Site Redesign Continues; What Do You Think So Far?

February 24, 2010 | Filed under: Site News | Posted by: Jenny Donati

Greetings!

The basics of the redesigned site are in place. Here’s what we’ve done:

A new, faster interface.
A cleaner, simpler layout featuring a number of categories on the front page.
New, better commenting software.
Ad revenue-sharing for our authors.
Paliban World blog aggregator.
New categories to help you find interesting stories faster.
Fewer ads to interrupt your reading.

There are still things to be tweaked:

We haven’t designed a logo/header yet.
We want to add a second row of tabs, for the various information pages (about, contact, etc.).
There’s some assorted weirdness toward the bottom of the front page. We’re working on that.

Please leave comments to let us know your thoughts. Do you like the new layout? Does it work well in your browser? What would you like to see improved? Are there things we should add, or things we should remove?

Let us know what will make this site more useful to you.

Thanks!

Jenny Donati is webmistress and co-editor of Secular News Daily. Jenny is an outspoken secularist who believes firmly in the separation of church and state. She demands evidence to support arguments, and holds herself to the same standard. She doesn't write about herself in the third person . . . but there's a first time for everything.

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2 Responses to Site Redesign Continues; What Do You Think So Far?

Slater February 25, 2010 - 10:01 am

Have you considered combining some of the 42(!) external javascript files into fewer files? That would seriously decrease the number of HTTP requests per hit. Also gzipping static components, especially javascript, could lower the data transferred dramatically.
Although not having worked with WordPress, I have no idea if it will let you do this.

- The design has a few glitches in IE6 and 7 but not 8. Nothing too serious, though.
- Under "secular resources" in the left menu, the secular.org banner is too wide and doesn't fit the sidebar.
- The PD Links at the bottom are great, but why there? It took me forever to find the link to the forum, and I was looking for it. Personally, I'd put them much higher, but of course you're much better at assessing their importance than me.

Otherwise it's a great site that looks clean and professional. Would just be nice if it loaded a bit faster.

- Jenny Donati February 25, 2010 - 8:49 am
  
  Slater -
  
  Thanks for the comments!
  
  I’ll move the links up. One of the things I want to do is add a second row of tabs at the top (all the way at the top) which would have those links. But you’re right, moving them up in the sidebar, at least for now, would be helpful. (Of course, there wasn’t a forum link until about 12 hours ago!)
  
  I’ve not been able to figure out why the secular.org banner won’t resize properly. I’ll make it a .gif with an actual size of 190 px and see if that helps. (Presently a .png.)
  
  I run into a caption problem in IE7, but not IE8 or Firefox. So, until that can be resolved, I’ve stopped using image captions. Also, in IE7, the tabs at top are spaced wider and break to two lines. Not sure why that is.
  
  I don’t know a whole lot about crushing the javascript. I do have a plug-in which does a lot of that, which I’ve been reluctant to activate since I was doing so much to the site. I’ll try it now, and see how it does.
  
  I’m also going to yank the scripted Amazon widget in the sidebar. The site seems to hang up on it when loading.
  
  Thanks again!

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Site Redesign Continues; What Do You Think So Far?

2 Responses to Site Redesign Continues; What Do You Think So Far?

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