Partially inspired by this comment, but in large part because I think it is time for a change, I think I am open to the idea of one of you (or a collaboration of you) re-designing the site.
What do you all think? Is it time for a change? If so, we can figure out how to go about it.
And WVU would have beaten either one of these scrub teams in the National Championship.
Ned R.
Well personally I really like the ‘text in the middle column’ approach — I use the same for my blog — so I’d strongly suggest not changing that! But beyond that, much as I like the hot air balloon/ranting guy logo, maybe time for a change there?
Krista
I’m pretty content with the site the way it is, although it might be nice to have a “recently commented” sidebar, or some such thing. Not a big deal, though. Other than that, my only request is that it be kept nice and clean — I can’t stand cluttered-looking blogs where you practically need a sherpa to help you figure out how to navigate the damned thing.
And if you keep the logo with the hot-air balloon, can you get a teeny-tiny Tunch photoshopped into the balloon basket? It would amuse me.
Ed Drone
I hate to say it, but I like the design of this site, from the way comments “come up” lined up below the text of the article, so if you need to re-read it, but off-screen if you don’t need to. I suppose there are other elements that could be added, but I can’t think of them. Clean, simple, straight-forward, all them good adjectives — that’s this place.
And the company is pretty good, too*. Don’t change just for the sake of change. You might upset some kind of karmic balance or some such shit.
Ed
* Even the trolls are interesting.
Porco Rosso
I like the site fine as is. I’m afraid the redesigned firedoglake site doesn’t seem as inviting as the old format they had.
But thinking of firedoglake… Maybe you could use some visuals for your posts.
r€nato
What? You’re not blaming the current site design on the Vast Left-Wing Web Geek Conspiracy™??? ;-)
Dennis - SGMM
Changing the color scheme or the graphics would be okay. Otherwise, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Firedoglake is an example of what happens when people get carried away. I was a long time habitué of TBogg’s old blog but after the move to FDL I rarely stop by.
annagranfors
yah, if you do anything, make it strictly cosmetic–FDL’s compacted post redesign is sucky. (esp. TBogg–I mean, you just wanna see the full-on multipic bassetts with the quickness, not have to get clicky.)
lee
I really like the clean simple design of the website. It is a refreshing change.
But if you are really interested I’ll think about it and see what I can come up with (or shamelessly copy from another site ;)
demimondian
I have one (and only one) suggestion: your main table adds to more than 100% of the browser pane width on FFox 2.0, which means that there’s always a horizontal scroll bar on the bottom. I think that there’s a space on the far right of the table, which, since it’s got a width of 100%, means that the “line” is too wide.
— demi “not a web designer, but I play one on Mondays” mondian
Breschau
Sorry, I’m a systems architect: I make things work, I don’t make them pretty. I leave the “bells and whistles” stuff for the librul arty-farty types.
But off the top of my head, some kind of shading on an “every other comment” basis might break up the longer threads easier. And in fact, any kind of color might help make it a bit more pleasing to the eye – just resist the temptation to over-do it. And some kind of variance in the font sizes would put an ease to the visual monotony – e.g. at the very least, make the date/time stamp 8 point instead of 10.
r€nato
I don’t think you need to change… look at Eschaton. It’s ugly as shit. It’s the content that counts.
demimondian
There’s a major problem with the design of the blog, but it only shows on IE on truly well-Darrelled threads: the IR table control starts choking for great goodness when it has more than a couple of hundred entries on it.
Don’t fix it. Convince people to use a different browser, instead.
UnkyT
I of course am willing to help out since you recently joined the Democratic party and are now part of the vast left wing conspiracy. Being part of this conspiracy entitles you to new and amazing blog benefits that those on the right obviously do not enjoy. Expect readership to increase 1 billion percent yet you will never have to worry about server crashes again.
I do agree whole heartedly with Dennis, the layout is great and easy to read, colors and a few graphics will be nice.
Ranger 3
Yeah. So long as one of those scrub teams isn’t Pitt.
Just don’t fall into the trap of using liberal software, cause then it’ll crash all the time and you’ll never be able to upgrade.
Zifnab
Um… I do have a simple suggestion for the comments section. Can you let us edit our posts after they’re on the page? I’ve committed enough typo faux pas and plugged enough bad links that the ability to come back in and mop up my mess would be infinitely appreciated.
