MOTHER NATURE: Alex introduces new Directories page

with Alex Smithson (story contributor/blogger)

Croydon-based photo-blogger and good friend Alex Smithson announced yesterday night (Saturday 31 August 2014) that he has now introduced a revamped ‘Directories’ page for his blog, Mother Nature. The new page comes hot on the heels of a raft of changes and improvement Alex has brought to his blog, including a name change, two photography book, and adding a new self-designed logo and theme to maximise presentation and usability.

The changes are low-key and the page is still in development, but already two links are live. One is to the Big Blog Collection, a blog that serves as a directory itself of different bloggers according to categories. The second link is to the Half-Eaten Mind, the news magazine and personal blog of Vijay Shah. A badge issued by the Big Blog Collection sits in the centre top of the page and underneath a special badge/banner designed by Alex especially for the Half-Eaten Mind. He created this badge using GIMP, an open-source graphic design software that is free of charge to the public. Alex’s HEM badge, which only took around five minutes to put together, features Woodsy the Owl, Seventies’ children’s mascot of the US Forestry Service and also the HEM ‘unofficial’ mascot. Alongside Woodsy, there is a ‘signboard’ carrying this blog’s name and slogan in white on a brown and green colour-shift background – the colours of the mascot.

The new directory page also features a host of sharing buttons for readers to share the page with their friends and family. Services to choose from include WordPress (the blogging service that hosts both Mother Nature and the Half-Eaten Mind), Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Google+, Pinterest and Tumblr. There is also a preset ‘like button’ for WordPress bloggers to show their appreciation and a comments box for further feedback.

You can see the new Directories page at this link.

Of course, a big thanks to Alex for producing this lovely badge for the HEM on his blog. If the proportions are right, then I may use it as a header for the Half-Eaten Mind itself. It would become our third banner in use.

A screenshot of the new ‘Directories’ page of Alex’s Mother Nature photography blog prepared on the 31st August 2014.

Another screenshot of the old “Directory(s) page before the changes, captured here from the Internet Archive showing Mother Nature as it was on the 20th August 2014.

The HEM banner and badge which links to our blog from Mother Nature’s directories page. The colour scheme is influenced by the dominant hues of the HEM mascot Woodsy the Owl. Alex created this on his home computer using an open-source imaging program.

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