Beta of the New PT Layout
By Jonathan Bailey • Jan 7th, 2008 • Category: Articles, HousekeepingI mentioned in my recent housekeeping post that I was looking at finding a new layout for Plagiarism Today.
Well, after pulling an all-nighter and working with a very good theme as a foundation, I’ve created a new look for Plagiarism Today that is ready for beta testing.
Click Here to visit the Plagiarism Today Test Site
I am seeking comments and feedback on this new theme. Any input is appreciated. The only caveat is that there are a few known bugs, discussed below, that don’t need any real mention as they will only work when (and if) the theme becomes live.
Changes/Improvements
A quick summary of the changes made would include the following:
- Completely new layout including a magazine look with greater use of images.
- Streamlined the static pages by eliminating unused pages and combining others under the same heading.
- Separated “News” and “Articles” to give them each representation on the home page.
Known Bugs
Normally, I hate “Known Bugs” sections of these kinds of documents but, this time, it truly is necessary.
- The Test site is running from an old copy of the database, everything is about a week out of date.
- The logo is just temporary, will likely be revamped for the final product.
- Several sidebar elements are missing including the Blog Herald links and the Twitter Badge.
- There is no stat counting code yet (not that anyone was going to notice, this is more for my record).
- The “About the Author” page on the individual pages is broken, won’t work until it is live on the live database.
- All plugin-based features break, including the contact form and the podcast flash applet.
- Feed autodiscovery isn’t working yet.
- About a million minor CSS positioning/color issues that are still being touched up
.
Requesting Feedback
What I am looking for right now is general feedback on the theme. In particular, I want to know what thoughts you have on the overall theme and how it stacks up to the current one.
Do you find it attractive? Is it easy to use? Easy to read? Do you think it is professional? Is it an improvement? What changes would you recommend? And so forth.
Please, if you have a moment, either leave a comment or send me an email with your thoughts on this theme when you get a chance. I am also available on IM, plagiarismtoday on both Yahoo! and AIM, and via Twitter.
This theme is far from a done deal. However, if support is overwhelmingly positive I can probably clean up the problems in a few days and push it live later this week.
If it is overwhelmingly negative, I can revoke the subdomain in a few minutes and we can pretend that this never happened.
I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback!
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Jonathan Bailey is The Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today, which he founded in 2005 as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field. He is also a consultant to Webmasters and companies to help them devise practical content protection strategies and develop good copyright policies.
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The one thing I noticed right away was that the primary (most recent) article was hard to spot. I think this is due to it not having a particularly large amount of area in the layout and the use of large, heavy graphics in other areas.
Aesthetically speaking, I like the new site for its visual impact. This is a highly subjective matter and someone else may well think otherwise. If the overall effect will look close to the beta version, with all the old features arranged differently, it should be quite nice to look at.
A silly (?) question - why fix it if it aint broke?
Ian: I realized after your post that I might have shot myself in the foot by using such a poor graphic for the main post. I’ve restructured the data some on the home page, though I’ve kept the layout the same, and used a stronger graphic. Can you give it another look and see if it is easier to view?
RS: I’m glad that you liked the new template and find it more appealing? Was it reasonably easy to use and follow?
As far as why fix what isn’t broke, a lot of it has to do with the direction PT is heading in. the current template does not offer a great deal of flexibility and prevents me from featuring content that often needs to be higher up. I love the blog layout for its simplicity, but that very simple nature is also very restrictive.
Besides, I am hoping that with a new theme and a different look, PT might stand out more and appear more professional.
Overall, it’s an improvement. You have more real estate to highlight your best complement, but
I would get rid of the Browse Archives unless your stats show that your readers use that feature. Most don’t.
I would move recent articles, or maybe a ‘most popular’ list to the left column over the copyright 2.0 show. As long as the first show or two appears above the fold, the images should be enough to encourage readers to scroll down.
You couldn’t have selected a better theme. I love that one. It’s so configurable and the info that Darren gives to help set it up is amazing.
So far, it’s looking great and can’t wait to see the finished product. Oh, and I do agree that the archives link can come down. It’s kind of redundant with categories listed below it. I’ll click on categories way before I’d ever look at archives (which are way too disorganized for actual use).
Aaron: Done and done. Thank you very much for the specific and pointed suggestions, I agree with them both and have made the changes (though the most popular section is just a placeholder right now).
Let me know what you think!
Sue: Thanks for the feedback, the archives are gone and buried. I hadn’t yet gone through and done all of my editing for the sidebar and there is still more to do, but I went ahead and took that step.
Once again, let me know what you think!
[...] some additions to the sidebar, tweaking of the page names across the top and a lot of cleanup. The usual known bugs apply and, add to that, my plan to re-add the CC license when the site goes [...]