The New Look TMV
Hello TMV readers and welcome to the new look. As you can see, it looks totally different from the previous site. First and foremost, I need to give credit to Nick at Elegant Themes for the awesome design. This is one of his stock designs (customized by yours truly). Without him, this redesign wouldn’t have happened. Here are the changes and explanation:
1. Removal of the large “The Moderate Voice” graphic and replaced with stylized text.
2. All posts are now in excerpt format. You get an excerpt of the posts and if you want to read more, click on the post title. The reason we did this is so the site would load faster, better organization, cleaner look, and emphasis on the article with the distraction of other articles (when you click the post title). The homepage should speed up since it’s not looking for Disqus comments until you click the individual post. This also keeps YouTube and other videos on the single post display, this speeding up the site.
3. Bigger sidebars. We will be adding some exciting content to the sidebars. Stay tuned.
4. Archive navigation. The site shows the most recent 30 posts on the front page. To read further back, utilize the “Archive” drop down list at the bottom of the site. Click on the month and you can go further back (with pages). This allows for a cleaner look with better functionality.
5. Image captions. Once all TMV authors and editors get familiar with the function, you can see small images on the homepage which gives you the full, properly justified/places image in the post when you click on the post title. This gives all TMV posts a more consistent and professional look.
6. Random blogroll. Since TMV’s blogroll was so long and cluttered the old site, we now have a random blogroll. Various blogs/sites will be shown with each page refresh. DO NOT WORRY (for those on the blogroll). Your site will be shown. We are testing this to see how it plays out.
7. Featured article. This is another test. For now, you will just see this article in all its glory on the top of the site. As we work through the functionality, we’ll be able to feature popular posts.
8. You will see the word “No categories” right below the TMV byline. That will disappear as we organize our categories.
We understand this is a big change but we are confident that this will work out for the better. In the coming days and weeks, we will be adding more content and working through any site issues that may arise. Thank you very much for your continued support and readership!
– The Moderate Voice Editorial Staff
UPDATE 05/29/09 @ 12:06AM EST: We will be sorting through the color contrast issue (minor) and getting our feed links back up later today.
UPDATE 05/29/09 @ 02:31PM EST: We are making several enhancements to the current design. They are longer post excerpts, more visible hyperlinks, navigation enhancements, and blogroll enhancements. Keep referring to this post for the latest information.
31 Responses to “The New Look TMV”
Very different and looking good. It's morning in TMV.
Thanks pacatrue. Still have to get some page navigation features smoothed out but it does look good!
Very clean, crisp, elegant design, T-Steel. And I really, really (add several more) *love* the new automatic excerpt feature. I always excerpted my longer posts (which is most of them, ahem!), but not everyone who writes here did that, and I must say it was annoying having to scroll through endlessly long posts to get to the next post. So thank you for that, especially.
The new design loads a lot more quickly.
Thanks!
It's hard to find the hyperlinks in the text.
Maybe there should be more contrast in the color?
Or maybe it's just me?
Your right GS about the hyperlinks. Working on that now.
Overall great redesign. Maybe in a week or two you could put up a 'tell us what you think' after we all get used to it.
And yep, much, much faster.
Yes, much faster
Getting the contrast better as well. We don't want tired eyes!
Hey, Tyrone. Enjoying my much faster TMV here….
One request: Something I routinely used in the old design was the comment count. This made it much easier to follow comment trail conversations, since I would not have to open the individual post to see if there was anything new. Any way to add a count under each post on the main page?
Thanks, T_Steel (and Nick!). Looks great and I agree there is faster loading, and (unfortunately) links that aren't easily recognizable. It'll be even better once that issue is solved!
This is great and much appreciated…. Great job, T_Steel!
The comment count and better link contrast will be fixed later today. It's one of those things where the obvious is what ya miss. But it's all good and easily correctable.
T_Steel, much appreciative for all the work you and everyone involved did on the overhaul. I certainly agree with others about the site loading much faster. One question, could you point me in a direction to learn about adding formatted text to comments? Things like italics, bold, quotes, etc… Do I just need to add html tags?
jchem -
Using HTML <big>tags</big> <small>is</small> what <sub>I</sub> do!
heh, AR, could you point me to a good site that lists them? I'd like to say that I know my way around a computer fairly well, but I'll be honest and tell you I'm pretty clueless here.
http://cedesign.net/help2j.htm
Not all tags work on this site, though. Experiment, and have fun!
