HellBound Bloggers (HBB) has been revamped with the popular Swift Theme. This is so far the best theme I have used and special thanks to the developer Satish Gandham for the wonderful design made according to HBB‘s needs. I hope you can experience a new feel and you can easily focus more on the content.
Why Revamped?
Almost one year back we redesigned our blog, we believed HBB needed a new and simple look to concentrate more on content. Our previous theme focussed more on Advertisements and Social Sharing, that’s because we targeted those two things specifically earlier.
Few words from Satish Gandham regarding this theme revamp,
HBB was growing at a rapid pace, but the design was not perfect. Attention to detail was missing, as a designer it doesn’t feel right to see the one of the top blogs in India with that design.
I explained Pradeep how the design could be improved and we started working on the redesign in the mid September. The aim was to preserve the overall feel of the site and fix the things that were not right. Today, here we are to present you the new design for HBB powered by Swift.
You can see some of the changes we made on our blog below.
Updated Sections on HBB
Social networking enabled comment system
We switched to Jetpack (from WordPress.com) to provide a social networking comment experience. Now readers can also comment via Facebook, Twitter and WordPress.com accounts.
Simple Navigation Menu
On our previous theme we had 3 navigation menus, but now we are using only one menu with dropdown. You can find all the popular topics on our blog there. That helps readers to find engaging topics quite easily.
Random Button
Sometimes readers feel quite bored when they visit blogs because they want to read something but not sure where to start (except the recent post, of course). So a “Random Post” button could be essential there. Just click the button and you’ll be taken to a random post. Not satisfied? You can again click the button to read another one. On the sidebar also you can find the list of random posts.
Featured Boxes
On our previous theme we had 2 featured boxes for highlighting important posts or trending posts from categories. Now we added another one and made it 3 for extra exposure.
Popular Posts – Sidebar
If you want to read the recent popular posts on HBB, you can find them on the sidebar. If in case you missed quite trending posts, you can always find them on the sidebar.
Exclusive Search Box
We now focus on user experience on our site, so that readers and visitors can stay longer on our site. We kept a powerful search box on the header to help users to search for their required posts and resources.
Ad-free Layout
We reduced the locations for advertisements. We are thinking of a different way to monetize HBB apart from advertisements. So from now on you’ll see less ads.
Responsive Web Design
Responsive Web Design provides an optimal viewing experience for readers. Our theme will support wide range of devices to make reading more comfortable.
About Swift Themes
Like I said, using Swift Theme made us believe that we can take our blog to next level in terms of user experience and content providing. It is a fast and server friendly theme. The best part is you have full control over the design. Some other things you’ll love:
- Search Engine Optimized with HTML5 semantics.
- Good Google Page Speed Score and Yahoo! YSlow Metric Grade.
- Full control over design. Highly customizable.
- Excellent support from the Developer.
So far HBB’s overall loading and optimization performance are quite good, I’ll write a detailed review about our change and experience next week. A feature I liked the most is the delayed loading of Gravatars. That means the Gravtars are loaded only after the entire page is loaded. What’s the benefit? It won’t slow down the page load if it can not connect to Gravatar.com, which usually is slow.
It wont interfere with the user experience (UX) as by the time user comes to comments, they will be loaded.
You can also check our previous review about Swift Theme.
People asked me why not Thesis or Genesis? I asked them back why not Swift Theme? It is a popular fast loading WordPress theme with Top notch Search Engine Optimization.
Your Opinions
We value your feedback. I’m sure this new look is far better than our previous one and you’ll love it. But I could have missed something more essential you guys expected. Do share your views on comments below. Thank you. 🙂
Nice theme,
More if you make menu a lil but more in height… well just a suggestion..
BTW nice sticky menu bar, thinking to do same with my blog too :-p
Hi Pradeep, I just wanted to jump in and say that your new theme looks awesome.
HBB is looking better then ever.
