those. The most important things are that it looks better, loads faster, and is more user friendly. We hope you feel the same way, so please tell us what you think in the comments! It’s not too late to make tweaks if there are some better ideas out there. Thanks again for being a MacYourself reader – we look forward to getting back in the swing of things with Snow Leopard tips & tricks in the coming days, weeks, and even months! There’s a whole lot of new stuff to cover.