I managed to finish what I started yesterday. Today, the site’s theme has officially been updated to include a new header section.

To the right, you’ll see a screenshot of what the site looked like before these latest changes.
 

Changes You’ll Notice

Smaller Logos. The logos have shrunk somewhat (about 70 pixels tall) and they’ve been moved out of the “header” area. Now, they appear kind of on top of the screen.

RSS Subscribe Moved. The “Subscribe to RSS” button used to be just above the Search box. Now, it’s been moved to the very top of the screen.

Header Section Shrunk. The old “header” section (where the colored bars are) has shrunk from 160px to 70px tall. This is partially due to the fact that the giant logo is no longer in that area.

Prominent Location for About, Contact, and Blogroll. The new, smaller header section contains more prominent links for the About, Contact, and Blogroll pages. The original theme kind of neglected these important aspects to the website, but now it is quite easy for a new reader to find them.

Why the Changes?

There are a couple of reasons I made these changes.

First, I wanted to give a more prominent location to the About, Contact, and Blogroll pages. I initially started re-designing a few weeks ago to include these pages (they didn’t exist at all). Once I made them, I realized there was no spot in the old theme to put them.

By redesigning a little bit, I gave them pride of place without using up too much real estate.

That brings me to the second reason - making more efficient use of prime real estate. The old theme had a huge header section which wasted a lot of space. The logo only used 1/3 to 1/2 of the space alotted, leaving a lot of blank space.

By shrinking the logo and adding the small buttons in the header section, I’m using the space a lot more efficiently. Instead of just a logo, it now contains a logo, an RSS subscription button, and a link to four key parts of the site.

The sidebar section moved up quite a bit, too, since the RSS button is now in the header. This allows more of the sidebar to be seen above the fold.

Finally, this opens up some more possibilities for advertising down the road. A lot of sites I’ve seen like to include half banners in the header section. I can easily move the RSS button back to where it was and include a small banner there instead.

I’m not going to do this right away, but it is an option for the future.

Comments? Concerns?

Was the change a good move? A bad move? Notice something wildly wrong?

I’m always open to suggestions, so feel free to leave a comment.