POV: You're Rebuilding a Navbar at 2AM

Hey fellow pixel enjoyers.

Ever spent so long staring at your navbar CSS that the letters start floating?

Just rebuilt Penfriend's entire navigation system and I'm pretty sure I can now see through time. Or the Matrix, or both…

The Great Nav Bar Reconstruction of 2025

So I just finished rebuilding Penfriend's entire navigation system, and let me tell you—Thrive Themes' nav builder should be classified as an experimental form of psychological torture.

Why the rebuild? We've expanded to three distinct products with more in the pipeline,

Echo - How we get Penfriend to read your blogs and write like you
Cluster - Turning one keyword into 16 inter-linked blogs
BoFu - Bottom of Funnel Content that makes you money
And added a bunch of resources, use cases, glossaries etc..

And they were nowhere to be found on the site.

and our sad little navbar was desperately trying to pretend everything was fine (narrator: it was not fine).

Here's what the rebuild involved:

• Creating dedicated sections for each product

• Building out use case navigation that actually makes sense

• Reorganizing our blog sections so people can find stuff

• Preserving my sanity (failed spectacularly)

• Making it actually look good (succeeded against all odds)

The process felt like performing dental surgery on myself while reading IKEA instructions written by someone actively having a stroke. But the results? Chef's kiss 🤌

The Nav Bar Confessional

Things I learned during this process:

1. Thrive Themes is simultaneously brilliant and maddening

2. Every dropdown menu requires at least 17 distinct existential crises

3. UX matters more than my personal comfort (sadly)

4. I probably need more hobbies

The new nav actually showcases our expanding product ecosystem without making visitors feel like they're navigating the backrooms of the internet. Small victories!

A Humble Request

Since I'm basically a one-man product and marketing department (hello darkness, my old friend), I'd genuinely appreciate any feedback on the new navigation.

Check out the new nav on Penfriend.ai and let me know:

• Is it intuitive?

• Can you find what you're looking for?

• Does it scream "professional company" or "guy who stayed up until 3am moving pixels"?

This Week's Front-End Wisdom

If you're running a small team (or you ARE the team) and need to rebuild your navigation, here's my hard-earned advice:

1. Sketch everything first—seriously, EVERYTHING

   

   I drew out everything, many times, before I made it on the site.

2. Consider user paths before aesthetics

3. Mobile-first isn't just a buzzword; it's salvation

4. When in doubt, simplify

5. Test with real humans who aren't you

6. When it comes to design inspiration, Dribbble. Just Dribbble has been my best friend for a few weeks

Until tomorrow, may your CSS behave predictably and your frameworks update without breaking changes.

✌️ Tim "Right-Click Inspect" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend

P.S. Built something cool recently that made you question your career choices? Reply and tell me about it—misery loves company!