Site Redesign

Site Redesign
Written by Samuel in News

So today we launched a new website design with one purpose in mind: to deliver more content in more ways. This meant expanding the site's width, creating more "linkage" throughout the site, and preparing room for even more content and features in the future. We also sharpened some weaker elements throughout. And of course, it was a perfect opportunity to rewrite the site in valid XHTML/CSS.

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Community Comments

Paul Ocal
12/7/2007 2:11:09 AM

Wow, Im witnessing the changes...

Brad Pyne
12/7/2007 7:40:39 AM

Looks good!

Sharon
12/7/2007 7:56:19 AM

I've noticed that more and more blogs use the wider sidebar to accommodate for more info and navigation. This looks nice...

Chris Pugh
12/7/2007 9:15:11 AM

I really like the changes you have made. Thanks for all that you do.

David
12/7/2007 12:05:26 PM

The new design looks awesome! Nice one :)

Noel Hurtley
12/7/2007 1:12:56 PM

Looks great, but the fixed background makes the scrolling annoyingly choppy. I'd recommend not using them until browsers better support them.

Landon Beaver
12/7/2007 1:27:06 PM

Nice. I like it a lot. One problem I see is that the side bar image is only on one side of the container in the firefox browser (for me at least). In IE it works fine though. Other than that looks better and more user friendly.

Thanks for all the good info and ideas!

Brett
12/7/2007 2:13:15 PM

Looks good.. I'm sure it's something that will continue to evolve. I think every site that we build for ourselves, we always want to fix little bits and pieces..

You've done an awesome job with fixing the structure to help accommodate the users and functionality while keeping the content consistent.

Samuel
12/7/2007 2:15:51 PM

Thanks for all the comments. I enjoy refining one's craft through the input of others :)

@Noel - It's kind of funny. I just had someone else say the fixed BG is a great improvement (as the "pixely" BG can be weary on the eyes as it scrolls). I'll try it on other computers and OS's and see what it looks like. (BTW, your photography on your site is amazing...)

@Landon - That may be a cache problem as I encountered the same thing -- since those side graphics are utilized in the CSS, browsers have a tendency to cache them often. After I deleted my FF cache, it was fine. That may work...

Landon
12/7/2007 3:13:26 PM

Yep, works fine now!

Mark Abucayon
12/7/2007 7:58:41 PM

wow thats nice...you really prepared that for us? I cant wait to see the new design of this website. Yes, website looks really good if it is created Valid XHTML. strict or transitional? wow nice one. Thanks...

Ben Henschel
12/9/2007 1:19:39 PM

Looks good, I really like it. Plus it is always a good thing to go the extra mile to have valid XHTML and CSS. Good Work!

Brett
12/10/2007 12:26:53 AM

Samuel.. I might be blind or just new to the Internets, but I think it would be helpful to have a "Previous Posts" or something at the bottom, just to keep browsing through the older posts.

Samuel
12/10/2007 11:21:54 AM

@Brett

No, you're right. Thanks for the heads-up.

Paul Ocal
12/11/2007 1:44:59 PM

Is that stroke on the wake up later on top new? It looks different... or was it always there?

Samuel
12/11/2007 2:04:28 PM

@Paul -

Yeah. That's new and a few other things. I have OCD with website details and am the type who will constantly change things until the client/mob/wife/voices tell me to stop.

Dito
12/18/2007 12:52:27 PM

Nice clean site. Looks very professional.

Matjaz Korosec
12/24/2007 1:45:20 AM

OK, the site looks very nice, but what about appropriate markup? Your article title is in label tag (whit class title) ... what are heading tags for? No <p> tag for regular text and thousand of <br> tags? Using tables for non tabular data and so on ... If you redesigned your page why leave old markup (or is this new front-end)? Didn't you write a SEO tutorial?

Samuel
12/24/2007 4:48:56 AM

@Matjaz -

You're right in that I need to implement header tags and that's one of the many things still on my to-do list.

As for the tables or <br> tags, I hold the belief that they mean microscopically little to nothing in terms of SEO (especially when compared to content and links). I also am a pragmatist and believe (and perhaps am wrong) that bringing a site to only new markup is a task of diminishing returns, especially when a site's primary task is communication of content. True, I will eventually get to it (I hope :) and I may offend and lose a few who check a website's source code with tighter standards than I. But all things considered, I'm okay with it though I continually try to be more up to snuff...

(Then again, I've also been known not to use third-normal form in DB design or function declaration comments in programming :)

Luthar
12/24/2007 7:54:26 AM

Using tables is no big deal to me.

C'mon, even Google uses tables for non-tabular data on their results page. And I highly doubt a company with a $200,000,000,000 market cap cares that they're using "old markup" :)

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