sexing up theleavingcert.com

This place has been left idle for a quite a while. I updated it in February 2008 and not much has been until yesterday.

photo credit: lemoncat1

After a full day of hard work, here’s what i’ve done;

created a new logo

theleavingcert.com never really had a proper logo, so i spent a few hours toying around in photoshop and here’s what i came up with;

It’s not the most classy looking logo you’ll see, but it’s simple and does the job. The font used is a nice modern curvy font called ‘Comfortaa’. The blackboard was added in as i wanted to have some sort of link to school/education within the logo. I always think you should be able to tell just by looking at a logo what the site is about and i think this new logo goes a long way towards achieving that.

Finally, along with the logo, i created a new tagline for the site – made by students, for students. Again, this helps to sum up what the site is about and who is behind it, what it’s purpose is etc… Although not a leaving cert student anymore, i originally set the site up before i got my leaving cert results. So technically, i was still a leaving cert student 🙂 At the time, there wasn’t much help online for me doing my leaving cert so i wanted to create a place where students could pass on knowledge to other stduents or even just voice an opinion or give tips/links etc…

Found a new theme

The site is now using  a free theme called ComFy Magazine. It was previously running Justin Tadlock’s ‘options’ theme. The new theme just gives me more control and makes life easier for me – the site is easier to manage and content looks a lot sharper. You can now rate articles, print out articles, reply to individual comments etc…

Added new features

I haven’t actually put any new features live yet, but i’m working on them behind the scene. There’ll be a new photo’s section where i’ll upload leaving cert related photos. There’ll also be a new forums section (this will take a while to get right), a new ‘handy links’ page and a new video section.

Gone Social

theleavingcert.com is now on twitter, flickr, bebo and i’ll be adding facebook, myspace, delicious, youtube accounts. Once i have all that done and the profile are all updated, i’ll make another blog post and give you links to all of our social networking profiles.

Tidied up posts

This new theme allows me to add thumbnail images to all posts, so the homepage looks a lot more colourful and interesting. So do the articles. From now on, all articles will include images and i’ll try to make them as visually appealing as possible :mrgreen:

What’s happening now?

What i’m gonna do now is try to recruit new writers for theleavingcert.com – leaving cert students. I’ll continue to write (and write more often) on theleavingcert.com, but seen as i’m a college student now, it would make more sense if the site was run by leaving cert students year after year…

So if you want to write for theleavingcert.com, contact me and i’ll hook you up. theleavingcert.com is one of the largest leaving cert sites out there (in terms of traffic) and if you want to be seen or heard by fellow students or teachers, even journalists, it’s the perfect place to get started.

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