Zero 2 Hero September 2009 Design Changes

Through experimenting on other various websites I have worked on I have found more efficient layouts for pages. In an effort to continually update and optimize the page I have made a few changes to the theme and layout of the page, as well as fixed any problems Internet Explorer users were experiencing. Lets take a look at whats new.

Old layout on Left — New Layout On Right

Changes:

1 Header
The old header was much larger than it needed to be. To give me screen real estate to the content I decreased the size of the header to 150 px.

2 Left Sidebar
I felt like having two sidebars was redundant. While it allowed me to increase the number of ads shown, it did not increase the number of ads people clicked on. To make things more organized for the readers I moved everything into one sidebar on the right.

3 More Info Section
In the old layout each link had its own banner. Adding more networks meant adding more and more buttons and taking up more space. I feel like the new area looks more professional and is easier to read.

4 Ads
Increasing the size of the side bar means I could increase the size of my google ad as well. Hopefully this should make up losing the text ads on the left sidebar.

5 Digg Widget
This will allow readers to stay up to date with relevant news stories as well as support Zero 2 Hero by digging our stories as well. Who you might even see one of your stories on their as well.

6 Ads
Increasing the sidebar width also means I was able to use side-by-side ads rather than just placing them in the center. This fills the area much nicer.

7 Polls
The polls section moved down to the bottom.