You’re building a brand here, keep up the great work 🙂
Hi Pradeep,
Awesome Design. Though I like Thesis Framework still and Thesis 2.0 Just Rocked the WP. Though Swift is also good and one of the best alternative of Thesis. 🙂
Thanks and Regards,
GetPRed.com
HBB looks even better now..I tested swift on local host, ah!! really awesome. Great design Satish
#Cheers
Hi Pradeep,
Glad to see a new look for HBB. Loved the new single navigation bar. Would have been nice if there was some breathing space between logo and navigation. It looks jam-packed with so many icons and links sticking together.
Talking about the overall look and feel, it looks good to me on Single Post. Home page still looks busy.
Also, I ntoiced that the featured posts’ images are resized using width and height attributes which is not a good practice.
Lastly, you can replace search with Google search. WP search doesn’t return relevant results. For e.g. try searching “digg digg” 🙂
Oh and one more thing, since you are already using Jetpack, how about using it’s social share icons ?
i hope, I haven’t offended you with my comment. 🙂
good work look much better and then previous.
Great work. Look much better and then previous
Nice Theme… HBB is now having great look 😛
Hey bro hbb looks and feels great 🙂 . One thing i thought was u could work on the fonts on top below the logo.
I agree with Vishnu! HBB has a great feel now! carry on! 🙂
awesome i love it…the site is now a lot faster and the look is simplistic and web 2.0ish 🙂 🙂
Now HBB looks more simple and clean. Really awesome design.
This new design is very good and faster than old one, congrats
awesome design bro simple and clean.
Simple WordPress theme.Combination of White and Blue.Side bar is wider than previous theme ( I think ) …All other look great especially blogger bio…
The Blog is Looking Great, Apart from Content now the Theme is Good ! 😀
awesome design bro simple and clean.
Hello Pradeep
Love the new simple looks . You and Satish Gandham have done great job.
Awesome design. Love the minimal stuff.
Looks great. Really swift too!
I like this look. For me, how lucky ！
Hii Pradeep
Homepage superb look but when i open any post then your sidebar look not gud work on sidebar recent posts image…
Gud luck
Really Awesome Desg 🙂 Best of Luck Pradeep.
awesome design bro, this is looking cool compared to previous one, i think specially new bloggers have to use this because they don’t have ads.
Hello guys,I am very happy to hear that you redesigned HBB as I was waiting for the change.
Satish made a good job. pradeep I was wondering with what was made the bio section in your article bottom, it looks cool.
Good Job Satish! Simple and very clear and yes, I am still amazed with the speed of loading webpage. I am seriously considering redesign of my site now.
Thanks Rohit. I was going to pitch you with a redesign proposal, but was caught up in other projects.
Hi Satish Do you have any ideas of releasing any child themes for the Swift Theme……
Very Sleek design. Best of luck dude.
This design is great as it’s cleaner and focuses on the content. Well done, Pradeep.
simple and clean ! 🙂
Hi Pradeep,
Well done – Personally, It looks better. And change is a good thing, every now and then. With the new look and feel the UX personally seems to be a lot more fluent, yet still visually attractive. Great job, compliments on the new theme.
The HDD logo(favicon) seems to be a 3D one. 😀
sticky navigation is simply awesome !!!!!!!!
I like this look. It is better then previous 🙂
The new theme is looking better than previous one.
Superb theme design, author bio box, highlighted search box at top, stretched Sidebar etc. It’s really looking very impressive n professional.
Looks cool. Although i’m not a fan of sticky head nav bar
Looks very impressive, but still need to fix few minor things like the sidebar in home and the twitter feeds at the bottom of the post. Else everything is great.
All the minor things will be fixed in 2 days. Would like to correct them all in batch to save time.
Theme super 😀 Stick side bar is missing , Sathish is awesome and he releases every month new updates 😉 so you just relax and enjoy more more theme features.
Cheers
I am very happy to hear that you redesigned HBB as I was waiting for the change.
Hi Pradeep.
The theme looks great. Reducing the Advertisements space is a good step and now it looks more spacious then before.
Cheers mate and the design rocks !!!!
Yah HBB rockz..!!
It’s amazingly awesome. More user friendly, ads free, responsive and professional.