To be completely honest, I’m no where near “done” on this redesign but spending a few minutes each day is just killing me. So I thought I’d do some live testing, and ask for some preliminary feedback.
If you have anything you’d like to gripe about, please do so in the comments. Oh, and watch this post for massive amounts of updates as I tweak things over the coming few days. I’m looking forward to fleshing out this redesign to the extent I did my last one.
Thoughts?
6:03pm: Fixed some oddities with the Twitter thingy on the front page.
6:09pm: Adjusted a few of the links/images.
6:15pm To show off how the mobile photos work, I added one. Take a look at the front page now.
11:25pm Fixed the archive.
11:35pm Added a link to the videos section to the header and increased the font size of the front page.
April 8th, 4:00pm Got the cron job for Mobile photos working again, thanks to Lee Adkins for his help via Twitter / Email. Also now the Photos show up on the front page like Mobile photos.
April 15th, 10:10pm: I’ve made some small changes to the about page and fixed the photos and mobile photos pages for now until I can give them some real attention.
April 29th, 10:10am: I created 2 new header images, in addition to the one from the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps, and set them to randomly change as you bounce around the site. I hope to some day find the time to have as many as ten random header images.
Some other notes
No, this isn’t a Tumblr theme. This is Kubrick, originally developed by my friend Michael Heilemann for Wordpress, with a few tweaks. I like the simplicity that many Tumblr themes offer and so I decided to go more in that direction than in the direction I was going.
More soon.
17 Comments
Nice, you got that coded quickly! Looks awesome, and only one thing I would change, make more definition on the footer, rather than just it ending in white.
Looks great though, good work
Look like the ‘older entries’ links are returning 404 errors.
Also noticed the links in the top header/nav are hard to see since the background is dark as well.
Thats all for now…
I think it looks and feels good. My only problem was I couldn’t find your navigation at first. Am I supposed to use navigation or does everything hit the front page?
TD: Which links? You mean this link? Seems to work ok for me.
I really dig the paper bag look. Nice work.
Dude, love the new look. Well done.
Colin, this looks great man. Very simple, yet classy design. I would try and make the navigation stand out a bit more, unless that is the look you are going for.
Cheers!
I really like the new look. While part of me wants to chime in with something about the navigation being kinda hidden, the rest of me like the simplicity of tumblogs and can appreciate a focus on the content at hand rather than the other mess and clutter often found on blogs (mine included).
I will say that I thought the old image of you drawing the Viddler logo was rad and it would have been cool if it made the cut, but I can also understand the logic of keeping your avatar/icon consistent across as many platforms as possible (makes it easier for people to connect the dots, right?)
Anyway, done rambling. Good job so far.
Colin,
If you go to ‘notes>older entries link’ it returns an error. Same goes for the ‘Photos’ and ‘Links’ pages.
OH yeah, like everyone else has said, the design looks great. Easy to use and read.
td: I see it now. It is a Wordpress thing. It wants /category/ in there. I’m going to write a plugin to fix that. Good catch, thanks!
Thank you all for your feedback so far. Please drop any suggestions in. You guys “have” to read this site, not me, I’d rather everyone else be as happy as me.
Alright, here are a couple more random things that you don’t have to do but just wondered about them so I’m letting you know…
Link styles: there are currently 7 different link styles:
- “Hi, I’m colin” — white text, black background, no hover state
- nav links — white text, black background, hovers to gray background
- entry titles — dark gray hovering to blue
- footer and sub nav text — blue hovering to dark blue with underline
- sidebar text — black with light gray background, no hover state
- twitter div — block text anchored with no hover state
- time stamp/comment count – light gray with underline on hover
and I’m wondering if any of these could be trimmed off. Hope I’m not stepping on any toes, just wondering out loud.
Also, the large, italic ‘Who?’ header in the sidebar seems out of place and out of step with the rest of the site.
Alright, I’ll shut up now.
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TD: All excellent observations. I’d love to trim down that list you so graciously created. I’ll update this post with what I end up going with. Thanks for taking the time to create the list!
Love the new look. The Tumblr type format suits you well since you love to post links and photos daily. I’m wondering if I should try and adopt this format on my blog.
If you are going for simplicity you got it. But as for me I like a busy/full site. So I enjoy seeing links or some kind of meny structure. But, one thing I would suggest for the Mobile category. When you click on mobile images you don’t see pictures when it lest the entries. Some people may assume it is broken and move on. Other my notice they have to click on the title to go to the post and view the image.
Okay I am done with my long comment.
I was wondering why, when I visit your site, I get a couple of spammy pop-ups that load Google and a website called heatbod.net that sells a weight loss management program and various “enlargement” products? These pop-ups continue whenever I click to read a post.
I made a video of the pop-ups http://www.viddler.com/explore/justjason/videos/124/.
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