New Design

[Chris]

Here is what we have so far for the new design on this site. Since this site is really about the community, figured I would let you all have a sneak peek and a chance to give preemptive comments.

http://benpartch.com/beta/clients/aspen/wsp/
http://benpartch.com/beta/clients/aspen/wsp/article.html
http://benpartch.com/beta/clients/aspen/wsp/seo.html

Ignore the poem etc bits at the top right.

[AmbulanceBlues]

Nice. I like how the sections are all broken down on the front page.

[KelliShaver]

It looks good, simple, but easy to read. Nice colors.

[Nico]

I like it a lot. Very clear & simple, but also cool.
The only thing is that it doesn't have too much color. Im kind of missing the colors of the current design.

[Chris]

Technically it has the same amount of colors (red, white, black, gray), but you're right, there is no long the big red bar across the top. The red is also obviously a little darker.

[Torito]

Nice and tidy, I like it. Kind of miss the brighter colors a bit too.
Almost validate HTML 4.01 Strict, just a closed meta tag in the head.
Nice work.

[Mike]

It reminds me a bit of one of sitepoints designs. I think the header needs a bit more colour, but I like the content part.

My only complaint is that its a little bland.

[Chris]

The new design is live on the blog:

http://www.websitepublisher.net/blog/

How do you like it with the beige background instead of the gray?

[Mike]

Can you add something where all that white space is?

[Chris]

What? At the top? There may end up being some text there eventually, or a banner ad. Not sure.

[Xander]

I like it, I thought it was too bland at first but its grown on me. Although I agree with Mike filling in the whitespace at the top would be good.

[Dan Morgan]

Like it - much cleaner.

On the blog page, unless the current placement of the adsense leader is based on optimization for CTR or a future link unit, it could use some padding at the top beneath the nav bar.

[Chris]

you're right, its meant for adsense (the unit is supposed to butt right up against it).

[Generalissimo]

Can you add something where all that white space is?

Didn't we all go through a stage of wanting more and more whitespace? I actually think it looks good as whitespace, having adsense there might seem like over egging the pudding since theres a 728x90 adsense below it.

I do like the new design though, perhaps I've grown used to this design, but I'm sure I'll grow used to the new one, it's far more accessible too.

[KLB]

WOW! I just saw the new design today -- I don't know how I missed this thread. I really like the new look it is so clean and so professional looking. The logo came out great too.

When do you start to bring elements of the new design into these forums (e.g. like in the header area).

I bet you could fairly easily bring in a new header and navbar (and maybe update colors) without having to muck with your templates too awfully much.

[Chris]

Its just this time of year delaying me. I'm so busy on weekdays with my ecommerce stuff, and then weekends often family stuff.

[Cutter]

Totally missed this! Yeah it looks very nice & professional.

I'm not quite sure what you could do, but it seems like the dark red bars (navigation, on the blog the posted in: by: comments.) I am thinking the main things you want to stick out are the logo and header..

not quite sure how it would be done, but I think with changing or subdueing some colors.

[Chris]

Well, its up on the forums... and what a pain in the ***. Trying to get the CSS of the header to still work when it is in vb was such a pain.

[Emancipator]

i dig it chris, and VB is a pain period, its why im not using it anymore :)

[Blue Cat Buxton]

Looks great; different, but smart

[KLB]

Fantastic! I feel your pain on making the change, but you did a great job!

[Westech]

I like it. It looks great!

[agua]

I like the design - nice and clean.

I'm not sure about the grays (or greys) and beige though - I think you need to go with one or the other.

[AmbulanceBlues]

I like the grays and beige. The only thing that sticks out to me is that it seems like there's a whooole lot of header with a lot of whitespace before you get to any content.

[Chris]

the grays and beige are just neutral colors meant to lessen the overall screen brightness to make it easier to read. Too much white on a screen and it ends up too bright.

All that whitespace to the right of the logo will be used eventually.

[KLB]

My only thought for change is that one of us who are better with graphics should give you some new buttons that match this theme better. Maybe I'll try to take a crack at this.

By the way, this color scheme is my favorite color scheme and is very similar to what I use on my chemistry site.

