Hi guys! You might notice things look a little different here today — that’s because we got a complete redesign!
If you’re an OG reader, you might know that this is layout number five here at College Fashion. Our site began on WordPress in 2007 and our first three layouts were coded by me in Notepad. Then in 2014, we moved to a new CMS and had our site professionally redone. Now we are back on WordPress again, and this theme was customized entirely by me (although I now use Sublime Text instead of Notepad). So, in a way, we have come full circle.
For our longtime readers, here’s a fun trip down memory lane to remind you of how far we’ve come, kinda like one of those “look at the hideous outfits the stars wore in the 2000s” retrospectives:
It’s been five years since we last got an update, and wow, were we ever due for one. The blogging world has changed so much since our last redesign, and it was time for us to evolve.
A big reason for the change was that we wanted full control over our look. Although we loved our previous layout, it was pretty set in stone, which was usually fine but could be extremely frustrating when we wanted to change small things and couldn’t. That’s no longer the case. We have full control over our blog now and we can change anything we want. This sounds like such a basic thing, but it’s something we haven’t been able to say in almost five years. It was a colossal pain to move our website from our former CMS back to WordPress (you wouldn’t believe how many setbacks we had — or how many times I broke down and cried throughout the process), but in the end we got it done, and the result is a much better CF, with a layout that feels like us again.
When creating this layout, I tried to combine the best of some of our old designs (colorful look, sans serif body font, easy access to the archives) with the things I loved about our most recent iteration (magazine style layout, focus on images). It feels like we are returning to our roots while also making our site more of-the-moment and fresh. I sincerely hope you guys like it (or at the very least, that it’s not the worst thing you’ve ever seen).
So now I’d love to bring you guys into this. Click around and try out the layout, then share your thoughts: Do you like our new look? Anything you aren’t loving? Anything we should change? Please, I’d love to hear from you — we can actually change things now so I’m beyond excited to get your feedback!
A big thanks to all of you for sticking with us through all these changes. We have the best readers ever, and everything we do is with you in mind! Please share your thoughts on CF 5.0, and if any of you have been with us from the beginning (or one of our early versions), I’d love, love, love to hear from you in the comments.
?Zephyr (and Team CF)
(By the way, our site will be turning 12 years old on March 1st — man, does time fly!)
I really like it so far. It’s a lot more user friendly than the old version. Congratulations on the redesign!
I really like it so far. It’s a lot more user friendly than the old version. Congratulations on the redesign!
Thank you Gemma! It’s been such a headache but I’m so happy to be on our own server again.
It looks awesome
It looks amazing! So much easier to navigate. Great work!
So glad you like! I hated the “click to see more” navigation on our old site, so I’m super excited to have paged navigation back! It’s the little things.
That was the most annoying part of the old site for me, and I’m so grateful the paged navigation and archives are back!
Congrats! This looks – in a good way – like other high quality blogs that exist right now, while retaining the CF “recognizability”. So good job from the person who has probably pinned the most from CF in those 12 years! 😉😊
I think you might be right about that Jessica! I always see you on Pinterest 🙂 I’m so, so glad you like the new look. It means even more coming from a long time reader!
Congrats! This looks – in a good way – like other high quality blogs that exist right now, while retaining the CF “recognizability”. So good job from the person who has probably pinned the most from CF in those 12 years! ??
I think you might be right about that Jessica! I always see you on Pinterest 🙂 I’m so, so glad you like the new look. It means even more coming from a long time reader!
It looks amazing! So much easier to navigate. Great work!
So glad you like! I hated the “click to see more” navigation on our old site, so I’m super excited to have paged navigation back! It’s the little things.
That was the most annoying part of the old site for me, and I’m so grateful the paged navigation and archives are back!
It looks great Zephyr!! Any chance that this new version will be more secure than the last one? The last few months I’ve been getting two or three pop ups an article that redirect me to a bogus site to “win big!!” It’s happened so often I sometimes stop reading 🙁
Then to celebrate turning twelve any chance I can get some easy outfit formulas for work? When I started reading CF I was in high school but now as a twenty something I have to dress professionally and it’s hard!! EOFs were the best!!!
It looks great Zephyr!! Any chance that this new version will be more secure than the last one? The last few months I’ve been getting two or three pop ups an article that redirect me to a bogus site to “win big!!” It’s happened so often I sometimes stop reading 🙁
Then to celebrate turning twelve any chance I can get some easy outfit formulas for work? When I started reading CF I was in high school but now as a twenty something I have to dress professionally and it’s hard!! EOFs were the best!!!
Yes!! We have moved to an entirely new ad network so those spam ads should be gone for good — on our old site those drove me crazy and I couldn’t get rid of them no matter what I tried! Every time I blocked one it would come back. Sooo frustrating. Please comment or send an email if you ever see anything like that again, I’m so sorry.
I’ll get on work outfit formulas! 🙂
It looks awesome
Love the new design! 🙂
Love the new design! 🙂
I really like it so far. It’s a lot more user friendly than the old version. Congratulations on the redesign!
Thank you Gemma! It’s been such a headache but I’m so happy to be on our own server again.