Website Update

So, what new is going to come with the site. Well, the first and most obvious thing will be the design. I hope to make it even better than the one that I had shared before. I want the site to look sleek, sophisticated, and professional while still being easy to use. Here are the rest of the elements.

Blog
Before I wasn’t planning on redesigning the blog, but now I have decided to, unsatisfied by the current design. The content of the blog will pretty much stay the same, but I’m going to try to remove some clutter that is currently up there. I hope to also get my own domain name and hosting which will allow me to switch my blog over to that and use the Word Press (More customizable than Blogger) system to run that.

The Store
I wasn’t so sure about the store before, but now I’m pretty sure that I’m going to include it in the site. Instead of selling things personally, however (at least at first), I will be selling/linking to various items from different sites that I think will be beneficial to the users of my site. I will also be designing various products and shirts to sell through one of the websites available on the web. I want these things to help you.

The Front Page
Before the front page was a place to share a little introduction and the site news. Now, I’m going to put a blog feed, ads and links to various places in the site, and various other tidbits that I’m not quite certain of yet onto the front page. One thing I might put up may be random tip box. I still have yet to finalize these things and come up with a solid design.

The Tutorials
My ideas for the tutorials will be pretty much the same. I will be hosting the tutorials that I have written as well as linking or displaying some of the better blog articles I have written. Something new however that I am planning to do is to allow users to give us their own tutorials to put on the site. It will increase the amount of information and make the site a better learning experience.

The Videos and Photo Gallery
I am still keeping my personal videos as well as the photo gallery on the site because that is what the site was mainly intended for. If things change and the site seems to be more of a learning place, I may separate the things.

Resources
This will be a place to go to learn more about the art of stop motion animation and clay animation. I will try to keep the number of links down and make them more quality. Other good links I will post about on my blog or I may make another page for them.

About Us
The about us page will be rewritten to be more up to date.

The Change
So how is Kramer Klaymation changing? Well, I really want to make it a place for the user to be able to learn and have access to materials about stop motion animation(preferably claymation). I will also be trying my best to get a domain and hosting for the site. People say those things are cheap, but they aren’t for me so I may need to ask for donations before I can get the site hosted. This will let me get rid of those annoying Bravehost ads and put ones that are more relevant up. I will hopefully be able to keep the site going through donations, purchases through the store, and clicking of ads, but it won’t happen if I don’t get enough traffic. This is where you guys will come in, I really need you to help share the word when the new site is out, to favorite the site, advertise it, and use it. Any money I make will help keep me motivated in trying to make it better as well as keeping it online. I also want the user to give feedback and to interact with the site: what to change, how to make things better, and what new things they would like to see. Once all this work is done, I’ll be able to pump out a few more tutorials that I want to write so things should stay fresh.

That’s all for now. I’ll try to continue to keep you updated. I don’t have a planned release date yet since I’m unsure of how long the design and coding processes will take.

This is my second blog post about the new update to my site, if you would like to see the older out dated on, click here.