b5media

June 18th,2007

Introducing Our New Identity

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In case you were thinking that the title of this post meant that b5media has been acquired by Google or something gratuitously silly like that, you can stow those notions under the seat in front of you. Instead, I wanted to personally introduce you to our new designs that have been deployed now across the entire network of over 200 blogs.

You might have noticed the new themes as they have been gradually installed on the various sites. It’s been a long and sometimes tedious process but we did get it pushed on our blogs. First of all, I want to thank everyone that was involved in the project: Ben Bleikamp for designing the theme. Jeremy and all the senior management for contributing feedback on their various areas of strength. Gary King perfected the network wide API that powers much of the template to make the blogs relevant. Brian Layman cached the hell out of it to make it load faster, smoother and all around more efficiently, and Christina Jones performed many, many “glue” actions along the way. Other key people along the way were Vernon Lun from the Good Blogs who actually created the tool that allowed us to clone the design with unique colors and logos across all the blos. Also, Neil Patel, who came along side to comb the thing for ways we could get SEO juice as well as Scott Brooks and the fine folks at Concept Share for giving us a fantastic platform for design collaboration (Go check ‘em out!).

At this time, I’d love for you to take a tour of our new digs. We have three different types of people that come to our sites and each group benefits from these changes. If you could divide yourselves into groups. Advertisers, please stand right over there. b5media Bloggers, stand right over here. Now, Readers, you come with me.

Features for Readers

When conceptualizing this design, we wanted plenty of content area. We have optimized the layout for 1024×768 screen resolution which seems to be the most common resolution being used. The content area itself is over 100px wider than it was before creating a much less cramped reading space. White space between lines creates an easier reading flow and creates an airier feel.

We also provided wider sidebars that are organized in a much tidier way making it easy to find other sites that might interest you, contests and polls and more. We also provide a Great Big™ way for you to find other content deeper in the blogs with a prominent search box in easy reach near the top.

If you want to continue to track the blog you’re visiting, we’ve made it a cinch to subscribe to the blog’s feed via Google Reader or whichever feed reader you are using.

Incidentally, you’ll notice there is a bar that goes across the top of the templates. This is an important, though easily overlooked section. We use this bar for branding b5media, offering advertisers a way to advertise and it also provides a link to the homepage of the channel that the blog belongs to. Check this out to find more content from the rest of the channel!

The New Blogroll

Speaking of feeds, check out our new blogroll. If you recall, the old one was just a little too unwieldy with every blog in the network in it! We recognized that that wasn’t particularly useful as we grew and it was slowing down the sites. Instead, we assume that if you like Entertainment, you probably like various television shows so our blogroll now consists of links to the other blogs in the channel. Relevancy, baby. It’s all about being relevant.

In the new blogroll, we’ve provided a way for you to subscribe to the whole channel as well as individual blogs by copying the RSS link from the orange RSS icons. You can also add the whole channel by grabbing the OPML file for the whole channel.

Discovery Zone

We also have to point you to the Discovery Zone. The Discovery Zone is all the way at the bottom and it is a window to the rest of the network. If you’re like most internet users, you’re not just interested in a single topic. Fortunately, if there’s one thing we do well at b5media, it is diversifying into many niches. With our slick Discovery Zone, you can explore other blogs across the entire b5media network. We also provide a handy preview of what you can expect from these blogs by giving you the recent stories from the channel.

Advertising Options

Advertisers are our primary revenue stream and so we want to attract advertisers. So, Advertisers, if you’d follow me, I think you’ll find a number of options that are appealing.

First, we offer several prime real estate spots. Every blog has a 728×90 leaderboard spot as well as another 728×90 above the Discovery Zone. We also offer 4 125×125 spots above the fold on every blog as demonstrated in the image above. As you can see, there is inventory available so contact our sales group if you want to purchase a spot. In some cases, the entire area can be bought for a 300×250 ad.

It’s important to note several key things about the advertising strategy on our new templates. For one, we’ve drastically reduced the number of spots available. We feel that overwhelming readers with advertising is not effective for the advertiser as it dilutes the “pop” of an ad. Former iterations of our templates also had a tendency to annoy readers. We’ve taken both of these concerns into account and reduce the number of spots available per page. We also rarely use Adsense anymore except on sites that convert extremely well or as a last resort after we try several other ad networks in the queue.

We also make it very easy to purchase advertising with a link directly to our advertising contact page.

Bloggers

Finally, we have given our bloggers lots of toys to play with so, bloggers, please walk with me.

This template is completely widgetized, which simply means that every sidebar module can be moved around and configured as you wish. It gives you the ability to make b5’s template your own! We have installed a core set of widgets in place and there are really many other possibilities for you.

We have also made the Share This plugin available. We are happy with this plugin because we feel like it gives you the ability to have your readers spread the love about your posts. They can submit your sites to Digg and Reddit as well as send an email to their family or friends about something that might be interesting that you wrote. No better way to get more traffic than that, eh?

Finally, this template has been given a large amount of attention in the area of Search Engine Optimization. Between the blogroll, some meta tag enhancement, title tag optimization, etc. we feel like this template gives you a huge jump on getting ranked by Google and other search engines.

Let us know what you think about the template! We love feedback!