It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you Death Ensemble’s new design. I’m excited to put a new look on DE, and I hope you dig the new layout too.
When I first set up DE with the help of Mike Cucinotta four and a half years ago, I chose a horror theme called, appropriately enough, “Zombie Apocalypse.” I loved it at first, and found the interface easy to use, but it got stale after all these years. Fortunately, the new look has a number of nice features that jazz the place up. Let’s take a look under the hood together:
An angular header— Complete with skulls that sport a multi-color of flames, the angular header gives a nice cutting edge to the site. My nephew would love those flaming skulls.
The pop out sidebar extension, only one click away in the top left corner— The sidebar no longer clutters the screen on every post. It used to bunch up the top of the screen, and leave a lot of empty space on longer articles once it ran out. Now, there’s an easy clean up. Click on the three horizontal bars, and the complete sidebar pops right out for you. Less distraction, more focus on what’s important, our posts.
New logo font— I leaned on Mike again for his opinion, and he suggested a bolder font to step the “Death Ensemble” out from the skulls. Fortunately, this theme made it easy to grab any of 700+ fonts. Now the site name pops, and it’s even got our philosophy printed under it. The font also extends to the post titles, which really makes them stand out.
A sleek home page, complete with excerpts— The main reason I went hunting for a new theme was that the home page went on forever. I don’t always write in small snippets, as some horror bloggers do, and because the home page held 8 articles, it was a chore to scroll down. Even if you didn’t want to read all 8 (hopefully because you come here daily and read everything we post), you couldn’t cut to the chase. The redesign offers a succinct 9 posts, each with a brief excerpt. Just click on the post title, and you’ll head directly to the article you want to peruse. The site also gives each post the nice, angular look of the header on the home page.
New photo titles— The new design does away with borders, and posits the photo title in the bottom left corner of each photo. Scroll onto the photo, and the title disappears to offer a full view of the shot. The one regret I have with the redesign is losing the “bloody borders” that distinguished each photo for years on DE, but when sacrifices had to be made, this was an acceptable one.
Four years ago in August was the last time I made any changes on our look, so a redesign was long overdue. As we head into Phase 2 after hitting 500 posts, DE proudly presents its new design. Please hit me up at [email protected] and let me know what you think.
Be cool,
