BlenderNation Has a New Look!
The current BlenderNation theme is almost 12 years old, and it’s showing 🙈 Not only is the design outdated, but it has also become more ‘noisy’ over time with the addition of extra ads, sidebar content etc. Time for a refresh!
What I kept
I’ve always really loved the large header at the top of the page – it’s usually used to display art (and you can submit your work), but it can also be ‘rented’ for commercial promotions. It changes daily and always stays on the articles that were posted that day. That way, when you browse older articles you’re always greeted by some of the best artwork from the Blender community.
I’ve also kept the ‘featured’ section on the homepage where I like to pin main articles that deserve more attention – either because of news value or because we just put a lot of work into them 🙂
What’s new
The homepage is now much cleaner: the sidebar is gone and all articles are shown as ‘cards’. There are three special cards: one for ‘Friends of BlenderNation’ and one for AdSense. A third card makes it easy to submit your news.
Regular pages are also wider and more minimal resulting in more focus on the content. I’ve added a ‘Support BlenderNation’ card at the bottom of the sidebar.
A small but important detail: the featured image on posts always had a bit of an awkward aspect ratio. This is now the standard 16:9.
On the technical side, page performance is better, and it should be easier to access the site from mobile devices.
Finally I also added a light/dark mode toggle because hey, we’re no longer in 2014!
What’s Friends of BlenderNation?
I’ve always used AdSense to help generate some revenue to keep this site running. But to be honest, it’s always ugly, irrelevant and frankly just devalues any site it’s used on. I want to get fully rid of it as I’m financially able to.
Instead I’ve started building my own ad server that will ONLY feature products FROM the community, FOR the community without creepy big tech tracking.
It’s free to use for anyone that makes me an affiliate for their Superhive, Gumroad or ArtStation products. It’s in private beta now, but if you’d like to help me test please have a look and reach out to me. I hope to fully launch within a month.
What I’m planning next
I’ve been tweaking this theme for the last couple of weeks and I’m sure it’s not finished yet. But I wanted to get it out there to really push myself to get this done (also, I’m rather proud of the result). The old BlenderNation theme has grown into a bit of a beast over the years, so I’m sure I missed some parts. If I did, let me know and I’ll fix it as soon as I can!
What if I find a bug or have a feature request?
Just leave a comment below!
Is this an April Fools joke?
No :)
Are you still looking for editors?
Yes!
I’d really love to hear what you think of this change – please drop your comments below. Thank you!
Bart
Well deserved update to blendernation! Great work, the site also feels faster and more responsive.
Splendid idea with the new AD solution, if its sustainable. Since some market places are closing and superhive is pushing some special concepts since the overall addon sales are going down. Blender just keeps getting too good for addons =D
Thank you! And I have faith that this is a phase we’ll get through.
Whoa, awesome new look on BN!
One thing I was wondering about though was where the pagination went on the homepage. I used those every so often, curious how to access older articles now
Ah good catch! It was supposed to be there – fixed.