It's been a long time coming folks and it's still a bit of a ways away, but I'm finally working on a new redesign for the blog. It'll come with a big change. We'll be going to our own .com (finally) and I'd love for you to be involved! You are afterall, the people who read it everyday, so you should have a say in how it looks! Sadly I'll be leaving blogger (in all probability) but I came across a wonderful feature of theirs recently which is helping me with ideas for my redesign. So today is sort of two-fold. If you have blogger yourself, you can do this with your blog, and I'm wondering, if I have something similar like this programmed for my blog which do you prefer? Here are the choices:
1. Flipcard - http://poppytalk.blogspot.com/view/flipcard#!/
2. Mosaic - http://poppytalk.blogspot.com/view/mosaic#!/
3. Snapshot - http://poppytalk.blogspot.com/view/snapshot#!/
4. Timeslide - http://poppytalk.blogspot.com/view/timeslide#!/
5. Regular: Leave the blog as a regular type style blog as it reads now
6. All of the above (if possible - ha)!
So like I said - if you have blogger you can do this yourself - just add "/view" to your url and poof! Magic! Only problem is at this point you can't make it your default url. And where/what do you do with your sidebar action? But it's a fun choice to have and play around with!
I'd love to hear your opinions - so please leave a comment if you have time and would like. I hope to have more posts/polls as things progress I'll be offering up some gift certificates to Poppytalk Handmade to random commenters throughout as a thank you! This post is worth $25 at this month's market! Thanks for helping me out! Your opinion is important to us! Offer will end this Friday, July 29, 2011. Eep!
Update: Thank you everyone for commenting - it was really fun to read everyone's opinion. It sounds like most of you like the original format, and now that we know that, it really helps us go in the right direction. We chose the very first commenter for this - (as out of all the giveaways that we've ever done, the first one has never been chosen that we can recall). So congrats to Jamie of A Pair of Pears! Jamie has won the $25 gift certificate to Poppytalk Handmade.

Comments
Just my thoughts, I'm looking forward to what you come up with!
Timeslide (4) works pretty well, though! Something like that really wouldn't be a bad solution, in my opinion. Otherwise, a clean and fancied-up "regular" blog could work well, too. :)
Good luck and I'm so excited to see what you come up with!
love your blog & am excited to see what you do :]
Good luck!
good luck, i'm excited to see the result
Have you thought about moving to wordpress? I moved my blogger account to wordpress last October and love it!
On the other hand, sth like mosaic or timeslide will exclude you from the other blogs.
That's just my thoughts.
Wish you luck!
http://ieva-thecraze.blogspot.com/
If I may also add, there is something about the new font being used as title to each post that makes me feel like its going to be an ad... I must've seen it on another site as their ad font. Or is it the colour? Not sure!
Thanks for asking for our input! As I said, I'm a big fan.
enjoy and good luck in the future
One of my other fav. blogs recently did a big design make over and to be honest i don't like it very much and don't visit it as often now, i hope you guys don't do anything drastic!
I'm a HUGE fan.
Maybe you could just do a simple clean-up of what you have going on--maybe re-categorize your sidebar lists of features/info/market info/our contributors/etc. you have in a more unique way? They're simple the way the are now, just a lot of lists that could give you reason to spice them up a bit.
In my opinion, also, I definitely think you should stick to the eclectic/handmade look & feel! I've always enjoyed that about your blog layout.
best of luck, changing things is always refreshing & good! :)
You can always keep blogger and fwd the frame to your .com. Blogger also has an option to use your own domain.
good luck designing!
Hugs from Germany
Ursel
It might be cool to have a link to the Mosaic version, if you'd just like to get a quick "overall" look at the site.
Good luck!
i also like the current interface as is- it's easy to navigate, not too distracting, etc. i do also like the mosaic format too... i like how it works visually, since all of your posts feature such gorgeous images.
happy creating!
-stephanie
http://myyearoffood.net
I have interacted with each of the proposed layouts and while they are dynamic, each left me feeling like the gimmick overshadowed the content.
I really love the blog as is- I agree with most people about the other layouts leaving out a lot of the content. I don't mind the 'snapshot' idea once in a while, however if the blog read as that all the time, it would seem out-dated in a hurry.
I also understand the pressure to update the site onto your own url, customized according to however you want it to look. I guess it's a natural transition to move towards, and at the same time, there will be a lot of opinions given with it being hard to accommodate everyone's wishes. You know your blog best- your up-dates have always been done well, so trust your guts. That being said, I prefer white backgrounds to images.
All the best with the updates!
So I'd probably say keep it the way it is!
Could you tell me please where to get those glowing orbs?? :)
Looking forward to your new design. I enjoy the variety of your posts. Right now I am eating my version of the salad you recently posted. It just looked so good I had to go make it!
I totally love poppytalk as is. Whatever direction you chose to go (or not go) will be wonderful, Jan!!
Greets from Germany
Kathness
Rambles with Reese
http://rambleswithreese.etsy.com
Abby
p.s. poppytalk is one of my favorite design site... and it's canadian!
Hope that helps!
if i had to choose though i would pick sidebar...
<3 <3
I do like number 2, but it just reminds me of Pinterest and it's not very blog-like...too hard to read/navigate. I think the way it is now is the best; easiest to follow and not tons of clicking and opening new tabs. :)
Sorry to be a stick-in-the-mud :(
Your blog is too good to give up however, so I think I'll just play tag-along and follow to your next inter-web destination.
Regarding views:
Mosaic had the most dynamic look I think, but if simple is what you're aching for then timeline is a very nice fix.
Best of luck to you in this time of exciting changes!
i love popptalk and am a regular reader who will continue to read regardless of new or old designs. i enjoy the blog as is, however, i would recommend cleaning up the sidebar. it is full of SO MUCH (which is not in itself a bad thing), but i often have a hard time finding what i am looking for, especially the search bar - when i want to find something i recall seeing or reading but never bookmarked, which actually happens a lot. so i would recommend making it more visible and accessible, because right now it gets lost among everything else.
good luck and i'm sure you'll make it beautiful regardless of what interface you decide on!
xo
I would like to see you keep the existing format, for I especially love that I don't have to click to read more after the jump. However i would recommend having less posts per page, for sometimes the load time is longer due to all of the images on the page.
Looking forward to the refresh!