[tonyjk3]

Wow - I like the new design - it looks especially good on the forums with the tanish background. And the new logo is great, who designed it?

[agua]

No - what I mean is that I think the colors clash... either go with all different tones of gray OR beige - but not the 2 together.

Thats just my opinion though :)

[AmbulanceBlues]

Is it just me? The visited links in the top navigation bar don't show up. I see "produce - promote - profit" but not "home", "forum", or "blog". When I hover they are identifiable but not very well.

[KLB]

I see those links just fine even after visiting them.

[Chris]

What browser are you using? And does it happen when viewing the blog too? Or just the forums?

[Nico]

I know what he's talking about...
Once you visited some of the top nav pages and go to the forums, the visited links blend with the navigation...so you can't see them. You can still see them when you mouse over though.
It's only happening in the Forums and in IE 6. Everything is working in FF 1.5, at least for me.

[Chris]

Hmm I don't have IE 6 on this PC anymore, I'll have to try another one.

[agua]

I checked on IE6 both the blog and forum and all seemed fine to me.

The style sheet seems OK too.

[piniyini]

The header screams sitepoint to me, everything else is cool

[AmbulanceBlues]

With IE7 on my laptop it's all visible. At work, with IE6, the visited links weren't showing up.

[Chris]

Ya, it is similar to SP, but its not like they pioneered the use of a horizontal menu.

[Mike]

I've just got back home to see the design in place, and it's really grown on me now it's implemented into the forums. I still say something needs to be put at the top, but apart from that I really like it.

[Torito]

It's growing on me now that I'm getting used to it. The color combination is better for the eyes too .. eye-friendly.

[cinemaeye]

I like it. Good job. I do like the beige on the blog page a lot better than the beige on the forum pages though. It might be cool to keep the same color going throughout. Just my 2-cents. The site is awesome!

[Chris]

The blog actually has a textured background, there are very faint strips. I couldn't do it here because the Adsense ads cannot blend with a graphic based background. So I pulled the main beige color from the graphic and used it.

[fredarn]

Nice, but i think it is a little to empty on the top.
Placing a small ad in the middle-right part of the header would actually make the design better :)

[agua]

The blog actually has a textured background, there are very faint strips.Maybe thats it Chris - tone down the beige to make it a little lighter - try #D6D5BD or #DCDCCD

[Erin]

Wow, very nice. Much better than all the red.

[Chris]

the new design should be live on the main site. If there are any errors please let me know.

[stymiee]

Looks really good. Now are you going to do any additional advertising for this site?

[Xander]

Just noticed it, got caught out as I'm used to clicking on forums on the right nav not left, but will quickly adjust. It looks good, nice and clean layout, although I think it may have a bit too much white in it - but thats me I prefer darker background colours for reading.

[Chris]

Looks really good. Now are you going to do any additional advertising for this site?

In good time. First I have to finish my content rewrite.

[adm78]

nice improvement! i went into archives.org to compare with the old design... no comparison :thumbs_up :thumbs_up :thumbs_up

[BGray]

I love the design Chris. Simple and clean. Really nice job.
Any reason you don't have adsense or something else down the left hand side under the menu on the main page?

Seems too blank for a good publisher not to capitalize on. ;)

[Chris]

Well the menu is going to grow, but yes, I plan on adding adsense to that spot.

The issue with it though is that on article pages I hit the 3 ads per page, on the homepage and category pages though I do not. So, if I added a normal unit it'd make it 4 units on a page for article pages... which Google is okay with I hear, they just automatically do not serve the 4th spot.

[chromate]

I like the new design in general. Looks really good on the homepage. However, The background on the forum pages is much darker and doesn't look as good? Why hasn't the forum got the same background as the homepage?

Also... I've just gotta say this... The automatic linking when someone types ' adsense ' etc is really starting to get to me. I vote this auto-linking gets scrapped! ;) Sorry, but I just think users should be in complete control of the content they provide. When the link is inserted it looks like I'M intending to link to it - which I'm not. Just doesn't sit right with me.

EDIT... I've just realised that the link that gets inserted doesn't even work - which makes it tripple annoying! ;)

[Chris]

The inserted link doesn't work for you?

