Second Beta of the New PT Layout

By Jonathan Bailey • Jan 8th, 2008 • Category: Articles, Housekeeping

First off, thank you to everyone who has provided suggestions and ideas for improving the beta of the new Plagiarism Today. The feedback has been tremendously helpful.

Overall, most people have been very positive about the new look and several people have made very good suggestions about how to improve the site.

I’ve taken many of those suggestions to heart and I’ve created a second version of the beta.

Click Here to View the Second Version

Once again, I am seeking your input and advice on this new layout. Below the fold are the changes made to this layout and the new known issues.

Changes

  • Copyright 2.0 Show is moved to where the news section was. This was done because there is no clear divide between “News” and “Articles” but definitely one with the podcast and the written works.
  • Expanded both the Copyright 2.0 Show and the Articles column to include five entries each.
  • A “Most Popular” section has been added above the Copyright 2.0 Show section to highlight the articles that are most popular on the site at that time.
  • Removed the Archives drop down in the sidebar as it isn’t necessary.
  • Added a “Subscribe By Email” link under the subscribe heading.
  • Many new graphics to for the stories. Refined some of the old ones.

New Known Issues

All of the old known issues still apply. However, it is worth noting that the “Most Popular” list is not actually a most popular list, it is merely a visual placeholder.

It is currently just another list of the latest articles, something that will change once I move the theme to the live server and install the appropriate plugin.

Conclusions

Once again, I turn the theme over to your thoughts and feedback. I look forward to hearing what you have to say. Please, feel free to leave a comment on this entry, send me an email or message me on Twitter.

I look forward to hearing what you have to say!

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.
Email this author | All posts by Jonathan Bailey

13 Responses »

  1. According to Aaron Stroud on January 8th, 2008 at 10:40 pm:

    The font is awfully small on my end. I do run a high res (big iMac), so that’s part of it. But the font is smaller than the old PT font.

  2. According to JB on January 8th, 2008 at 11:08 pm:
    Aaron: Which font are you referring to? The one the articles are written in? It is smaller than the current PT font but then again I’m not running an extremely high resolution.
  3. According to Aaron Stroud on January 8th, 2008 at 11:24 pm:

    Yes, I’m referring to the content font for articles, but it’s also used for the excerpts and a lot of the navigation on the main page (most popular list, category nagivation, disclaimer text, etc).

    I just checked the site on my 12″ pb, running 1024×768. It was readable. It even appeared a little bigger than on my iMac, but it was still pretty small.

    My vote would be for a slightly larger font. Not because it’s wee-sized at 1920×1200 (I know how to increase my own font size), but because I think it’ll probably be a little small for others.

    However, you’re definitely writing for more experience computer users, so perhaps it’s not going to be a big deal.

    Does anyone else out there have an opinion on the font size?

  4. According to JB on January 9th, 2008 at 3:09 am:
    Aaron: Check out the font size now. I increased it by about ten percent and it made a big difference. Let me know if that’s big enough in your mind, I agree it looks better.

    On my screen, which is a measly 1280 x 1024 (thank you for making me feel completely inferior) it looks about on par with the current site in the default font.

    Thank you again for all of your suggestions and help! I think your ideas have drastically improved the site!

  5. According to Aaron Stroud on January 9th, 2008 at 3:35 am:

    That’s a big improvement. Even if slightly bigger was still “better,” I don’t think you could increase the size without making the rest of the layout feel out of whack.

    However, the third level headings are not big enough now. I’d suggest you either increase the size (perhaps h2 would look more appropriate, which would protect you from changing the appearance of h3 in posts). Also, I’d darken the headings to give them a little more contrast with the text.

    Now I’m back to foolin’ with my design. I’m not satisfied with the appearance of my title and a professionally designed logo isn’t in the budget at the moment.

  6. According to Aaron Stroud on January 9th, 2008 at 3:56 am:

    It must be getting late…I had meant to say there’s no need for you to feel inferior with your older mac. I stuck with my little power book as long as I could and then a little longer to make sure I didn’t miss out on the iMac refresh.

    If you wait another year or so, they’ll probably release a 26″ iMac that will make mine look like a toy.

  7. According to JB on January 9th, 2008 at 4:00 am:
    Aaron: Ok, just because you’ve been so right up to this point, the h3s have been darkened and enlarged by about ten percent.

    I don’t know if you’ve looked at the CSS on this particular theme but the designations of H3 and H2 are almost meaningless due to the fact that everything uses relative fonts. The only way to really make adjustments is to change the font size.

    That’s probably the most frustrating problem I’ve had in working with this theme.

    Anyway, let me know what you think. The color makes them stand out a lot more but I can barely tell the font size difference…

  8. According to Recording Studio on January 9th, 2008 at 8:03 am:

    Great. Looks just great. Definitely better than Beta 1 in the way it looks. Other than that highly qualitative comment, I have nothing to add.

  9. According to JB on January 9th, 2008 at 10:12 am:
    RS: Qualitative comments are both helpful and appreciated so please keep them coming!
  10. According to Aaron Stroud on January 9th, 2008 at 2:57 pm:

    Jonathan, the color change worked. I’m not sure if they look bigger now, but they certainly stand out more.

  11. According to JB on January 9th, 2008 at 3:13 pm:
    Aaron: Glad you approve. I think they are bigger but the size diff is about 5% (just rechecked my math) so I doubt either of us would notice it.

    Is there anything else you see that needs tweaking because I’m getting some final feedback and looking to push it live in a few days.

  12. According to Aaron Stroud on January 9th, 2008 at 4:41 pm:

    The “tagged as” at the bottom of single posts appears to break when the tags go onto a second line.

  13. According to JB on January 9th, 2008 at 5:07 pm:
    Aaron: Fixed. The theme designer used a SPAN where a DIV was much more appropriate. Should not mortally break now. Thanks for the catch on that one!

Leave a Reply