Format-wise, however, this site is as good a blog as I ever visit. You’ve got a clean, readable set-up. Black and White is a bit stark, I’ll admit. Perhaps throw up a little yellow, blue, and red? Maybe a Steely McBeam logo on the top right? I’ll leave the aesthetics to someone with better taste, perhaps.
Anne Laurie
Oh, gaaah, please not another “upgrade”, aka “lake of happy drone pee”!
I started hanging around here when TBogg converted to a State-O-Teh-Art hipsterness festival that keeps blowing out my antiquated dial-up capabilities while simultaneously strangling the fierce snarkiness of TB’s commenters.
Admittedly I am probably not representative of BJ’s Most Desired Demographic, but for the sake of all that is readable, at least stay with the center-columned, low-graphic, black-on-white basic format. People who hunger for dancing graphics and flash videos are too busy with YouTube to read political snark, anyway!
VidaLoca
I’d agree with the sentiment expressed by several others: it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
And whatever you fiddle with while you’re not fixing it, DO. NOT. bring in whoever the Jane Hamshers of the Left brought in to fix their site that wasn’t broken; they’ve managed to turn it into a bright & shining example of suckitude. Or as revenge we’ll make sure that the first five comments on every post are “Hi John/Tim/Michael :) :) :)”. And wouldn’t that make you feel special.
Tunch in the gondola under the balloon would be a nice touch though.
Voice of Reason
Well before you redesign anything, just make sure that your content is approved by the liberal engineering conspiracy so they don’t plant a fifth column trojan horse in your code designed to take out your website at the slightest criticism of Hillary’s shrewness.
Seriously, your format works, I wouldn’t fix it.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Do we get to ask for $25,000 in donations?
Cuz if so, I’ll do the redesign. I’m all up for that.
And no, I don’t have any experience in web-site design. But, hey, you only became Democrat recently, you can’t have started caring about competence already, have you?
Ranger 3
Which is why I recommend an option to use a dial up version of the site. That way, the site can be brought into the 21st Century while those of you who still don’t have broadband will still have something to use until you get your shit together.
STEVEinSC
I would like to support the idea of a collaboration among the readers. In that way the result might very well be the blog eqivalent to the Yellow River Concerto and represent the creative influences of the masses. When such an opus would be ready for roll-out, would, unfortunately be anyone’s guess.
r€nato
I’m a great fan of April Fools’ Day, so I think you should come up with a really wretched site design – blinking text, nonsensical 3D icons, etc – and post it on 4/1 as the new site design.
The rest of you, forget you read this comment.
myiq2xu
Fixt
The Grand Panjandrum
Mega dittoes. But I think the Fair Tax pig could use a little lipstick. (Sorry Michael, but I have to fill my daily snark quota.)
myiq2xu
My visits to FDL have declined to less than 25% of what they were before the “improvement.”
Jake
No offense, but this site crashes. A lot. Even when compared to other WP sites. I’d focus on finding a fix for that and screw making it purty.
But if you had to go for something extra, find a way to send an electric shock when people post long ass links that make the page five feet wide.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
3.0 Beta 2, as well.
But, coming from a web designer — site looks good. Tweak if you want, but no need to overhaul the damned thing. :)
John Cole
I am a fan of keeping it simple, so if we redesigned anything, it would not be a radical departure.
Remember, this is the guy it took two seasons to recover when they changed the Monk theme song after Season 1. It will not be drastic.
Voice of Reason
I would like to put myself forward as the Iraqi reconstruction company of website design. Give me $25,000 in cash and I will redesign your website without any oversight or metrics of improvement. In fact, I will ask congress next year for an additional $400,000 in funds to improve your website some more.
PaulW
One word: flamingos!
demimondian
I’d love to see the back end code stabilized. I wouldn’t love to do it, although, yes, I regret to admit that I have the technical wherewithal to contribute.
Me, I volunteer Herb. He knows ALL ABOUT databases. He’s told me so.
demimondian
Yes! Black and white ASCII art pink flamingos!
Voice of Reason
And more cow bell.
VidaLoca
Make him the team lead. Then put Darrell under him.
myiq2xu
Yes! Gotta have more cowbell!
And a jackalope filter.
demimondian
Seriously, John…what would you be looking for in a web-site redesign? From a functional viewpoint, I’d like to see a better search function, but, hell, there’s always Google. I’d like to see an RSS feed for the comments, just because. I’d also like to see the comment section reject reallyreallyreallylonglineswithoutspaces — links being my particular bete noire.