As for why it is there, it is just to make sure the main review threads remain the prime sources of information about the ad networks, rather than having individual user reviews scattered all over.

[Mike]

It doesn't work for me either, it says I don't have permission.

How about if it was just the first mention of the network that was linked? I don't mind it when it's linked to once, but sometimes it can be three or four times and like Chromate says, it can get annoying...

[Chris]

whoops, I had removed the thread to a hidden forum.

For awhile there some spam bot would keep posting a reply to the thread a couple times a day, I must have accidentially removed the entire thread when I meant to just remove a post. It is back now.

[Chris]

You know when I added the feature everyone liked it...

anyways, it is now changed to just once per post.

[chromate]

I think Mike may mean once per page? I think that would be much better. For example, in the post above mine, there're two other posts that mention adsense.

I didn't think it would matter when you first introduced it. But I didn't realise how much these terms get repeated all over the place.

On a basic level, I still don't like the idea of the links being inserted into my posts. It's like I'm indorsing what's being linked to, which isn't my intention. But anyway, I'm not going to moan about it...

[Xander]

I prefer the forum background colour to the white of the main site, too much white annoys my eyes even if it does tend to look more professional.

Regarding the autolinks like adsense/etc, I think most people will realize that its not a normal promoting link as its got the javascript hover and a link to a another thread not the site. I do find them annoying on some sites where they turn to adverts every second word but here its fine, I think.

[s2kinteg916]

how much it cost u for the design facelift ?

[fredarn]

I think Chris designed it all by himself.
Didn't you, Chris?

[Chris]

nope, Johnny Gulag did it, think it was like $200. The logo portion was from gfxcontests.com and was $100

[fredarn]

You paid 200 for the hole design, and 100 for for the logo?
hehe....

Anyway; Great design, one of the best i have EVER seen!

Does Johnny Gulag have a website? Maby i'll pay him for a new truemoneymaker.net design sometime... Would like to put it to my bookmarks..

[stymiee]

I think Ben Partch did it.

[s2kinteg916]

how about the template integration with wordpress ? seems time consuming ...

[Chris]

I think Ben Partch did it.
Well ya, thats his real name, Johnny Gulag is just his forum name.

[Johnny Gulag]

Wow, my ears we're burning and I see why now. :)

[stymiee]

how about the template integration with wordpress ? seems time consuming ...

Not if you are experienced. I can do it in under 15 minutes at this point if I also coded the template. Ben can probably do it in 10 minutes. :)

[stymiee]

Well ya, thats his real name, Johnny Gulag is just his forum name.

I totally missed a handful of posts when I made my reply. At first your post made no sense but now it does. :blush:

[Johnny Gulag]

Not if you are experienced. I can do it in under 15 minutes at this point if I also coded the template. Ben can probably do it in 10 minutes. :)Yeah WP is pretty easy to add to a layout. Once you get the hang of it. It took me awhile and then one day I thought Wow, this is way easier than I had been making it out to be. :blush:

I have done some where the client wanted it added to an already existing table based layout and it can be a bit tricky wading through the tag soup, but can be done. :)

[stymiee]

Yeah WP is pretty easy to add to a layout. Once you get the hang of it. It took me awhile and then one day I thought Wow, this is way easier than I had been making it out to be. :blush:

I have done some where the client wanted it added to an already existing table based layout and it can be a bit tricky wading through the tag soup, but can be done. :)

That would suck. I guess I'm spoiled by doing tableless layouts. :)

[fredarn]

Gulag; Maby i'll hire you for a design to truemoneymaker.net and maby also golfsiden.net...
But first i need to make some money on the sites ;)

[mikestrand]

love the new design, good job !

[MaxS]

Looks wonderful. Very easy to navigate and easy to read.

Nicely done!

(edit: it's kind of a minor complaint, but the fav icon is a bit strange? I can't tell what it is?)

[Johnny Gulag]

Looks wonderful. Very easy to navigate and easy to read.

Nicely done!

(edit: it's kind of a minor complaint, but the fav icon is a bit strange? I can't tell what it is?)It's the 3 webpages in the logo, me thinks. :)