Instigator Blog - Latest Comments in New Design at Instigator Blog

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

sell ebooks — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 07:37:04 -0000

I found your blog very interesting,just setting mine up.hope it does as well as yours.

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Ben Yoskovitz — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:32:17 -0000

Rob - no problem on the shameless plug - your site looks good. I'm particularly intrigued by your adoption journal, sounds like something that could help a lot of parents.

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Rob O. — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:15:57 -0000

Looks good, Ben! Very clean!

I also just underwent a massive site redesign over at www.2dolphins.com (yup, another shameless plug). I'd had the old frames-based design in place for more than 2 years and it was just looking stale. The new design moves the blog itself front & center and all of the other pages are modelled after it, so there's a consistent look (mostly) throughout.

I've been puring over every little detail. Even down to a custom "quote" graphic used for blockquote insets. I'm still refining the code a bit to try to make the pages load a bit faster. I hope to move the stylesheet data to an externally-linked file, but this is still presenting a few problems...

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Bret — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 09:05:31 -0000

I like the new design. Well done.

Since recently launching my own blog (kind of a blog and kind of not www.techtraction.com please pardon the shameless plug), I've started paying closer attention to what others are doing with their design. I like your new design simply because it makes sense to me. Easy navigation and no nonsense.

I'm not totally thrilled with my design but figure it's 1.0 and gets me started. After I've learned more about what I want and how to do it, I'll work on 2.0.

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Mack D. Male — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 20:16:59 -0000

I'm a little late with a comment here, but I'll say it anyway - it looks good! Only thing I don't like is the black bar at the top. Feels too different from the blue. Anyway, looks good.

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Ben Yoskovitz — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:50:14 -0000

Jordan - sidebars are getting packed. I'm desperately trying to keep mine as neat as possible, and organize them intelligently.

Having two sidebars adds some flexibility which I like, but it also opens up the door for cramming in more stuff. Very likely I'll be reducing over time not adding...but there are some essentials in there for me (and hopefully everyone else too!)

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Jordan — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:46:40 -0000

Nice work, Ben. The three column design seems to work well...after all, aren't our sidebars getting more and more packed with relevant widgets and whatnots?

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Robert — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:50:29 -0000

Looks very nice and clean. I love the gloves!

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Brad Shorr — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 09:34:51 -0000

I like the new look. Cleaner, easier to read, more professional.

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Ben Yoskovitz — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 09:22:20 -0000

I've learned to let half my brain sleep while the other half works. Then switch. The results are sometimes odd, but I can just keep on trucking...

(OK that was a complete lie.)

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

AndyBeard — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 08:59:51 -0000

You sleep too much.
Since that last comment I launched a new website and had a good 6 hrs sleep.

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Tony D. Clark — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 08:23:53 -0000

Looks great, Ben. Apparently you, Andy, and Rick got is all worked out while I slept.

Don't you guys ever sleep? ;)

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

AndyBeard — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 23:27:34 -0000

I will get there in the end, my problem is always the line spacing in the form on the left hand side. I need to specify it implicitly in the CSS, but might just use it as an advert for firefox

Does this blog theme look broken? Get a browser that supports standards

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Ben Yoskovitz — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 23:14:46 -0000

Rick -- I haven't put the subscribe code on the Archive pages yet (but I will soon.)

I've also left the SUBSCRIBE stuff in the far right sidebar - but after mucking with sizes and having sidebars disappear on me in IE, I'm leaving the width as is...

And thanks for testing Rick!

Andy -- if you want me to send you the code I've used just shoot me an email. Maybe it'll help you in IE7...

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

AndyBeard — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 23:10:47 -0000

I was just pointing out the problem I alway hit on my site. Rick has tested it so I don't have to (I hate even loading up IE7)

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Rick Cockrum — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 23:06:29 -0000

The subscribe icon and tag looks good in both Firefox 2 and IE7. Both also found your feed with no problem.

The subscribe icon and tag are on both your home page and single post pages, just not your archive pages.

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Ben Yoskovitz — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 23:00:55 -0000

Andy - did you test mine in IE7 and it's broken?

I just tried IE6 and it looks like it worked properly - auto-discovering the FeedBurner feed.

I appreciate the help!

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

AndyBeard — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 22:57:25 -0000

That works well, at least in Firefox.

One of my biggest problems is making mine work in IE. It was looking ok in IE6 but IE7 messed it up again.

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Ben Yoskovitz — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 22:46:25 -0000

Andy and Tony (and others) -- let me know what you think of the "subscribe box" that shows up on top now. I think it's only showing properly on single posts - so click through to take a look.

Leah - I agree. I've added some padding, but I think I may use a little graphic of some kind to help highlight individual elements in the sidebar.

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Leah Maclean — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 22:10:34 -0000

Nice and clean Ben! A suggestion ... I would add some more padding in the sidebar tags so that the items such as Popular Posts, Topics etc have a little more white space and are easier to read (at the moment they appear a little "swished" and it is hard to just scan.

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Tony D. Clark — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 17:39:24 -0000

Great point, Andy. I definitely didn't miss yours the first time I visited, and thought, "what a great idea."

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

AndyBeard — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 17:29:12 -0000

Even better would be to place subscription information in prime real estate, that magic triangle right where people suggest placing Adsense.

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

lornadoone — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 17:03:50 -0000

I'm using Internet Explorer at 1280 by 800. As of this afternoon, there is no scroll bar at the bottom of my screen. That helped things to be spaced out better, and it's looking really good now. Everything seems to have been able to stretch out a bit, which leaves more white space for a nice, clean look.

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

Tony D. Clark — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 17:02:58 -0000

Looks nice, Ben. I like the clean look. I agree with Char about the pictures. Also, though I run a higher res, I tend to keep my sidebar open in FF making the viewing area smaller, so I get the vertical scroller too. That loses your 3rd column, so you might want to move your subscription stuff to the second column, and keep "less critical" stuff in the 3rd.

Just my $0.02... anyway :)

Re: New Design at Instigator Blog

D. Lambert — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 15:31:07 -0000

Not bad. Very clean-looking. Do you find a better response for the body-sidebar-sidebar layout than sidebar-body-sidebar?