Well hey guys! Even though I had a post up this morning, I still had to check in again this afternoon to fill you in on some of the updates that have taken place over here on STSL.
Then again, if you’re reading this, you probably already see most of them right in front of you…
So first things first…for those of you involved in blogging you’ll get this more, but I have updated my blog to the Genesis framework, along with the Foodie Pro theme via Shay Bocks. I had been going back and forth for weeks on the theme I wanted to switch to and, ultimately, Foodie Pro just really won me over in the end. And Shay (link above) also offers a TON of great tutorials on the theme and how to get going with it.
My overall goal was not to make TOO big of a change when it came to reading the blog and your experience as a reader. I went back and forth on changing my header design, and while I may still wind up changing it down the road, I just couldn’t do it yet. It’s the face of STSL!
We cleaned up the sides a bit (no more pink) and currently, as you can tell, the font is a bit smaller. I’m probably going to change the font and size, but it’s not on the top of my priority list so we’ll see when that happens. We also widened the space for text/photos, so photos are able to be larger than they previously were.
We changed up the welcome image and some of my social icon buttons to match the overall theme of the blog, which I’m really loving. You can also click right on the image to bring you to my My Story page (which really needs to be updated…).
So if ya haven’t already gone ahead and checked me out on social media, be sure to use those buttons! 
A little further down in the sidebar, you’ll see that there is still a search bar and a list of 5 of my most recent posts, just like I used to have. I originally had this in another place, but if you guys are anything like me, you get flustered when something moves like that. Plus, those are two features I tend to use most when reading blogs, so I wanted to make sure it was easy to spot.
Two features that did move quite a bit are the Category and Archive drop-down menus. You’ll now find them at the footer of the site, along with some of my most recent Instagram pics and pinned images on Pinterest.
There’s one page that I’m REALLY excited about, but it’s still in the process of being organized, so it’s not posted publicly…yet. This new theme comes with a really awesome recipe page that organizes all of the recipes with thumbnail images (I’m a huge visual person and always appreciate when there is an image on recipe pages).
The reason I’m not ready to publish it just yet is because each recipe needs to be labeled with the appropriate category to ensure that it gets placed in the correct spot. Well, in the almost 5 years I’ve been blogging, I didn’t always pay much attention to things like that, so I need to go back through all of my recipes and update them with the correct category.
If you want to peek around on the page while it’s still in progress though, you can do so by CLICKING HERE. Like I said, it’s a work in progress, but you’re free to browse around for now if you’d like!
This new theme also enabled my site to be “mobile responsive,” meaning that the content should now fit your smartphone, tablet, etc. exactly, without you having to zoom in or worry about ads in the way.
You can see the full menu by tapping on the triple bars below the header, which will display them all below.
I know I’ve gotten feedback from some of you that the words are getting cut off on your smartphone (gahhh!) and I’m so sorry about that! It was happening on my phone too at first, but once I cleared my browser cache, that seemed to do the trick after a few hours. If people are still experiencing this issue PLEASE let me know, because I want to make sure that’s resolved ASAP.
And that’s pretty much it! I have to give a HUGE shout out to Rita at The Blog Genie for helping me with most of the backend design stuff. She was absolutely incredible to work with (she’s actually who designed my header for me years ago), and if any of my fellow bloggers are in need of some assistance with blog-related design stuff, I would 100% recommend her. You can check out her blog for the services she offers, as well as some incredible insights and helpful tips. Thanks again, Rita!
But again, if anyone has any other feedback to provide, please, please let me know. Those of you who have offered some so far have been amazing, and I truly appreciate it! I’ll be back tomorrow with some highlights from the weekend since I haven’t had a chance to get to them yet.
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