Some of you may know I also run a comic blog called PissMeOffAnd.com. It’s been a lot of fun so far and the greatest thing about it is that I am learning a lot in the process. One of the hardest tasks so far has been answering the question of just who my target audience is. Are people over 30 going to find this funny or find it pointless? It’s too early to tell but to my partial surprise there a few people so far who are interested in these comics.

The site is built on a WordPress install and I modified a free theme called ComicPress to my likings. Now that I’ve had a few months to see how this is going to shape out I’ve come to the conclusion that this blog style format is really not the best solution. Since these comics are not sensitive to time I can use them out of order without it making a difference. Recycling content is going to be a key factor because those unfamiliar with the site aren’t going to dig three pages back unless they’re really seeking it out.

So after finding some sources of inspiration I have created a new concept which I am hoping to improve upon some of the things I have mentioned. We (The other authors and myself) have also talked about expanding the site to include videos, store front and possibly a blog. So below you can see that we have the current design (top) and the new concept design (bottom).

Header

The old design is dark and doesn’t reproduce well between monitor settings, so in this new design I made improvements to the look and play of the navigation. The site will grow by two pages and I think this works well.

Content Area

One thing I’m not happy with in this new design is that the comics are roughly 40 pixels smaller in width. Not a huge loss but a reduction is a reduction. The content to the right of the comic is going to go through some changes as I’m not happy with it at the moment. I’ve thought about putting the comic title above everything else and running the width of the content area. I do like the new look of the highly visible social media button which will illuminate into their respective colors upon hover. The images below the main comic will be a gallery of old comics that scroll to the right.

Footer

The footer will be the new home of the twitter feed. Some other ideas could be to post a user submited #pissmeoffand tag line and possibly have the users vote on it they like it or and maybe award the winner with a prize. The new blog post section at the moment works for me and helps get the new content up front.

So in conclusion I think this new design is going perform better and improve the look of the site. If you have any comments or suggestions I would love to hear them. I also might be creating a VLog of this process because I’d really like to share more of what I am doing for others to benefit from. Thanks!