Today marks the start of a new look and feel for gmtristan.com. It’s been quite a long time that this site has looked the same. It’s high time that things got a little fresh, so to speak.

The migration is slowly taking shape. Btw, thanks for bearing with some of the downtime and the erratic disconnections during the transition. I elected to retain some elements while improving some from the old design. This led me to make this short chronology of how my blog came to be. Let’s travel back in time together…

Here, you can see the first design courtesy of my old blogger blog, http://gmtristan.blogspot.com

My first post was made on Feb 25, 2007, a lazy Sunday evening.

As you can see, the elements of the first design were pretty basic and n00b-like. Back then, I was clueless on what worked and what didn’t. I was pretty much running blind on blog design, much less how to monetize it. I experimented with such things as widgets, a shoutbox (bad idea) and other non-sense in the sidebar.

By March of that same year, I decided to buy my own domain and have my site hosted.

The theme of choice was Not So Fresh.

For the longest time, this became the look associated with my blog.

Here, I learned the basics of coding, sidebar optimization, SEO and whole slew of other blogging must-haves that grew my readership slowly but surely. This was also the time when the girls section had to have regular content since I thought that it would be one of the main attractions of the site.

I experimented with a lot of side-bar options for that theme. I also found out several Google adsense areas that really worked. This helped me boost my earnings. It didn’t make me tons of money but it was satsifying (and fun) to see it grow little by little.

I’m going to miss my old theme.

Now, I am proud to present the new gmtristan dot com

I like the clean elements of this design. The codes are also clean and easy to decipher. To summarize, for the sidebar, I found that these things work:

• A way for your readers to subscribe
• Your featured content in a photo
• A youtube video or channel (here’s my channel btw)
• Featured content summary
• Your users’ comments
• Links to your popular posts
• Mybloglog

There still are some bugs in the current design… such as text wrapping and a problem with the tags. But I plan to iron ‘em out in the coming days.

I’d love to hear your comments about the new design. Also do tell me what other stuff or features you wish to see here.

Enjoy your long weekend,

GM T