May 06, 2005
WTF? Again?!
Yes, Another Site Redesign
Once more, we have redesigned the site. That opening sentence shall serve as our statement of the obvious for this very late night and/or very early morning.
Chalk it up this time, at least in part, to needing to restart some element of Portland Communique in a manner which more or less corresponded to the timing of our recent move. That said, there is at least one other reason for the latest change.
It had gotten under our skin that we had abandoned some of the formal qualities that tend to mark a website as in fact being a weblog -- mostly notably the presence of a sidebar.
So we've imposed this new design upon you all in large part in order to bring the sidebar back, along with all of the various and sundry goodies that tend to populate the sidebars of weblogs (including, once again, a blogroll of other weblogs from around Oregon).
For what it's worth, the design we extensively used as the foundation technically is known as Kubrick, and originally was created for WordPress. Despite the fact that this site runs on Movable Type and not WordPress, we swiped it anyway. For whatever it might further be worth, we lifted the Kubrick HTML and CSS for this redesign not for the main site for the design, but from Zeros and Ones.
Comments (10)
Tenskwatawa on 06 May 2005
-
I liked the old if only because it looked-n-feeled different from most other blogs. But not its too-small font size, and the new is better for that. Font size hardly matters to me, though, because I almost invariable cut-n-paste and print whatever I intend to read and everything comes out on paper in my preferred font size.
Blogs everywhere churn and turn and rearrange, and the rate of changing is something I pay close attention to, around the web, for whatever meta-message it possibly sends ... and to stay 'young' -- 'What is hip?,' as the song goes. It's fresh, it's fresh; and in blogs it is NOT corporate marketing tricks-driven. Which is driving corporate marketing mad mad mad, I'm glad glad glad of. That 'career track' may have recruited its last victim.
Related to all that, one of the most important 'blogs' going, (another one, b!X, this one is most important also of course too), is evolving or molting and here is the intention to pass the word along, for the sake of the extra concentration of computer savviness locally. A 'must see' job opening announcement. World-class especially need apply. At MediaMatters.org:
'Caterpillar sheds its skin, to find the butterfly within.
Caterpillar sheds its skin, to find the butterfly within.'
-- Donovan
Tenskwatawa on 06 May 2005
-
b!X, everyone, sorry for too much widget-Strong-close widget. The bold face turned off after the headling in Preview, but gad, look at it in Post ... don't look at it. Is there a bug in BlockQuote ?
-
Miles on 06 May 2005
b!X,
Very nice site redesign... congratulations.
Miles
Bob R. on 06 May 2005
B!x -
In general, I find the new design more readable and, dare I say, "professional".
However, I ask that you change one thing. By having the number of comments displayed as words "fifty five" instead of numbers, "55", and having them at varying positions in a paragraph rather than at the start of a line, makes scanning the posts to see if new comments were added someewhat difficult. My eyes had to do a lot of hunting to extract the information, but in the old design I could do it very casually.
(Yes, I know you've added a "Recently Commented" sidebar section, and maybe in time I'll adjust to using that. Most blogs I read are inconsistent about using the sidebar like that, so my habit is to just review the recent posts directly.)
- Bob R.
BassBird on 06 May 2005
I too find the comment numbers very useful.
The One True b!X on 06 May 2005
Hrm. I'll brainstorm about it.
Alan DeWitt on 06 May 2005
I like the new design as well. I actually kinda like the numbers spelled out, but I suppose a numeric comment count in a consistent location woould be nice. A decent fix might be as easy as inserting a paragraph break just before "There are [number] comments (Most recently..."
The One True b!X on 06 May 2005
I'd be alittle concerned that a paragraph break would make the entry-footer too large. Would it help (even just in the interim, while we contnue to brainstorm about it) if I made the sentence about comments and pings bold instead of normal weight like the rest of the footer?
The One True b!X on 06 May 2005
FYI, the return of the sidebar also means that until and unless I'm ever able to work out the more unique and experimental site sponsorship idea, it's likely that some Blogads will be returning to this site.
In all likelihood, there will be one "premium" ad which will sit close to the top of the sidebar, and then a strip of regular (read: cheaper) ads lower down in the sidebar.
Yoram on 09 May 2005
I like the redesign, except the title banner which is really hard on me visually. Generally, white block letters are hard, and especially when they're not against a solid dark background. Ouch! Hurts my eyes!