Trying Out A New Site Design

• Mar 07, 2007
• 23 Comments
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Thought I should take advantage of my latest bout of insomnia and do a slight redesign of my website. My goal was to clean it up a bit so it looks less crowded and cluttered.

I also removed the Flickr images because the script was slow to load and caused my site to load slowly. I didn’t think it added a whole lot anyways. I may look into creating a server-side flickr control later.

Here’s a screenshot, in case you’re reading this in an aggregator.

Let me know what you think of the design. My next step will be to focus more on usability. If there’s anything that annoys you about my site (here’s where Jeff will chime in) do let me know.

What others have said

Omer van Kloeten Mar 07, 2007 3:07 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

I like it, but it has some problems. Stop reading this comment at any time if you think I'm nitpicking :)

1. The ads are too prominent. I'd place them in the/a sidebar. Those of us with AdBlock also can only see a huge whitespace there.
2. The logo is small and ends abruptly (probably to accommodate the ads).
3. I'd make the surrounding border a shade of blue instead of black, since it's a bit too bold. It also ends around the 'useful references' section, instead of at the end of the page.

Marcos Mar 07, 2007 4:11 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

Thats look really good =)

Much more clear and readable, a big step forward in usability.

Keep in the good work
Marcos

sasha Mar 07, 2007 5:21 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

Very nice... much better than previous design...
Will you remove horizontal scroll bar in browser (I tried IE, FF and O) because it doesn't seem you made it on purpose? Or did you?

Michele Mar 07, 2007 5:27 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

Nice, but the first thing I want to see in this page is the post, instead I see Ads... This is the only defect.

Michele.

Krenn Mar 07, 2007 7:00 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

Not great in IE7. When viewing individual pages (not the home page), the "blogpost" section almost always has vertical and horizontal scrollbars, depending on the width of the window. It's not a problem in IE6 or Firefox, so it may just be that I never noticed it before.

What's really odd is the XFN link doesn't move when you scroll, so it can end up on top of the text...

Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP] Mar 07, 2007 7:46 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

Not bad... However, using IFrames for the entry? It's quite gaudy.

Additionally, I have a horizontal scrollbar, indicating that the page is much wider than it actually is.

This is using the latest version of IE7 on Windows XP SP 2.

Jon Galloway Mar 07, 2007 9:07 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

Very cool. I really like the wider layout. It's a lot easier to read.

Things are shifting around a bit as they load or as I type comments (FF2). Commonlayout.css seems to have a character encoding issue (begins with ).

I'm taking a crack at horizontal scrollbar issue - I'll let you know if I find anything.

Phil Scott Mar 07, 2007 9:50 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

For what it's worth, the left:60% on #searchWrapper is throwing things off. I think it's keeping it's width and just shoving it 60% to the right. Adding something like width:40% to the element should get rid of the horizontal scrollbar.

Scott Hanselman Mar 07, 2007 9:53 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

Yikes...the scrollbars in the post (is that an iFrame I wonder also) aren't working for me. Otherwise, it's lovely.

Haacked Mar 07, 2007 10:00 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

Thanks all! I'm not using an IFrame, I have overflow:auto set. I'm not seeing the scrollbar. I'm going to switch back to the old design till I work out these issues. Thanks!

tod hilton Mar 07, 2007 10:06 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

Site looks great! :)

I'm seeing the extra horizontal space & scroll bar too. I took a look at your style sheet and dropped you an email.

Haacked Mar 07, 2007 1:15 PM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

@Michele and Omer, yeah, I need to figure out a balance with the ads. If I'm going to make any income, they need to be prominent. But if they are too prominent, I know they can be obnoxious.

One thought I had was to only show them to people coming from Google searches, Digg.com, etc...

I need some way to pay for hosting etc and to support the time I spend on writing open source software. Ad revenue could be a big help in that regard.

For now, it's helped in that I can continue to work at reduced pay for my own company during the start-up phase.

I'll mull this over.

Brandon Mar 07, 2007 3:27 PM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

Stupid Question, but what is up with the Gravatars and the autogen image?

Haacked Mar 07, 2007 3:38 PM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

The autogen image is an Identicon.

I'm using an identicon as the fallback image for users who don't have a gravatar. Read about gravatars here.

Simone Mar 08, 2007 3:22 PM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

I love the content footer...
more Web2.0 than before :)

Haacked Mar 08, 2007 3:36 PM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

Thanks Simo!

engtech Mar 09, 2007 12:03 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

This could be a source of some feedback: http://www.hallwaytesting.com/

I'd get rid of the "archives" sidebar all together... people never click on them. Click on the archive page is much better.

Maybe add some copywrite near the subscription icons to encourage subscriptions? http://copyblogger.com

Haacked Mar 09, 2007 12:30 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

Thanks for the resources! I'll take a look. This is exactly the type of feedback I was hoping for.

Haacked Mar 09, 2007 1:56 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

@engtech: What about the sidebar categories? Should I get rid of those too?

Michele Mar 09, 2007 7:22 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

Hey I'm not against Ads :) but I think that content is the important thing.
I think the sidebar can be a suitable place to show Ads...

Michele Mar 09, 2007 7:38 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

Hey I'm not against Ads : ), but content is the important thing. I think the sidebar can be a suitable place to show Ads

engtech Mar 09, 2007 11:59 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

I wouldn't get rid of the sidebar categories -- people actually use those to find related posts. :)

holger velbert Mar 11, 2007 1:12 AM

# re: Trying Out A New Site Design

for me the most important think in blog's design is font typo. here you did an excellent job.
the look and feel is a little bit boring and i agree to michele's coment concerning positioning the adds


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