But graphically, this really is a great layout. I suppose that you could improve it slightly by moving the balloon-and-man graphic into the main column so that the article itself wrapped around him (tough CSS problem, but a fun one, I think), and could then move most of your right-hand column into the left hand column. That would clean up the layout a bit, and brand the experience a bit better. But those don’t really seem like redesigns to me as much as they are small clean-ups, and questionable ones at that.
libarbarian
For me it doesn’t crash but sometimes it takes 20 minutes to load and appear on my screen.
It always sayssomething like “waiting for ads.websense.com” or something when it happens so I think it is your ad-server and not your site per se.
Still, Balloon-juice is the only blog I read that hasnt changed yet and I kind of like it.
myiq2xu
Can something be done about teh stupids?
Cuz people who think they know it all are very annoying to those of us who really do.
libarbarian
Actually,it just hit me that if you want change…..
how about you start that porno career mentioned in a previous thread.
Come on, you know you want to. It will make you feeeeeeeel good.
grumpy realist
Put me in the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” column, John. We come for the snark, and there’s nothing I really want to tear my hair out over.
Dustin
Talking as someone who’s helped implement and optimize one badly coded design and create another one from scratch I agree with some of the other commenters: don’t fix what isn’t broken.
Other than narrowing your content middle column about 15-20 pixels so you get rid of the sidescroll there’s nothing on this site that needs to be changed… at least as far as visuals. Don’t know about code server performance optimization, but from the readers perspective this is an excellent wordpress design.
Add features like the previously mentioned comment background alternating color if you want, but I’m not sure even that’s necessary.
Dustin
Oh, and I second the “FDL’s new design sucks, don’t use their designer” comments… They’re an example of what not to do.
over it
Keep it simple!
I like it just fine the way it is. I use Firefox and don’t have any problems with the site crashing or with slow loading. If anything, it is one of the few sites I can count on on coming up quickly.
Just my (less than) 2 cents worth.
Tsulagi
Demi hit it. Personally I don’t care about the RSS feed. But when someone dumps a BIG ASS link blowing the margins all to hell, I don’t bother reading comments. I just quickly backspace.
I’m in the “if it ain’t broke….column. I have fast connections, but I don’t care to see dancing graphics.
JC
You’ve already answered this, buy yes, it needs to stay simple. No artsy-fartsy colors for this blog! Keep it Google-like!
Now, in terms of simpicity, what would help?
Now, it would help if Tim listed some of the other blogs he reads – according to “blogs Tim reads”, he only reads 3 blogs.
What a maroon!! You’ve clearly got Tim beat to shit, in this new-fangled thing called “reading blogs”.
Tell Tim to get him, one of those, what are they called, “edjumacations”.
JC
Hey, I do like the idea of having pictures embedded, every once in awhile.
I’m thinking a weekly open thread post called “Fox Female Anchor Money Shot of the Week” of the week.
Seeing as this is the only look that Fox goes for in their female anchors, is the hot-blonde-just-got-out-of-porn, so let’s-pair-her-with-old-white-dude”.
Conservatively Liberal
Hmmm, RedState is griping about a vast left wing conspiracy to keep them from updating their site, and John all of the sudden decides that now may be a good time for a revamped blog?
Veerryy interestink. Could there be a chance that John may be switching back to Republican party in the future, so he figures that now is the time to get the left wing coders to do some freebie work for him? Could this be a new chapter in the vast right wing conspiracy?
Inquiring minds want to know! ;)
About changes, I agree with what others have said. If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it. Maybe a few cosmetic changes, but this site works fine for me as it is now.
Lurker 2.0
(long time lurker first time poster…I think). I must echo 2 suggestions made by others:
1: Don’t do whatever FDL did-I stopped reading it regularly after that horrid change.
2: Alternating colors (I’ve seen white and a light gray work well) do wonders for the eyes in the comments section.
Pb
No.
Ok, you convinced me–switch to Scoop. Anything that baffles the morons over at Red State must be awesome.
The Other Steve
I’d help with feedback. To busy to do much technical. I’m trying to build my own blogging community website from scratch. But that’s cause I’m overthinking the damn thing and trying to come up with something that’s unique and cool that people might want to use.
