Comments on: Planned Site Redesign

By: lukeprog

lukeprog — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 05:13:13 +0000

Evolution SWAT,

Please do try to explain what could be improved about navigation. That is huge.

By: Evolution SWAT

Evolution SWAT — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 03:12:15 +0000

I also agree with Mark. Your blog has a very original feel to it. Your prototype looks fine, but less original, which I think would hurt your blog.

I do think you could improve the navigation on your website. Sometimes it is hard to find things. I will try to elaborate on this later (I’m not sure how to explain it now.)

Oh, and I would up the quality of the background picture too.

What internet explorer bugs are there? I’m using ie right now and I don’t have any problems. Also, anyone who ever comments at Pharyngula would probably not notice any performance issues here :)

By: lukeprog

lukeprog — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 00:20:21 +0000

Tshepang,

I’ve tried that in the past with IntenseDebate and Disqus, but they caused some problems.

By: Tshepang Lekhonkhobe

Tshepang Lekhonkhobe — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 23:43:20 +0000

maybe u can add a link on your blog to some good quality browser (having trouble viewing this site? try this browser)

By: Tshepang Lekhonkhobe

Tshepang Lekhonkhobe — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 23:36:55 +0000

just some suggestions:

* due to the large number of comments this blog gets, maybe some threading would help, EG http://lwn.net/Articles/380073/, since I often get lost in the backs and forths
* this blog’s design ‘feels’ more fresh than the proposed design, and can you pls up the resolution of the clouds a bit because they look like they pixelate

By: lukeprog

lukeprog — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:06:15 +0000

drj,

One problem with that is that if I allow the body column to expand, then text lines can grow from 60 characters long to 200 characters long, which is very daunting to read.

By: lukeprog

lukeprog — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:04:58 +0000

piero,

An interesting thought. The problem is that many comments here are very long and involve numerous quotes, and I think a bolder highlight like my design will be easier to follow in the comments section.

By: lukeprog

lukeprog — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:03:28 +0000

Mark,

Those are valuable comments, thanks.

By: lukeprog

lukeprog — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:02:40 +0000

One person has mentioned that they updated Java and now my site works for them. I don’t know why, since obviously my site does not use Java. But that’s an intermediate solution while ya’ll wait for the redesign.

By: drj

drj — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 15:34:57 +0000

I’d like to see the main content column change so that it will expand and contract when you resize a browser window. The current, inflexible and narrow view in the center is extremely cumbersome and makes long discussions hard to parse.

I think that’s pretty essential, in fact.

By: John D

John D — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:58:12 +0000

I must say I like the current design a lot. And it presents no problems on safari.

That said, the proposed design looks pretty good. I would like it if you could keep the rounded floating boxes. That’s an aesthetically pleasing feature of the present design.

I can’t really talk though, given the crummy design of my own blog.

By: piero

piero — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:58:34 +0000

I like your proposed design a lot: it looks cooler and simpler. My only complaint would be that the shaded bar highlighting a comment’s author, though attractive, is perhaps too large and obstrusive: it would imply more scrolling. What about a modest underline or a bullet?

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:12:45 +0000

Have to share marks thoughts, although i dont see any performance issues on my mac, I do love your graphical style. particularly the pictures preceding posts and the “breezy optimistic and intellectually curious” description.

Keep up the good work. Looking forward to your new podcast re counter-apologetics.

Maybe you might consider interviewing those light hearted chaps at “Reasonable Doubts” ( or letting them interview you :) )

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 08:36:12 +0000

I did; that’s what I was referring to by “conventional blog layout” (although maybe “conventional blog theme” would’ve been more accurate). It seems to me that the Aero theme is very well-suited to the fancy graphical content you frequently append to your posts, which wouldn’t look as natural in a standard “three-rectangle” design or whatever. It’s also clear that you’re trying hard to make your blog distinctive among atheism blogs in a bunch of ways, and I felt the unorthodox theme facilitated that by giving your site some design elements (e.g., the clouds, the rounded free-floating boxes, the color palette) that I now completely identify with Common Sense Atheism, and which cohere well with the overall tone of the blog (breezy, optimistic and intellectually curious). I’m not sure you could retain this in that boring, greyscale format you have in mind. But I’m no graphic designer, so these are just my own idiosyncratic opinions. And probably a performance upgrade is more important.

By: lukeprog

lukeprog — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 07:57:39 +0000

Mark,

Did you look at the screenshot I put up? What do you think of that?

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 06:32:44 +0000

The site does go quite slow for me (especially when I try to write comments), but I hope you’d keep the layout. A lot of your graphics wouldn’t look as good on a conventional blog layout.

By: lukeprog

lukeprog — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 05:38:39 +0000

Thematic does look pretty cool, though Thesis looks like it may be easier to tweak once my hired designer is done with it, and also there seem to be more developers for Thesis than for Thematic.

By: Jason Berberich

Jason Berberich — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 05:26:52 +0000

If you haven't actually paid for Thesis yet, I highly recommend taking a look at the Thematic Framework. It's completely free and open source, and is comparable in features. It might require a little extra PHP coding on your part, however.