All New Soles of Silk Blog Format

This is the newly redesigned Soles of Silk Blog.

Man! It feels good to finally get some time to sit down and tend to something that I've been wanting to tackle for a little while now. The best thing, however, is that I did so much more than I intended to do and learned a few things along the way. That's never a bad thing.

So, this blog has been sitting here with the same design and format for close to two years now. Well, I'm happy to say that is no longer the case. What I aimed to be a cosmetic redesign turned into a total overhaul - one that I think will benefit those coming to this blog as well as the site itself. Here are some of the changes and additions that were made:

I really tried my hardest to include this photo in the blog's background.

Design

Gone is the black background and purple footprints. While I did love that look when I implemented a couple of years ago, I grew tired of it as of late. Initially I set out to put a the photo of Mindee and her heavenly feet (above) in the background, but things weren't quite looking like I wanted them to. Too much of Mindee was covered by the blog. Why waste such a beautiful woman and feet? They deserve to be seen! This is when I began to play around with things.

The first thing I did was attempt some different blog formats. I tried to see if I could see more of Mindee with different layouts, but things still didn't quite work out as I would have liked them to. This is when I made the hard choice to not force the design around the background image, which isn't something I typically would do anyhow. I just love Mindee and her adorable feet, so I was being a little hard headed. She loved that set too, so I wanted to try to make it work. It just didn't.

What I ended up doing while thinking about things was simply the layout and just turn things into the simple color scheme of Soles of Silk. I changed things to have the same purples, black, and white scheme. I played with some typefaces and things really started to pop. And just for the hell of it, I turned that Mindee's image into a monochromatic version using the site's background #cc99cc hexadecimal color, but still no dice. That photo just wasn't going to happen. Oh well, at least that set will be on full display this month in the Monthly Mindee update plan I initiated several months ago (see blog: "Monthly Mindee Updates?").

Features

This is where the meat and potatoes of the blog redesign comes into play here. I started exploring and boy did I realize all the things I was missing out on here on Blogger. These are now all the features you can presently find on this newly redesigned blog:

Soles of Silk Links - This seems like something that should have always been on the site, but it wasn't. Now there is an icon of the splash page of Soles of Silk, and then below, a link to all the different social media and forum pages for Soles of Silk.
Translate Blog - If English isn't your native language, I placed a Google translator on the blog.
Search Blog - Looking for something specific? Well, now you can search the blog for just that. I tried this quite a bit and it finds tons of stuff.
Popular Posts - I thought it would be neat for people to be able to see what others are interested in. I debated on what time length to use, but decided the most popular posts over the last week would be best. The other choices were last 30 days and all time. I just think those wouldn't really move too much, so I went with seven.
Wu's Feet Links Links - Since I have been hands on with Wu's Feet Links since Wu's passing in 2014 I decided to put links to his site, forum, and the two blogs, Columns and Interviews, that I run.
Contact Field - I'm seeing how well this works. I've added a contact field for ease of contact. If it starts flooding me with spam, I'll remove it.
Total Page Views - This is just a filler item and something I've never really had on any of my sites. It's kind of neat to see how many people have stopped by though.
Wu's Feet Links Feature Set History - As many of you know, I treasure all the sets I've done for Wu's Feet Links over the years. I link all of these sets on the main pages of Soles of Silk, so it only felt natural to do so at the bottom of the site's blog as well.

Column Archives

This has been something I've slowly been working on in the background over the last few months. If you notice on the Blog Archive listing, you now see 2004 and 2005. I am taking all the columns currently on Soles of Silk and moving them over to the blog. I am also adding in some new bonus photos in some of the blogs too - just to make them more than just text. Back then, I didn't always have photos accompanying columns.

There is no timetable for completing this task. With nine years of columns to transfer, it's going to be an ongoing process. Be on the lookout for any archive announcements on the site and here on the blog when updates are made.

Moving Forward

I will still continue to do many of the things I've done since opening this blog moving forward. Photo shoot blogs, update blogs, footographies on models, and random series and entries. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know. Heck, use the new contact form to do so.

Join Soles of Silk today to see this and over 10 years of foot fetish content!