And then I remember how horrible myspace is, and I get depressed.
Evilbeard
If anything I would like to see an end to the PJ media ads in the sidebars.
The Other Steve
Don’t do it. Don’t share the super secrets of the liberal blogosphere with him, he might give it all to redstate!
srv
More Ponies.
srv
Oh, and how about some real search/archive function. It takes hours to dig up your silliest posts when we are want to.
Darkness
The clowny guy needs some bright stripes on his pants. That’s always seemed lacking. And the “o” and the “e” and part of the “s” of the logo did not get the grey when the paintbucket was dumped on them. Hint, when your text is black, use “multiply” to an underlayer of your new background color. That works great. But I’m with most. Just cosmetic changes please.
…although, it would be nice to see (as an option) only new posts since last visit. It would cut the bandwidth too.
srv
I think the best solution to preventing the slide into echo-chamber blog is to start paying your students again to troll here.
Or an even better idea. How about you have a Trollers Convention at your college and have DougJ speak? You could have lab sessions where they practive under his guidance on BJ.
I mean, obviously DougJ is just rolling around in all that money in Rochester (or wherever it is), and all that trollart is being lost.
JC
Agree with srv – we should be able to find the silliest posts as quickly as possible.
As your customer, I must say, I am very displeased you haven’t fixed this yet. What am I paying you for?? Pretty soon, I’m going to take my business elsewhere, fair warning!!
null pointer exception
Can you somehow make this site accessible on blackberry or other mobile devices? Right now if I try to access it from my blackberry, I get a script error and the site refuses to load.
null pointer exception
Also, I second (third?) the suggestion about alternating colors in comment. Rest of the site doesn’t need any change whatsoever.
Justin
Don’t change a thing, it looks fine!
Pooh
I’m disappointed that there are only two comments seeing the obvious Red State influence at work here…
Kewalo
No! I hate change. Your blog is perfect just as it is. This is going to be a tramatic year and I can only handle so much trama. Please just stay the same. TIA
Kewalo
Wow! I posted my last comment before I read the others. I’m astounded at how many people feel the same way I do about FDL. It was a must read for me and I hate the changes. Just hate, hate, hate them and never go there anymore and it makes me sad. John, please don’t make any changes.
Walker
I have only one request. I would like the side-bar to contain the recent blog posts. As it is, to go to another post, you have to go out to the main page and back down into the other article.
cd6
The truth comes out!
You only became a democrat to get in with some free site redesigns, because as we know, all programmers are libruls!
Once you’ve got a free $25,000 redesign, you’ll rip off your mask, and underneath you’ll be some douchebag like Bryan Preston, and you’ll giggle yourself silly as you pully an election handle for Mitt Romney.
We should have seen this coming.
cleek
one thing i’d really like is a way to identify people using duplicate IDs.
i wrote a tiny little WordPress plugin for my blog (as a proof of concept really, since i don’t get enough commenters to have a problem with handle abuse). it puts a little 8-character code next to the comment time stamp for example:
that code is the IP address of the commenter, run through a simple one-way hash. it won’t catch people with multiple IP addresses, but it’s good enough for most uses. and, it’s trivially simple – like four lines of code.
RSA
Oh, great. Like any other liberal Democrat, John wants change for the sake of change, with the unintended but probable result being the destruction of the
moral fiberdefensive capabilitieseconomic performancebloggy integrity of this site.Seriously, though, for changes beyond bug fixes and minor functionality enhancements, it’s worth figuring out (1) any new or continuing expectations for the revised site and (2) how you can tell whether such expectations are met or not. (I could go into great, boring academic detail on this, but I’ll forebear.)
Chris
I’m similar to the guy whose comment started all this. Strong in programming, somewhat experienced in graphical design… so on so forth
No. Do not redesign. Your blog has the same appeal as Google’s front page does. Do not fix what is not broken.
You might want to consider doing what Fark does, which is add features little-by-little. But if not, that’s fine too.
Simple is always good.
grandpa john
whatever you do, DON’T screw with the font size. the main reason I have made balloon Juice my most read site is because the print size is large enough that my 70 year old eyes can actually read what people say, and yes FDL is the prime example of overkill and change where change was not needed.
HeartlandLiberal
Over the holidays, I had three weeks off, so in one week, I figured out how to install PHP, MySQL, and WordPress, all free downloads, on my Windows server at home. I then spent a few days, figured out how to download then modify two different WordPress themes (free downloads from users/designers), to achieve the style and look I wanted for two of my personal web sites.
