I decided to give this blog a new design – this is a prototype and I am still optimizing , but the basic idea is like this:
Modern look, two sidebar columns where both pointers to conversations and syndicated content go, and a header & footer area where admin stuff and additional links (blogrolls!) go.
Overall it’s based on Anton Schevchuk’s constructor theme set, that allows for a lot of customizing and tweaking.
The technology underneath is basically the same as before, the only thing I added was the Google Buzz wordpress plugin that provides the nifty buzz widget in the middle column. That said, it’s placed there, ie. in the “conversation sidebar” for a reason: I find that I engage a lot more in dicusssions on buzz – much more than on Twitter – so this is a place I find worthy mentioning and linking to.
What do you think of the new design?
The look is nice and clean. The content column should be wider, in my opinion – from Firefox is looks like ~half the width is taken over by sidebars. And the links in the sidebars don’t have obvious hyperlinks (until you mouseover). Looks like a lot of text – particularly the parts in German that I can’t read.
My honest opinion:
I like the design (specially the bottom part)
2 columns might be better
The fonts and sizes are a bit mixed up
The header needs more work (menu font too small, 4 mm white separator needed before blue block)
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hm, verwirrend viel in die screen-ansicht hineingestopft, IMHO. erinnert ein bisschen an "your company's blog": http://is.gd/9Xxrj
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Jack – thanks a lot for your feedback. I will give it a try to widen up the layout, right now I try to cater for the unhappy folks without a widescreen, ie. I stay at 1000px
And yes, I should write more imn English, but be assured that most of the things in German are of local relevance only, feel free to apply a robust filter.
That said it’s a good idea to translate at least some of the meatier posts into English too.
Cheers,
Martin
Same as Jack … nice, clean, but a bit overwehlming in the information that is proposed …
Xavier,
very good point – now I have cut down on the number of items presented and I might even install a simpler single-post view (but I need to find out about this a little bit …).
Indeed I wanted to keep it simple and clean (really ..) – and I might even reduce it back to one sidebar. Who needs all this syndicated tumblr/delicious/other blog links after all
excellent points and feedback – thus I updated the perpetual beta – much cleaner look now at http://www.frogpond.de/2010/03/new-blog-design-what-do-you-think/
- only 2 columns (Matthias, right! – but I will leave the fonts as they are, it's only one font-family already, optimizing this would be really hard for me …)
- the header is added to the todos … I will ask a friend for help and see what gives
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@elsua Luis thanks a lot, made it now even more simple due to crowdsourced feedback – http://bit.ly/bGaHtR and buzz at http://bit.ly/99nSQU
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It really improved a lot!
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Martin,
I like it. Nice and clean & not too densely packed. Looks great on my 10″ ThinkPad screen (in FFX). Thanks for the pointer to the Buzz WP plugin. Hadn’t thought to add that to my blog.
Danke!
Thanks Megan for the kind feedback, I hope that now I have narrowed down the design to something that makes sense and looks decent.
PS. you’re speaking German OR you’re very polite. Both reasons rock
Das Logo muss oben links stehen, als erster Blickfänger für das Auge. Unser Auge sucht intuitiv erst links nach einem visuellen Anker und nicht ganz rechts außen. Ansonsten würde ich nur noch die Spaltenbreite verschieben. Das Textfeld ist etwas zu breit in der Relation zur Sidebar.
Matthias, mit dem Logo hast du natürlich recht – aber diesen kleinen Ungehorsam leiste ich mir mit dem Design. Die Rechtsbündigkeit leitet so auch schlüssig zur Sidebar, die ich jetzt – dank dir – ein bissele verbreitert habe.