Welcome to the new Chocolate-Covered Katie!


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What do you think of the new website?

(If you’re reading this post through email, click here to see the new site.)

Going into the process, I knew I wanted something bright and cheery – but also whimsical yet modern, and youthful yet grown-up. (Contradictions galore.) It’s taken many months of hard work to get here, and I am so excited with how the design finally turned out! Perhaps one of my favorite parts of the new design is how organized it is:

 

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For example, the new recipe page is incredible!

A picture of every recipe! Plus there’s a fancy slideshow on the homepage, and the sidebars are much less jumbled now. If you think I managed these feats by myself… you are giving me way too much credit. Allow me to introduce…

food blog web design

Julie Farber from Deluxe Designs.

Julie is amazing; I wish I knew half of what she knows about web design. Julie can design your entire site for you if you don’t want to worry about a thing. In my case, however, I preferred to be very involved, and she was ok with that, too! I drew up elaborate screen shots in Photoshop of exactly what I wanted—right down to the color scheme and layout—and Julie took it all from screen shot to real-time website without crashing anything, which I would certainly have done if I’d attempted it without help. She was patient and non-judgmental, while still offering sage web designer advice. (You can thank her for the fact that there are no giant polka dots on the top of the page: one of my not-so-bright ideas she talked me out of!)

And those beautifully-organized new photo pages I mentioned earlier? All Julie’s work. I can’t tell you how many things I asked for, while being almost positive she’d come back and tell me such things weren’t possible. Yet every time, she instead responded—quite quickly—she’d made the changes. In short, if you need design work for your food blog (or photography blog, company website, etc.), Julie is your girl! EDIT: Julie will give a 15%-off discount to anyone who mentions CCK in his/her inquiry.

Still to come:

1. The heart logo: The header that you see now is an interim thing, so don’t worry if you’re not big on the heart; it’s not staying! I am not big on it either. I’m a perfectionist and haven’t been able to come up with the perfect logo yet, so I quickly designed this shutterstock-esque heart logo to stand in. The rest of the new design was ready, and I just didn’t want to wait any longer!

2. We’ll probably be making more minor adjustments in the next few days, so give the site a little time to adjust. And Julie is working on perfecting the mobile version of the website as well.

Meet Katie

Chocolate Covered Katie is one of the top 25 food websites in America, and Katie has been featured on The Today Show, CNN, Fox, The Huffington Post, and ABC’s 5 O’clock News. Her favorite food is chocolate, and she believes in eating dessert every single day.

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206 Comments

  1. missnah says:

    Love the new design! Remember seeing it this weekend and thinking how great it was 🙂 just two comments, one is the comment thing various people above had mentioned and the other is just me wondering if you are still working on the recipe page cus i.can’t easily find recipes at the moment, although glad to see the search feature is alive and well 🙂

    Seriously though, it looks so clean and fresh, well done!

  2. Laura@ Fit Running Mama says:

    So Clean and pretty! Looks amazing!

  3. Anna @ Your Healthy Place says:

    I LOVE your new site design – especially the comments box and the clean white layout. I actually really like your header with the heart too! If there was a photo of you incorporated in there somewhere, or one of your amazing food creations, that would be even better. But I like the logo idea!

    Your designer sounds amazing too. I just came through relaunching and designing my site and my designer was also eternally patient, poor thing. I bombarded her with questions! But you gotta live with the results, right??

  4. khursten says:

    It’s so much better! Great job to both of you! Love everything.

  5. Sam says:

    Congrats, you go girls!! Just on a side-note: The recipe pictures don’t always match the dish. If you browse through the healthy meal plan section, for example, you’ll see what I mean, lol 🙂

    Best,
    Sam

  6. Alan Kleesattel says:

    Hello,

    The new website is great but I do have one thing I would like to mention. I like the slide show on the homepage however for me it is the the only thing I see in the stream of new posts. Personally I like to be able to see at least the top of the first without having to scroll down. Maybe the slide show could be incorporated into the header or off to the side or smaller? Just a few ideas but overall it looks great, congratulations and the work is great.

  7. Jennifer Grimm says:

    I really like it…love the heart also 🙂 The photo slide at the top took a minute to switch pictures though…other than that there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong! Love it!

  8. Sara Ann Burroughs says:

    I LOVE it!! It looks awesome!

  9. Anonymous says:

    I’m In love!!! Love the chocolate dripping ‘Katie’

  10. Haley @ fullnfit says:

    LOVE LOVE LOVE! It looks fab <3