Although I am a database programmer of many years (well, decades, almost 62 years old) experience, I am not a designer. And I had never done PHP. Or MySQL. I just found a couple of good FAQs, and hacked my way through using the native intelligence and experience I possess in at least adequate measure.
Needless to say, I am less than sympathetic to the RedState whining. What a bunch of pathetic losers.
This is NOT rocket science, given that the true geeks have created off the shelf software that will do the job and is highly configurable by even non-techies.
Bob In Pacifica
Some sites allow you to edit your posts for a certain time period after you post, a half-hour or hour. It would enable us to fix up misspellings and would also encourage those of us who post while intoxicated to actually read what we write.
Punchy
MAKE THIS FUCKER BRIGHT FUCKING ORANGE
bryanD
“demimondian Says:
I have one (and only one) suggestion: your main table adds to more than 100% of the browser pane width on FFox 2.0, which means that there’s always a horizontal scroll bar on the bottom.”
Has anyone suggested Opera? It has great “view” options. And it’s fastfastfast. No autocomplete, though.
oN-TOPIC: SURE! Change everything! An amusement park of pix and dueling scrollbars! Knock PajamasMedia off their psychedelic perch! Trade this ’66 Chevelle “up” to a ’74 with them cool safety bumpers!
Seriously, when the saleman calls again, just hang up.
bryanD
Punchy stole my thunder!!!
Damn you, Punchy!
Chris
Fixed.
/Great Orange Satan, har har
Chris
Only when it comes to sex. We beggars can’t be choosers.
Ron
Don’t change anything. The site works fine, looks good, is easy to ready, and has content worth reading. It isn’t broke, so don’t fix it.
The Other Steve
Pay Homage to your Great Orange Satan master!
Tim F.
I can’t speak for John, but neither of those sound like a bug to me. For one thing, allowing people to change their entries midway through an argument renders the entire thread partially incoherent. After-the-fact corrections work fine for me. Better, they serve as a public reminder to use the real-time preview.
peach flavored shampoo
outlaw swearing. For 1 day. If for no other reason than to watch TZ’s head explode upon hearing the news. For extra explosion, add a link to something in Israel and to that gay website that advises Teh Ghay which airport bathrooms offer the best blumpies.
Svensker
Ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Ditto re FDL “upgrade”, I spend very little time over there anymore. But *good news* — TBogg’s window now has the first 3 items fully up without having to click on anything. I was missin’ me some TBogg.
John S.
John-
I’m all for it, and I would be happy to lend my expertise as an Art Director. I definitely think simple is good, and that is the mantra which my ad agency lives by. I presume you’ve got my email address, so drop me a line and we can talk.
UnkyT
Simple and clean. Don’t assume that a redesign would add a bunch of unneeded shit or put it in the same boat as RedState and fdl. A good design will have nobody bitching about it being too flashy and will also be easy on those of you with dial-up (why is anyone still on dial-up?).
Rudi
If you do add the latest asinine bells and whistles please add check boxes or some other option to limit said graphics. Those with a preference, dial up or older PC’s and IE may not like the diskspace memory waste associated with extra graphics.
If more is added, please allow a choice for those happy with more text and less graphics.
UnkyT
Just so I am not misunderstood, I think a new design would be great, so long as it is done right, but will not affect my hourly visits here whatsoever.
Pieter B
Changing to a serif type face such as Georgia would make the text much more readable. Sans-serif is for headlines, not body copy. Other than that, I’d say don’t change a winning game; the current layout is clean and uncluttered.
Ed Drone
“MAKE THIS FUCKER BRIGHT FUCKING ORANGE”
So we would become a colony of Naranjistan? I don’t know about that. It’s tempting, and here might be advantages in it, but I would hold out for actual statehood; Once granted, you could rename the site ‘East Naranjistan’ and change the color scheme (or colour scheme, for our Brit fellows) to the appropriate orange hue.
Now, that would be a case of ‘hue and cry,’ wouldn’t it?
Ed
Bombadil
Fuck that.
Dustin
Ditto. I might not swear often here, but when I do I damned well want to know it’s not going to get me into trouble.
Those sites, who shall remain nameless, who ban people for swearing need to grow some fucking balls.