Introducing our new look blog!

Posted on Tue, 6 Mar 2018 by midcenturyjo

Hooray! At last we can share what we have been working on these past few months. Welcome to the new Desire to Inspire. The look is cleaner, bolder and we hope a whole lot more user friendly. Here on the home page you’ll find our most recent posts. Click on the one you want to read and off you go. Once you’re in you can navigate with the previous and next post buttons. Need to find a specific date or post? We have our usual archive and category tabs up the top as well as a search bar.

The biggest change is our room category buttons at the bottom of the home page (not those above … that’s just a picture of what to look for). We’re very excited about these. Go on go back to the home page and click on one of them. I know you want to. You’ll be taken to a grid of rooms that you can scroll through easily and when you find one you really, really like just click again and you will find a link to the original post. We’ve been working hard to build up a fabulous library of rooms for you by  sorting through  our archives and this brand new resource will only improve with time as we add more with each new post (and as we continue to process our over 10500 older posts.)  Oh and mobile users will notice a big difference too. So much easier to use.

Once again welcome to the new blog. Take the time to look around and please let us know what you think. Kim and I have spent the last 11 years sharing our all consuming passion for the perfect room with you, our valued readers. Here’s to 11 more!

 

 

 

Sparky says:

Darn, clicking’s not working for me…and the link from my blog to yours is gone. :o(

KiM says:

Hey Sparky. Can you elaborate on “clicking’s not working”? And what link?

Jacqui says:

I have the site saved on my chrome google favourites, but when i click on my link the site says ‘error establishing a database connection’. But i can click via facebook and see this article.

midcenturyjo says:

Hi Jacqui try clearing your cache and then try desiretoinspire.net/ (without the “www.” and save that to your favourites. There’s something technical that I don’t really understand that is causing it but Kim will be looking into it 🙂

Jacqui says:

That worked. Thank you. The site looks great!

midcenturyjo says:

Thanks Jacqui. We still have a lot of tidying up to do back in the archives (a few missing pics here and there) but we are slowly working through it. Don’t forget to try the room buttons on the bottom of the home page 🙂

Sparky says:

Hi Kim: Yes, where it says: “Click on the one you want to read and off you go.”, the photos aren’t “live”, in other words, not able to “click” on them.

As for your link from my blog I have: https://www.desiretoinspire.net/. However, it now shows an error: “Error establishing a database connection”.

midcenturyjo says:

Sparky my bad. That was a bit confusing. The category picture buttons are at the bottom of the home page and are live. The picture of those buttons in this post is just a screenshot. I’ll change the wording to hopefully make it clearer. As for the link from your blog when we launched it somehow isn’t recognising the “www.” part of the address. Kim is looking into it. Hold off a bit before changing your link until she figures out all the technical stuff. Bit beyond me 😛

Susann says:

Wow, what a difference. Did I ever told you that your blog was the first I have ever read and followed? So many years now, no idea how long. It was nice that you didn’t change something all the time, so every visit was a little bit like coming home. But guess what? I really like the new look! And I love the categories! Good job Kim and Jo!

midcenturyjo says:

Thanks for being such a loyal reader Susann. Glad you like the new look 😃

Susann says:

Thank you for all the lovely work you did the last 11 years! 🙂

Anne says:

Wow. Seriously impressive styling and design. Well done ladies and thank you for all that you do in the blogging world.

KiM says:

Thank you so much Anne!

like it, love it, thanks and stay strong!

midcenturyjo says:

Thanks!

Jared Hayden says:

I love the new look, ladies. I’ve been following this site for years and it always inspires. Keep up the excellent work.

KiM says:

Thanks Jared! We really and truly appreciate your support over all these years. (every time I read your comments I think “exactly!!” XOXO

John says:

Hi!
Your ‘reply’ button logic is broken!
Our bookmarks are broken! Which is seriously bad. Although you promised the opposite.
By changing the color theme and page design you actually changed/destroyed the whole brand, which turns me, a visitor since 2009, away. The “DTi” acronym is non-saying; we have more than enough screen space to write actual words.
The website loading times are horrible.
Archive navigation bar should be on top & bottom.
Sorry, but I dont like it that way.

midcenturyjo says:

Thanks for your feedback John. I am sorry that you don’t like the new blog design. Unfortunately we can’t go back but we can get our designers to look into some of the very valid points you make. Hope you can bear with us during this transition.

Teez says:

Hello,

I love the changes. I was dreading it would be one of those controversial logo changes similar to “Instagram-gate” that you either love or hate, but this is love. The dot that rolls off the logo is clever. The archived room categorization is teasing and inviting. The colors are fresh. And the “Here’s to 11 more years” caused me to pump my arms up in my cubicle and whisper “hooray!”.

midcenturyjo says:

Thanks Teez. We love our logo too.

John says:

The dot that rolls off is simply a copy&paste from the ‘development’ website, click at the bottom the “jump”-link and see. Even the dti preview icon on my phone now says ‘jump’ !?! Proof for an amateurish copy and paste work.
The comments section is not even checked or verified against bots. These kinds of problems have been solved long time ago.
Technical issues for maintenance should never surface to users and interfere with their site experience, which WAS so simple and classy.
I’m with Christelle. The vibe has gone. unnecessarily. sadly.

midcenturyjo says:

Sorry John we’ll miss you. We never like losing readers. We’d just like you to remember that we are amateurs, we don’t get paid much to do this (blog advertising doesn’t really pay and we are not part of a big syndicate) and we don’t charge our readers to view our content. We do this for the love of it. Once again apologies that we have altered your experience for the worse. Perhaps we’ll see you again in the future when we’ve worked through our teething problems. I’m not being facetious writing this. I really do understand your frustration.

Edgar says:

I don’t like the look. I really enjoyed scrolling for everrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. The pictures are too small to entice me to open the link to get the article. But I guess I don’t have a choice now. Also I want to enquire about the ‘more posts’ section. How many new posts will be displayed until it becomes an ‘old’ post then the option to click and view that home is not under ‘more posts’ anymore? What I loved I about the old site is that even after 4 weeks of not being able to get to your site I could easily spend hours scrolling though all I missed, one page after the next. Scrolling though the pages was like a drug, literally, I would get a tingling sensation knowing I’m taking a break from work now to give my eyes and mind a visual frenzied overload of visual stimulation. Now I have to click on a BLOCK.

midcenturyjo says:

If you go to the archives section at the top and click on the month like March or February you can scroll like the old blog with several full posts on each page. That’s the best way to deal with being away for ages 😃

KiM says:

You can still scroll forever Edgar as that’s how you’ll view all of our archives just like before except now it’s via the Archives section. The home page display our latest 6 posts. And then you can click on the next/previous buttons when you’re on a post to view each one, or the archives which as before, shows 5 per page.
Sorry you don’t like the new format but we were essentially forced to change after being on a blog platform that essentially no longer exists and was failing us on a daily basis. You’ll get used to the new look, and love it. Trust me 🙂

Edgar says:

Thank you for guiding me and explaining how to navigate your new site. I take comfort in the fact that the content wont change. I hope that visitors adapt to the change especially those who are set in their ways and don’t like change…..like me. I will give it a bash 🙂