Beta of the New PT Layout

I 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• The Test site is running from an old copy of the database, everything is about a week out of date.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

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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!