When we decided that our template needed a remake several years ago, we knew it was going to be a long and difficult process. We offered you a chance to give us some input in a recent post and now we are releasing the first iteration of the new template.
For those that saw the mockups and gave us your opinion, you will be happy to see we actually listened to many thoughts and incorporated them in our final design. We worked with some people at Google to determine what features should be tossed and what to keep, and what we have ended up with, is what you see. We also acknowledge that not everyone will love the change, but we feel it is a move in the right direction. We’re really happy how it has ended up.
I want to offer a special thanks to [Stephanie Froehner] who put tons of time into making this template pretty, even if it has been hacked and slashed a bit since then.
Join me after the break for an explanation of some of the new features and upcoming features.
New features that are active right now:
Filed under: news
For those that saw the mockups and gave us your opinion, you will be happy to see we actually listened to many thoughts and incorporated them in our final design. We worked with some people at Google to determine what features should be tossed and what to keep, and what we have ended up with, is what you see. We also acknowledge that not everyone will love the change, but we feel it is a move in the right direction. We’re really happy how it has ended up.
I want to offer a special thanks to [Stephanie Froehner] who put tons of time into making this template pretty, even if it has been hacked and slashed a bit since then.
Join me after the break for an explanation of some of the new features and upcoming features.
New features that are active right now:
- Related hacks: After each story there are links to 5 hacks from the same category.
- Staff picks: In the right column is a section for “staff picks” each week the staff agrees on a select few posts to add to the “staff picks”.
- Social media stuff: You can now connect to social networks easier. We’re not forcing that on you. Don’t worry.
- Popular categories list in the right column: Displays a list of the categories that have posts with the most comment activity.
- turn on the lights: a button to switch to a light colored theme for those that find the black and green to be too high contrast.
- Possibly a new commenting system: There are several other systems available to us. We need to do more research before making any decisions.
- double spacing: needs to be a little tighter
- post titles shouldn’t change size when you click on a post
- favicon needs uploaded
- related post formatting is not there for some reason.
- speed improvements (changing the social buttons at the end of posts just helped a bunch)
Filed under: news