Well folks, as you probably already know if you’ve been reading Swoon Worthy for any length of time is that for my ‘day job’, I’m also the Editor of another blog called AO at Home.  It’s like my foster child, much like Swoon Worthy is my baby so I hope you’ll indulge me in talking a little bit about it today.

Hmmm that picture looks STRANGELY familiar…

 

See, I inherited a blog design which wasn’t really all that great when I took the job in November of last year. It was a bit clunky looking and not too user friendly.  It was hard to find what you were looking for and it was even harder on the eyes with tiny pictures and too much text.  This wasn’t a design that great content could comfortably sit on.  It would be like Kate Middleton being asked to sit elegantly on a crusty bus stop bench.  It just doesn’t seem RIGHT, does it?

(Yes, I just compared our blog content to Kate Middleton’s bum.  I may need to rethink my analogies.)

So I started with a wire frame – a basic outline of what I wanted the blog to look like and how I wanted it to function.  I worked closely with Gumball Creative out of Manchester who took my rough outline and all my ‘wish lists’ and came up with a workable design.  Then we tweaked it.  And tweaked it.  And changed it a little more.  And added more functionality.  And then even more.  I’m sure they wanted to kill me.  But ya know when you KNOW you are close and that if it’s not perfect then you might as well not bother?  Well, I was kind of like that.
Anyway, it’s with great pleasure that I introduce you to the brand new AO at Home.  It looks good, it works well, it’s easy to navigate, the contributors have a page, you can see all the posts by one person, we’ve got a Twitter feed, a quote of the week… I mean, it’s pretty much like I’m doing a room reveal here!!
Here’s the home page BEFORE…
And here’s the Home page AFTER…

That’s better no?

The recipes section and interiors sections are so much better laid out now too with subcategories for everything.

In Interiors you have Buying Guides, Event coverage, How To, Inspiration, Interviews and a new section called The Rented Home.

In Food, we have all the recipes broken down to Breakfast, Desserts and Baking, Drinks, Lite Bites and Main Courses as well as Events, Interviews and How To.

We have a whole lovely Craft section too… not twee old-fashioned crafts but cute ones you’ll actually want to (and CAN) make.

I’m pretty damn proud of this site.  Ok, there are still a few little bugs knocking about that we’re sorting.  But I love it all the same.

Now I want your feedback – what do you think?  What would you like to see more of? What’s not working for you?  I can’t promise we’ll make changes this week and there’s actually more to come (like at-a-glance boxes for recipes and crafts, a few tweaks on the section headers, the subscription email is being worked on now so that it’s a lot prettier, etc) but I trust you guys to give me honest feedback.

So I implore you – go and check it out.  Let me know what you think.  You can subscribe too for email notifications when we post new content.  Of course, if you feel so inclined, leave comments on the posts (I moderate those too of course and will respond!) or share with those little cute buttons on every post.  We’re on Bloglovin’ too.

And of course, if you love it, please do talk to me about that too.  After the week or two that I’ve had, I can use the encouragement.  Also, if you want to tell people about our redesign on your own site and help me spread the word a little about our lovely new home, that’d be cool too and you’d be my BFFAE (Best friend forever and ever) :)
Ok, I’ll shuttup now – Go! Fly fly my pretties!!


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