This makeover came at a perfect time. I’ve been wanting to redesign my blog for a while so to finally have a deadline and an excuse to get some gears turning was just the push I needed.

There were a few things that needed to be addressed right from the start. Let me just say my blog wasn’t terrible, all things considered, but it wasn’t great and it could definitely use some updates.

All in all it looked fine, maybe a little bland, but what you saw was what you got. Except, that is, for all the blog tabs. I knew that was the first thing that needed to be changed. When I was in undergrad a lot of my classes required different blog tabs for each different course which makes sense in an education setting but an employer looking at my blog would most likely be really confused. So I decided that I should combine all of my blog posts together under one tab simply titled “blog”.

However, before I could even do that I knew I needed an update on my theme. My original one was fine, but I wanted to change from something that looked like a standard pre-set WordPress free theme. Obviously it would still be free but I wanted it to look expensive. Which is pretty much the same rule I follow when I buy literally anything.

Now. This is where the makeover ran into some difficulties. WordPress is not very… accommodating in their customizations. If I wanted to change the color of a link or change the font of something a lot of the time it would be impossible. I tried just about every theme before I finally settled on one.

Post makeover I made some pretty big changes from what my blog previously looked like. I decided to put my logo in as my header. It’s bigger than I wanted but WordPress would only allow photos of that size so I didn’t have a lot of wiggle room. I didn’t want to forgo to logo because I wanted to add that same pop of teal that my resume has to tie them together.

During my makeover I realized that unless you read to the end of my About Me page there would be no way to contact me, so I decided to add the Contact Me! tab in case people missed my e-mail. Similarly to that I wanted to put my resume on an easy to find tab in case my portfolio wasn’t convincing enough to a potential employer. I also thought it might be a good idea because my phone number and my email are both on my resume in case people miss both my contact me page and my email in my about me page.

Lastly, I finally organized my blog posts into one tab. I think that this layout is much easier to understand and looks better aesthetically rather than having various random blog tabs. I also changed font styles to make them as similar as possible (WordPress doesn’t always give you the same font options) to create some consistency there as well.

Overall I really enjoy the new look of my blog. I think it looks professional and consistent while still being youthful and fun. One thing I wish I could have figured out to change was the fact that the layout and sizing on some of the pages didn’t fill up enough space. This can be seen on the About Me page or on the Resume page. In the end though, that little problem aside, I still really enjoy my new blog and can’t wait to add more soon.