A Tour of the New Site…and That Huge Announcement

Welcome back!

It seems like we have been away forever, but it’s only been a week. When you are used to blogging 4-5 times each week, taking even one week away seems like it will never end. But, as you can see, we have been doing just a little bit of work around here. We want to give you a tour…

…but we have to get the big announcement out of the way first.

Announcing The Faughn Family Podcast!

That’s right, we are starting a family podcast! While we are a little while away from starting, this was one reason for the redesign. The first show is going to go live on August 1 and trust me, you will be hearing plenty about this new adventure before then. We are thrilled by the idea, and have already booked a couple of guests, as well as laid out ideas for programs well into 2014. To see our new podcast page, click here.

As we said, you’ll hear more about this in coming weeks, but please be praying for us as we go into the recording and production phase of this new work. We are so excited!

Now, About that Tour

So, how do you like our new digs? We have rethought and redesigned just about everything. Here’s a tour of just some of the changes.

Content is Now King. We wanted to make our site a little more readable, so we increased the font size (significantly), made it black font on white space (instead of black on grey), and also made the text column wider. Now, what we write is truly the star of the show. Very few sites have as much “reading space” as our new design offers, and we hope you find it to make reading our blog entries much easier on the eyes than before.

New Design. This one is just a bit obvious, but we have totally stripped down the site and started over. The site is now full-screen on most computers, and we think it is a bit more “family”-like and playful. The header, designed by our good friend Shane, includes an up-to-date picture, and we think the blue and green color scheme is more fun than the old one. Hopefully, we will tell you about the tool that helped us with this redesign very soon.

Free Stuff…For Days! Besides all the free content on the blog, we have added much more free stuff for all our readers. What all is free?

Free e-Book for Email Subscribers. With Google Reader going away in a few weeks, we wanted to be able to help you continue to get our updates easily, but we also wanted to give you a little incentive. So, if you sign up to receive our blog posts via email, we are going to give you–totally free–our book Blessings from Revelation in pdf format! Also, if you already get our daily emails, we are going to send you this book in the coming days! Sound interesting? Click here to sign up so you don’t miss a single post, and so we can send you your free book.

Free e-Book for Newsletter Subscribers. Our monthly newsletter is growing and doing very well. Near the end of each month, we share new and different content (not just recycled blog posts). We strive to make each newsletter fresh and helpful. A few months ago, we gave every subscriber a copy of our book Understanding the Love Chapter. Now, we are going to do that again for every person who subscribes (for free, of course)! And, if you have signed up in the interim, you’re going to get it as well! If you’d like this free monthly resource–and the free e-book–click here. (Next issue: June 27)

Sermon Outlines. We used to have a sermon outlines page on our blog, but we didn’t do a good job keeping it up. Now it is back and better than ever. As we start, there are 20 free outlines, all in pdf format for you to use for your study or in your sermon preparation. We plan to add many more soon. Click here to see this new page.

Other Free Stuff. We have also added pages to show you both of our blog rolls as well as Adam’s podcast list, and other works we support. We plan to keep these up-to-date, so check back often.

New Daily Email Design. If you subscribe to our blog via email, you are going to notice a slick new look, as well. The email now has the same color scheme and header as our blog. We have moved our email list to MailChimp, so we can make these emails much cleaner for you to view. As we have said, we hope you’ll subscribe via email. Do that here.

Accepting Advertising. A few years ago, we allowed ads on our site, but did not have a cohesive policy, and we didn’t make a big deal out of it. We are still not going to make a big deal out of it, but we do have a page of our blog dedicated to our ad policy and rates. If you are interested in seeing that page, click here to know how you can advertise with us.

The Return of Hymn Reflections. The most popular set of posts in the history of our blog were our Thursday Hymn Reflections. Though we have not posted in this category in about 18 months, we still get almost daily hits to these posts. They are returning…just not on Thursdays. Look for the return of Hymn Reflections on most Fridays, to help you prepare your heart to worship God. You may also notice a special “ad” on the left-hand side of the page for these posts, at least for awhile, as we welcome them back. To remind yourself of the older posts in this category, click here.

What Do You Think?

So, there you have it. A brand new site, but our goal is to continue to deliver content to you on a regular basis that is Biblical, encouraging, and helpful.

Before closing out this post, I will tell you that this redesign, as well as starting the podcast, cost us a little money. We don’t mind, and we do this because we love it. If, however, you would like to help us with this, visit our Support the Site page. There, you will see a way that you can help us with the blog for as little as $4. If you don’t wish to do this, it’s totally fine. We love blogging, and just want to help folks.

Lord willing, we will be back tomorrow with a new post on our new site. Will you help us have any new readers?

QUESTION: So, what do you think of the new stuff?