Contrast is much better now, pleasant. I'm sure you'll have the bugs worked out soon. Thanks T-Steel.
Jchem–
If you're using Firefox, you can download an add-on called BBCodeXtra [Direct link to it by clicking HERE], which will allow you to insert your own HTML tags on most anything you type into an internet text box.
You highlight <ins>whatever</ins> you want to format by dragging your cursor through it, then right clicking. Select the formatting you want from the pop-up menu. (Note: I have to use the third choice, “xhtmlXtra” to make it work.)
You can also insert links relatively easily from that menu, but it does take a little practice to get it right.
If you don't use Firefox, it's pretty easy to download. [Click HERE]
Thanks for the link AR; I'll play around with it a bit on a test site before clogging the comment box with my practice runs. GS, I use Safari, but it looks like that add-on may work for me. I'm not sure why I've waited so long to mess around with all of it, but I'm slowly getting up to speed. Thanks again, both of you
Looks great! I really like the new design — especially as it relates to the front page.
PS: What's a blogger got to do to get on the blogroll at TMV? =)
I love the idea of using pure CSS for the styling rather than bogging the site down with tons of images.
I also like the idea of shorter punchier intros to the posts since TMV has so many in a day. Rather than having it the automatically create the teaser, I think you should try to use wordpresses built in system for creating specialized teasers.
Was it a conscious decision to remove the space between “The” and “Moderate” in the banner text?
Also, kudos for simplifying the sidebar on post pages. Anything to cut down on the loading time and page complexity without sacrificing your revenue is a definite plus.
That tagging issue is a project of mine that I hope to have added very soon.
Hate to be the voice of dissent here, but I don't like the design at all.
While the other design wasn't exactly awesome, it was at least easy on the eyes. This seems like a half step away from web 2.0, more blocky, less easy on the eyes and the colors up top aren't particularly complimentary.
Would also probably look a bit better if the ads and widgets in the sidebar were centered within their blocks. The ad in the footer region should also be limited to smaller banner ads, if you have ads there at all (which I wouldn't)… there is an Amazon ad loaded there now that is cut because it's meant to only be a sidebar ad and it cuts off when it hits the bottom edge of the block.
I do like the layout though… the top bar is good, although again it would probably be better if it was centered.
Again, sorry to be the seemingly lone voice of dissent, but you're using WordPress (I'm more of a fan of Drupal, but WordPress is fine for a simple blog like this) and there are literally hundreds of more visually appealing themes you can use for free and modify to make unique that I think would look much better than this. I know I'm more picky than most, as I've done a dozen or so sites myself, but when I look at this I see something that a high school kid threw up in a weekend, not the best damn political blog in the country (in my opinion).
The last thing I'll say is… I would seriously consider paying a professional to come up with a totally unique theme for you guys that isn't just okay, but sharp, professional, light and modern… if I were you. I'm a grad student and have very little disposable income, but I'd throw down a bit of cash for that if you asked. I'll read this blog regardless (I barely ever actually see the website anyway as I read it through RSS feeds), but I'd hate for you to get less click throughs and lose potential readers because of a mediocre first impression.
Keep up the good content production boys and girls.
The old photobanner of the Capitol Building gave the site a more stately air too. I took it more seriously when I first logged on here when I saw it. [subliminal I suppose]. Is there anything that can be added that gives it a more stately appeal?
Just a suggestion.
I think it looks great!
I've been a TMV reader for a loooong time, I really appreciate all that you guys do for this site and I visit it daily, but… I just don't like the new site design. I started my own blog about 2 weeks ago at wordpress, and this design looks just a like a template wordpress theme… kinda gaudy. Sorry for the negative comment! I love this blog!
There are some practical reasons why we changed the design. Primarily we can't invest in better hardware at the moment and this design is isn't nearly as “load heavy” as the previous. We frequently lost visitors with the previous design due to the server load killing the site.
Site design grade: D-
The old design was user friendly. This one looks like it was just thrown together.
The new site loads up really fast!
It's a terrific improvement!
Thanks!
Thanks for all your—and others'—work, Tyronne.
And, AR, thanks for your advice on how to format comments
Dorian
I second GeorgeSorwell's recommendation of BBCodeXtra… I've been using it since it came out and it makes everything HTML faster & easier.