December 09, 2003 | View Comments (12) | Category: Whitespace
Summary: Redesign: Phase 2 comes sooner than expected.
I have now moved on to phase 2 of the redesign much faster than I thought I would, but the feedback you guys gave me validated what I was thinking already. The main issue seemed to be how to handle recent entries. As many of you pointed out you would like a better method of handling these and from the beginning I had been thinking about the importance of showing more metadata for recent entries.
Since I am a frequent poster to this site (almost daily) it is quite possible that many people will miss a few entries if they do not hit the site up frequently. With the phase 1 design you could see the most recent entries, but you were unaware of when they were posted or whether they were even worth commenting on. If come to this site hourly, daily, or whenever, it would be nice to see when new comments were posted to an entry. With phase 1 you could only immediately see that with the most recent entry.
These facts may not be important to many of you because you see this as a personal site. However, take into consideration that this site is part of a business site and the longer I keep people on here the better I have a chance of making a sale. When people can see more information and get to it quickly they are more apt to explore. Having a list of recent entries is good and may entice people to click on them, but having a list of entries where people can see the excerpt, date, and comments is even better. However, this is where most designers fall on their face because they get information happy and try to get as much information as possible on the page. Information overload does exist. Avoid it.
Why not list more recent entries though? Well going on totally unscientific data, once an entry gets more than 6 days old people stop posting comments. After two weeks I close comments on the entries anyways. So with this in mind I didn't see a need to include more than 7 entries on the homepage. However, the individual pages (soon to be redesigned) will have the most recent entries list above the categories list because the content of the page changes.
The only other cosmetic change had to do with the color scheme. This will change again, but I didn't like the "cold" look of the site either so I changed it back to the old colors. If you notice the header for categories is a different color than the title of the entries (on the homepage). I did this because having the categories header the same color as the other headers gave it a feel that it was the same type of content. I wanted to distinguish that it was a completely different section from the rest and therefore the color was changed.
Phase 3 will include small changes to help users navigate around the site better and some redesigning of second-tier pages (archives, individual). Phase 4 will be the aesthetic phase where I will add a little more visual ooomph to the site and work on guiding the reader's eyes around the site.
Thank you for all the insight during Phase 1. If you don't mind I would like for everyone to sound off again on Phase 2 to see if you agree/disagree with my ideas.
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IF you're playing around with boxes and columns, take a look at my Box Builder at http://flurf.net/boxy - it's just a quicky tool written in PHP, XML, XSLT, HTML, CSS, RSVP, QED, IMHO, YMMV, ETC. It lets you design a layout and draws it for you, giving the CSS and HTML. Deeply kludgey, but it works well enough in IE and Mozilla, so I think it's worth telling people about.
Eric TF Bat
I was actually considering something very much along these lines for a redesign I'm working on, though I would be moving almost all of the sidebar contents on my site below the actual content.
I'm not sure I'll end up doing that though. But for what you're trying to achieve it works well. Personally I've syndicated you so it matters little to me.
Michael Heilemann (http://binarybonsai.com)
After hitting your new sight since it went down, I can't say I like it.
The "squared" listing is really hard to understand at a glance. I didn't know which were the recent articles and which were ones I has read. I had to actually "read" the headers rather than just recognising them. Not good - too much effort.
Maybe some sort of 3-3-3 setup might work? -
3 main large items - the latest three posts.
3 secondary headers, the 3 previous/older posts.
3 tiny posts (maybe just subject lines?) which are "relevant links" to the main three posts.
I'm also having to "read" the capitalised headers. Words that are capitalised take a lot more effort to recognise them. Correctly capitalised sencences are much easier to read and are easily scannable. Don't forget to consider that most online content is scanned when you do a re-design.
You won't be loosing a visitor though - the content'll keep me coming back for more. Just passing on my thoughts.
dysfunksional.monkey (http://dysfunksion.co.uk)
Josh: What browser are you using? The recent entries are supposed to be below the categories.
I do think the visual hierarchy could be improved to add some distinction between sections, but for today I am focused on layout and the functionality of it. However, mayeb there is no functionality without a clear visual distinction...
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
I agree about the capitalization of the links ... makes it kinda hard to read ... also, the reddish color doesn't add much value as is ... also - maybe a nice title graphic/logo for whitespace to brand your site better ... I do love the simple, clean layout and the content of course :) Keep it up!
chuck (http://www.geocities.com/chuckmallott)
I have to say that I like the redesign so far and look forward to it constantly evolving. The only issue I had is the order of the past entries on the Whitespace homepage. Of course, all you have to do is look at the date to see which are the latest ones.
But it's great seeing the evolution and the site is clean and the content great as always.
Todd (http://www.monkeyhouselounge.com/tcoleman2/)
I've become used to your tinkering with the site, but was a little surprised by the drastic change this morning. I gotta say I don't really like the recent entries section. I think it throws off the balance by extending across all 3 columns. Maybe current entry up top like now, 4 recent entries below it, and the rest of the weeks entries in a list on the right, above or below the categories.
When in doubt, go for the simplest solution. That's what attracted me to your site in the first place.
clint (http://www.516media.com)
Great comments so far. I will just say that phase 3 is looking (to me) 100% better than this. So much so I am tempted to put it up right now, but am holding out to see what others have to say.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Paul, I'm using Firebird 0.7 but the layout has changed again so it's not out of wack anymore on my browser.
I must say i don't like the current look of the "Recent Entries". I was a little lost at first about what was most recent until I saw the dates. But still the 6 box rectangle under the content just doesn't feel natural to me. It doesn't convey a timeline of entries to me.
Joshua
You could definitely do with some space after the paragraph teaser for each of the three recent blog entries at the top of the main page. You need some form of visual separator between each (space, hr, etc) to separate them -- currently there is more space between the preceeding heading and the the para, rather than after the para.
Justin French
Just after I posted, I noticed the CSS had been updated (dramaticaly??), so disregard my post -- must have had the older one cached.
Justin French
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#1
Paul, the "Recent Entries" seemed to be pushed down below the categories because they seem to be too big. I would suggest limiting the width so it won't get pushed downward. I like the new "Recent Entries" much more usable. Still to much blue for my taste. Kinda looking like a patriotic site due to the red, white and blue.
Joshua