A New Look

I first started messing with a new look and theme towards the end of last year. Like most things in my life, I kept putting it off and tweaking bits and coming back to it. Now I have finally pulled the plug and hopefully you are looking at a much cleaner and ideally better Head In A Vice.

Along the way I made the mistake of showing people screenshots and telling them my ideas. When 9 people tell you it looks amazing, and then 1 person (normally my wife) says they don’t like it, that’s always the opinion that stuck in my mind. So I kept tweaking. And tweaking. And tweaking. Ultimately as long as I like it that’s all that matters. And I love it. It just took a long time to get here. This is version 473, and I guarantee people still won’t like it. But time has come to just embrace that and not worry.

Aside from real life people who I bored with images, I also was in touch with two of my most trusted readers, Eric & Chris. Eric would tell me it looked amazing, whatever I showed him. Even though I’m sure he didn’t mean it, he doesn’t have a cruel bone in his body and that’s why I love him. Chris on the other hand was more ruthless and would quite often tell me what was ‘shit‘ or ‘old school‘. Me and him no longer speak…………

I knew that the new look had to be a responsive theme. Meaning that whatever device it was viewed on, the page would adapt and make it easy to read. Since statistics say there will be more phones than people within 12 months, and I know a lot of people view sites on phones and iPad’s for example, a responsive theme was a must. Also my good friend Wordschat would go mental if I didn’t, he sure does hate themes that aren’t responsive.

I also had a check list of things that my old site didn’t have that this new one must. Most importantly I felt that the fact I didn’t have a sidebar on posts needed to be rectified. The old theme wouldn’t allow it, but this one does and I hopefully can showcase and tempt people into clicking more things and seeing more pages. Everything you see on the side of the post is clickable. I will be sharing some old reviews from the archives that you may have missed. A big movie poster should hopefully tempt people to check them out! All the social media things we need these days are on there, and exciting/boring things like the Top 10 most viewed posts etc. I even have little images for my pages for those too lazy to scroll back up to the top. All the pages have been updated, with Face Off scores and Project: De Niro finally getting Silver Linings Playbook added to it. Guest Contributors all have a little bio photo, and they do great work so please check that out. Hell, check all the pages out, you may find some good stuff there! My hope ultimately is just to get people sticking around a little longer and seeing things they normally wouldn’t notice on here.

He hates me thanking him, but the reason I accepted the so-called constructive criticism from Chris was because he was kind enough to design some stuff for my new look. My gravatar, the main header image and a little Hollywood glamour on the ‘about me‘ page were all designed by him, but rather than thanking him I’m going to do some promotion instead. Along with Eric, Chris has a little project called ‘The Bloggers Cut‘ in which they show how a film should have gone down. The image below will take you to their newest entry, The Expendables 3, so please go check it out and try to find my very glamorous cameo in it.

I hate criticism, I struggle to accept it and therefore please just say nice things about the new look! Or say nothing. But I hope you find it easy to navigate, and as much as I loved my old ‘Drive Neon Pink‘ inspired look, the cleaner approach is part of the more sophisticated Tyson. I know people don’t like full pages of writing or the wide approach. Personally I love it, and was finally convinced when Eric went for something similar. Images look so much cooler when they are large in my opinion, hence why LOVE is one of my featured reviews from the archives. Click the movie poster and see for yourself, Space sure does look beautiful!

If you do find something that you hate, or isn’t working, please let me know. I will likely delete your comment and block you but we shall see. I’m still tweaking things behind the scenes, so fonts and headings may change slightly, and images on old reviews may look a little iffy, but this has been a long time in the making and will all be fixed over the weekend. I know not many people make a post announcing a new theme, but hey, I like to be different! Thanks as always for reading, and as well as a new film in the Promoting Horror project, and the biggest Face Off so far coming in the next few days, I might even review some films for myself and stop relying on guest posts! Stay classy folks! 🙂

Posted by Tysoncarter182 on March 8, 2013

https://headinavice.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/a-new-look/