It’s been a while since we’ve shared some personal words with you. Today is a big occasion for us, as we take this blog to the next level. Starting today, this is going to be the Apple blog you want to visit. It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to our new face on the web, Smoking Apples 2.0.
When Aayush and myself had decided to start an Apple blog, way back in time, we had conceived of something very small, personal, and inconsequential. But it took Ashwin’s pestering and Preshit’s determination to get us where we are. Looking at the stats, we can honestly say that we are a very successful for being just 2 months in business. We are already averaging huge number of visitors daily, with articles being carried on MacSurfer, MacDailyNews, and several other independent blogs linking to us. Day by day we see an increase our RSS subscribers (for which we have you to thank), and the response to our initiative has been phenomenal.
Which brings us to Smoking Apples 2.0. I hope you like the new look which we have worked hard on. We found the old one a little too flat for an Apple blog; and added a little more depth, flexibility, expandability, as well as aid in navigation. Notice the featured posts carousel at the top, along with bricks for some of our most special write-ups. The linked list has been moved into the sidebar, the RSS feed for which should be ready as soon as we get it working properly.
With our relaunch, we will be having much more exclusive articles, reviews, screencasts and some very special offers for our readers. We will have regular polls, software giveaways, as well as some exclusive interviews. So stay tuned.
A word from the designer: Smoking Apples 2.0 is a work in progress, with several bugs that need to be squashed. We will also continuously add new features as we go. However, we needed a strong foundation for the future and we think we have it with our current setup. For now, the site is best viewed in Safari, but 100% Firefox compatibility coming soon. Please feel free to report any bugs or complaints using our contact form.
We are out to smoke the Apple world like it has never been smoked before. And we hope you can join us in doing so.
Thank you for staying with us,
Preshit, Ashwin, Aayush and Milind.
Team Smoking Apples.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Looking good. Hopefully the 100% Firefox compatibility comes soon.
The site looks impressive but not looking good on other browsers is bad web designing!!
I hope in the near future this site will look equally good on all the popular browsers.
Good luck people
Stunned!!!
No problems in Firefox at all. Change was required and it is indeed good change.
Bring it on guys! am loving every bit of SA and cant wait for more:) Change is inevitable.
Keep up the gr8 work. waiting for smoking stuff…as ever!
new design gives it a professional touch than the previous one! good work!
in firefox not much prob, except for the bottom block of the page…
Certainly looks a lot better than the previous design. Good work guys
Are you planning to start a forum dedicated to Apple / Apple products in the near future ? I dont think we are ever going to see a seperate section on TD forum and I, for one, would be very interested.
Thanks a lot for the comments.
@bluediamond: I realise the footer is muddled up. It wasn’t so in the sandbox and I’ll figure out what the problem is.
@Pat: A forum has been talked about in our private loop as well. Let’s see how that materialises.
@Azeem: I checked the site in Firefox and Safari on Windows and Mac, but couldn’t find any glaring issues. The rest of the browsers can be dealt with later (just 5% of our traffic)
Brilliant new design! I love it! As others have said, some problems in the way the post footer and page footer render. I like the concept of a ‘featured story’ on the top of the page. Great work! All the best.
Looks really good! Very professional and mac-like. Some alignment problems here and there but I guess you will fix those. Keep up the good work. Looking forward for some more smoking stuff! (TM)
Ah! It’s here. Nice nice. Though I see some issues with the font on Firefox and a bit of aligning issue with Digg & Stumble This buttons. For the forums, might wanna wait for some time IMHO.
Cool look guys. Really like the new logo and the whole image flasher thing on top.
Thanks a lot for the kind words.
We are improving the theme (and the site) constantly.
Manan –
We’ll have a forum but we haven’t planned sometime like that in the near future. Building this blog is our first priority.
Guys all the best to u all. Found ur site trough my friend goobimama and I can sure tell that ur getting better. Interesting stuff flowing around
ur getting into my everyday check sites 
hope ull continue good work, take care.
cheers Patrik
Smooking new look. But special appreciation to the new logo. I can see a lot of work must have been out to make it Appleish..