The New Design

Whether your holiday has already past or you have yet to celebrate, I want to wish you a Happy Holidays from the GrilledShane family. I hope you are having a great holiday season.

As you can already see, I have introduced a brand new design to grilledshane.com, courtesy of the Vantage WordPress theme. As I was investigating new designs, the focus always needed to be on the images of my grilled cheese sandwiches. I spend as much time, if not more, taking the photos of each and every grilled cheese sandwiches. They need to be featured. And now, with this new design, come larger images and kickass image sliders at the end of each and every grilled cheese post. The focus is now squarely on the grilled cheese sandwich, as it should be.

In addition, to the photos, I have added/updated two more items that I am very proud of. I previously had both an Events page as well as a Press page and each one were truly horrible. Now, both these pages have been updated substantially, providing greater usability and better design. The Events page adds so much functionality that it just blows me away. (Thank you “The Events Calendar” plugin.) Please keep your eyes peeled to the calendar as I add more appearances and signings in the new year. The Press page has been completely redesigned and updated with so many new articles where I or my cookbook have been mentioned. I will be constantly updating that page so keep checking it.

Also, before I forget, with this new theme also comes a fully responsive mobile design. If you have an iPhone or Android or other brand phone, point your mobile browser to grilledshane.com and see how awesome even the mobile design is. This theme is amazing.

With the new design and a new year almost upon us, I am taking stock of the last few months and the upcoming new year. In 2014, even with some already planned travels, I plan to create new GrilledShane original recipes on a much more regular basis. The last sandwich I posted about was in July; that is quite simply, sad. Also, I hope to focus much more on using video, whether it is for when I make new grilled cheese sandwiches or for yet to be determined projects. Either way, you will see a lot more original content courtesy of GrilledShane. Stay tuned.

How you find out about all this new content is truly a great question. Currently, my go to social platform is Facebook. In my opinion, it is was the easiest and I have the biggest, engaged following. However, as is being reported, Facebook is messing with a good thing. Fewer and fewer people are seeing posts from Facebook Pages unless the page owner pays to “promote a post.” Now even though blogging and becoming a cookbook author has become a full-time job, I am not rolling in the dough. I don’t have the money to “promote a post” or “promote all my posts.” I don’t have the time to worry about every time Facebook changes their mind. It makes it harder for the general public to promote their blog via a Facebook Page.

I am not simply going to abandon Facebook altogether. Like I said, I still have a pretty good following on there. However, I am going to work much harder on building a true audience on Twitter and continue to embrace Pinterest and Instagram. Also, you are able to sign up for email notifications of new posts at the bottom of every page. This is a great way to stay in touch with grilledshane.com.

I have relied very heavily on Facebook at the expense of the the other social platforms and at this time, it has hurt me. However, I plan on working diligently on branching out and expanding my horizons. I hope you will follow me where ever I am.

Everyone, thank you very much for your support over the past few months and in the future. I appreciate it more than you realize.