Welcome to the new Root Simple!

The Root Simple Information Hub

After six years of semi-disorganized blogging, we’ve cleaned up our act. We hope this new design will make it easier to find the information you need, whether your want to access an old post, look for some specific information, or find out if we’re doing any events. Also, this new layout is what’s called a “responsive layout,” meaning it should look as good on your phone or tablet as it does on your desktop computer.

We want to thank our designer, Roman Jaster, pictured above, for a beautiful job!

Thank you, too, to Caroline Clerc for the charming drawings in the header.

Some features:

  • We’ve really cleaned up our tags (aka categories), to make information easier to find. In the top menu bar you’ll see some of the major categories, but also be sure to click on “All Categories” to see the full list. Relevant categories also appear to the left of every post.
  • We’ve finally started a project we’ve long wanted to do: creating short how-to videos. We’ll post about each new one as we finish them, but you can also always find them under the “Video” tab as well as on our YouTube Channel. We’re also working on making the videos “video podcasts”, so you can sign up to download them automatically.
  • On the subject of podcasts, we have long promised podcasts but have decided to focus on video production for now.
  • Keep an eye on the “Upcoming Events” in the right-side menu bar. More info will be found under the Events tab at the top.
  • A hint for searching: The search box at the top of our layout works pretty well, but if your search is a tricky one, Google often works best. Just enter “root simple” in quotes and then the subject, e.g.: “root simple” olive oil moisturizer

With any change there’s always bugs. If you experience any technical difficulties with the design, please let us know! And when you do, be sure to mention which browser you were using (Firefox, Chrome, etc.) when you had the problem. You can comment here or email comments to [email protected].

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28 Comments

  1. Love the new design! WordPress is great, isn’t it? It just seems to lend itself to designs that are so much cleaner and utilize the whole screen area so much more than Blogspot, I think. Terrific!

  2. Oops! Looks like some of your links in ‘Comrades’ are scrambled. The first one, Afrigadget popped up with a warning about it being an attack page. ‘Another Roadside Attraction’ links to Backward Beekeepers, and ‘Autonomy Acres’ links to DIY from Scratch (which links to Dornob.com. Most of the ones I hover over show what looks to be an incorrect link. Just thought I’d mention it. Something probably got lost in translation in the switch.

  3. Congratulations, it looks like it must have been a lot of work. In the future (I am sure you are feeling a bit overwhelmed right now) I would love to hear why you switched to WordPress and the plusses and minuses of each. I am always looking at how I can upgrade my site and where to go with it next. Now hope you get a rest but keep up your great work.

    • The header drawings are by our friend Caroline Clerc. I’m going to edit this post to credit her right now! Thanks for pointing out our omission.

      And believe me, I am leaning on her to make a line of t-shirts, because I want one, too!

  4. It looks wonderful on my phone! I cringed when you mentioned a redesign because your old site did work well on my phone (only internet acess) and I was afraid the redesign wouldn’t–so glad my worries were in vain! 🙂 Good job! (So many blogs I’d like to follow are so obnoxious on my phone that I don’t bother)

    • Our designer Roman made it a priority to make sure the blog works on phones and iPads. Glad to hear it’s working.

  5. Why is the text box so narrow? Is this to accomodate iphones? It’s hard to read on my laptop. Perhaps I can change some setting to make it easier to read, fewer line breaks?

    You guys rock!

    • Beth, that’s interesting. Which browser are you using? The site does adapt itself to different devices, but it shouldn’t look skinny on your laptop.

    • I’m using chrome. The words make a long skinny chain down the middle of the screen. a bit dizzying as there’s a new line every three words.

    • How very frustrating! We’ve been checking around, looking at it on Chrome, and can’t seem to duplicate your problem. I googled and found an interesting parallel, though. The keeper of the Smitten Kitchen– a great blog, btw – went on a wordpress help forum to say her blog text was super skinny — in Firefox. People chimed in to say it looked fine to them on Firefox. Then someone suggested she update her Firefox. She did, and the problem was solved. Have you updated chrome lately?

    • I checked and chrome is up to date. But, success! I made the text smaller (command and -), and that seems to have made the boxes more horizontal. Thank you!

  6. Beautiful! I really, really like this.

    (Every comment made on this blog is coming up in my feed/reader as a “new blog” and flooding my feed. Probably a WordPress issue, but just wanted you to be aware. This happened before I made this comment and I am not subscribed to follow comments.)

  7. I used your search function and it worked great and brought up just what I wanted. However when I clicked on “Continue Reading” it does not go anywhere. Clicking on the name of the blog post did work tho.

    • Hey Jen,
      Many thanks for catching that–I tried it myself and had the same problem. I’ll let our designer know.

  8. Very nice, clean new page design. However, the Root Simple Information Hub seems to have been transported through time to a 1960’s era computer room. Are you really still using this technology?

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