PSDFan Extra

PSDFAN 3.0!

After 14 months of serving the community with top quality tutorials and design inspiration, I’m very happy to unveil the brand new PSDFAN!

This is the third design to grace PSDFAN’s pages. Yet it is far more than just a design! As PSDFAN continues to grow it has become apparent that it was outgrowing it’s old skin. It is time for the site to reach it’s true potential, and so allow me to talk you through some of the exciting changes that have, and will be happening over the next few weeks!

What’s New

Several things are new with this version of PSDFAN, ranging from the prominent, to the subtle, from the visible, to the invisible… All of these changes were made with YOU in mind. This new version of PSDFAN should be far more user friendly.

• More Writers! – In an effort to grow the site I’ll be bringing onboard more and more writers over the next few months. Previously authors received a small mention within the post, but now they have their own author profiles! If you look at the bottom of this post you’ll see my profile (including embarassing mugshot).
• Pagenation – If you remember with the old version, people were forced to keep clicking ‘next’ if they wanted to navigation to an older page of content. Not any more! Now our handy pagenation bar below all posts allows everyone to navigate to a page of their choosing, quickly and easily!
• Staggered Navigation – Also in the old version we played around with a drop down menu. In my view there is a reason why not many sites in the design community use drop downs. It caused endless browser issues for users, and really wasn’t all that user friendly. The new staggered navigation system allows users to quickly see where they are on the site and explore within the various categories.
• End Small Fixes – This change may be less noticeable, but hopefully will have a big impact. In the old version of the site several issues went unfixed. The social icons in the header didn’t work, various other links were dead, the related posts area just threw up any random posts… I could go on. In this new version all of these issues have been fixed, and not only fixed, but gone over with a fine toothed comb. You can now easily browse between related posts, and well as quickly share posts on your favorite social bookmarking sites. We even have a favicon now!
• Weekly Polls – I’ve never been keener to expand the great community here at PSDFAN. I can’t reveal all of my plans, but we’re starting off by holding weekly polls (check out our sidebar). This should be a fun way for visitors to voice their views, and make a real impact upon the site and it’s content. We’d love if you’d tell us what you think of the new design by voting in the poll to your right, or even better, by leaving us a comment!
• Cleaner, Faster Code – To compliment our cleaner, more user friendly design, we’re now rocking cleaner faster code. This will mean faster load times for you, giving you more time for reading, and less time waiting!
• Why Not Tweet About It? – We’ve finally installed the TweetMeMe besides all of our posts. As many of our community are on Twitter this gives you all an easy way to spread quality content, and saves you copying/pasting the details of each post, as many have been doing.

What Else To Expect

As well as sprucing up the main site, I’m working on relaunching the members area. In many ways this is even more exciting, as I see it being the main source of community in the future. Right now there isn’t a lot on offer for free members, whilst paid members now get access to an astonishing 65+ files for just $4.95 per month!

You Can Sign up or learn more about our members area here.

I would also like to announce that after having ongoing difficulties with some file downloads (due to file sizes and server issues) my fantastic host have got everything working perfectly, and they offer cheap web hosting! This is a big relief for me, as I’m constantly trying to provide members with the best possible service.

Right now I’m working on integrating the members area more with the main site, and you can look forward to some of these awesome new changes:

• A members forum for all members (not just paying ones)
• More community involvement, including suggestions, polls and more interactive features
• Members only tutorials/files – a great perk for the paying members
• Several other features that I will reveal soon!

The Man Behind It All

I don’t profess to be any kind of developer, so after mocking up my initial designs for this new version I took it upon myself to find a talented, reliable developer to handle the coding for the new site. I eventually found Jamie Huskisson, a developer from the UK (my home country). I’ll actually be posting a full review of Jamie’s services (he was that good), but for now I’ll just say that he has honestly been the best developer I’ve ever worked with. I’m sure that we’ll be working on a lot more fun projects in the future. You can check out Jamie’s blog here.

Thanks for a great job Jamie!

What Do You Think?

I would love to know what you all think of the new design, as well as the future plans and new features. Your comments continually mean a lot, and your support is what keeps this site going.

I hope that you like where PSDFAN is headed!

About the Author:

Tom is the founder of PSDFAN. He loves writing tutorials, learning more about design and interacting with the community. On a more interesting note he can also play guitar hero drunk with his teeth.

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