A Tour Of The New FERMENTATION Home

Posted by Tom Wark on Aug 30, 2012

Seven years and nine months ago this wine blog was launched.

And it has taken that long to make it look relatively pretty.

Working with James Marshal Berry of Sonoma, California, the goal was to make FERMENTATION: The Daily Wine Blog relatively good looking, more flexible in the way it presented information and owned by me, rather than Typepad. In reality there isn’t a great deal of change. The biggest of course in the new URL. It’s like picking up all your stuff, packing it in boxes, throwing it all in a truck and putting it all back in place in a new home. It’s all still with you, just slightly re-ordered. The hope is that the postman will know where to find you now.

So, a little tour of the new home is in order:

THE MASTHEAD
If you look up, you’ll see the masthead and logo and such remains the same and in the same place. I figure, the logo works. Why change it. And I like the colors.

THE NAVBAR
This is sort of new for FERMENTATION…easy access to vital info. Under “ABOUT” you’ll find exactly what you think you’d find. Stuff about me. Under “ACCOLADES” I get to toot my own horn a bit. “WARK COMMUNICATIONS” is a link that will take one to the website of my communications and public relations firm. and under “CONTACT” you’ll find all my contact info, in addition to a bit more info on this blog and how it works.

CONTENT
I went the route that has a portion of the most recent post just under the masthead and a necessary click-through to get to the rest of the post. I hope you don’t mind the extra click. But doing it this way allowed me to feature the four posts that came before the latest posts and that’s something simple I wanted to do because I found that too often recent posts get undeservedly buried.  As you can see, those four latest posts on the homepage get you quick access to what’s been recently published.

ADVERTISING
There they are. Right there on the right hand side above the fold. I want to give my paid supporters as much exposure as possible to my readers, without disrupting the flow of things. And I think it works. By the way…See that hole in the ads area. That’s for you if you’d like to advertise to FERMENTATION’s readers.

SEARCH
I put that bar right up there at the top where it can’t be missed. Previously it was buried way down on the right hand side of the old blog. There are over 2,500 posts here. If you do some searching you might come up with some interesting things you’ve not seen. For example, give “Natural Wine” or “Three Tier System” a search. That should keep you reading for a while.

MUST READ
I’ve wanted the ability to easily highlight certain posts for quite some time. Now I have it. What you’ll find there on a rotating basis are posts that I think deserve a second look, are more important than others or that reveal something more about me.

LATEST
Yes. The latest posts. It’s a bit redundant given the design. But there it is.

COMMENTS
Folks love comments. Under this tab you’ll find the most recent ones.

CATEGORIES
Here you can find all posts that have been organized under certain categories. For example, if you want to read a bit about Jazz and Wine, just click the category.

RECOMMENDED WINE READING
Here you’ll find under the drop down menu a selection of blogs and websites I recommend. This will grown and subtract over time, but it represents stuff I’ve currently been focused on myself.

WINE INDUSTRY NEWS AND TOOLS
Under this drop down menu you’ll find news websites and other industry-related tools and services that are indispensable for me and for you too if you have anything to do with the wine industry or want to keep up on the news of wine.

WHAT WE ENDORSE
Here you will find services, advertisers, clients, and such that I endorse. I encourage you to explore them

SOCIAL MEDIA
I deliver a bit of info and opinions and thoughts via social media. Down at the bottom of the page on the right are links to my primary social media outlets. I urge you to follow and friend at will.

That’s it. Not much different is it. Just a tad prettier, easier to read and easier for me to manage. James Marshal Berry and his crew made this transition incredibly easy for me. And certainly much easier than I ever expected it to be. I recommend him highly to anyone looking to change over to WordPress or change their current WordPress site or if you need a winery website that’s easy to use and not hugely expensive.

If it wasn’t clear by the decision to redesign FERMENTATION, my intent is to keep this blog going as long as readers will have me and as long as I don’t find myself out of ideas and thoughts. I’m thinking at least another 7 years or more.

Finally, dear readers…Thank YOU!