A New Look for MattBrowne.com

You may or may not have noticed that I gave MattBrowne.com extreme site makeover this weekend. It was time to graduate from the ‘hosted’ wordpress blog and get back to a ‘self hosted’ environment that allowed for greater flexibility and customizations.

A few things I wanted to accomplish with this redesign:

Create a visual hierarchy of my active networks on my main page
Make the homepage more palatable for non-bloggers and first time visitors
Integrate my FriendFeed lifestream with my blog
Install ‘Disqus‘ for comments and ‘ShareThis‘ for posts

I am still very happy with WordPress. They’ve made it very easy to migrate from the hosted to non-hosted version. The project took me less than four hours to: setup server, install wp, export and import posts, hack up CSS for homepage, integrate plugins, and QA / final touches.

I’d be interested in hearing some feedback on how I could make the site better, or maybe something I may have missed.

A few of my favorite things about the redesign:

Easier to comment
Easier to share posts
Easier for first time visitors to see what I am all about before diving into my blog
Easier to subscribe to blog + lifestream via Nourish

Please leave me some feedback on what you like/dislike? I appreciate it, thanks!