Why I made the change:
- Navigation: Once you get used to the navigational methodology, it should be easier to bounce around the site. Everything is in a more logical, consistent place. Links, blog roll and archive on the left and ads/search on the right. It's like a new haircut. You may not like it at first, but it should grown on you.
- More space for new features: There are a variety of new features that I'm considering including a "Label Archive," a jukebox, Georgia Sports Blog apparel store, Del.ic.ious headlines, etc. There was no where to put those new features in the old 2 column design.
- Monetization of the Site: To be totally honest, I would do the blog for free. I've received over a dozen offers to write for other blogs, blog aggregators or site publishers in various arrangements from legit (AOL and well known sports sites) to downright sketchy (don't ask). I've refused those offers because this is my hobby, and I don't want to lose control of the site (Plus, I have a real job). My goal for the site is to deliver great content that keeps folks entertained. Obviously that starts with entertaining myself. Financially, I'll never get rich doing this. But I'd like to offset some of my vast Bulldog related expenses. The new design allows me to better deliver ads and affiliate information in an organized away...hopefully without interfering with the navigation of the site. Before, I used ads to break up navigational elements on the sidebars, and many of you never saw some of the site's resources.
- Branding: There are some branding changes that I'd like to make over time, and the design will help with that. More on that some other time.
- Stagnation: Honestly, I was tired of looking at the old design.
Known Issues/Problems
- Clickable Headlines for Blog Articles: Update: This issue is fixed. Dave supplied the code, and you should be able to click on a headline with no problem.
- Comment Font Size: UPDATE: This appears fixed due to Dave's suggestion. Let me know if its' still busted
- Cool Bullets on the Sidebars: I miss this little guy
. I'm trying to bring it back on the side bar as an automatic feature in the LI tag, but I don't know how to do that in the CSS Style sheet. If you're a CSS guru, can you tell me how to fix this? - Monitor Resolution / Blog Width: The blog was previously 800 pixels wide, and now it is 960 pixels wide. The main content area remained virtually the same width. According to the site stats, roughly 7-8 percent of you have a monitor resolution less than 960 pixels wide. That means most of you shouldn't be negatively affected by the wider screen. Those of you who have the smaller monitors will only be impacted in that you won't be able to see as many advertisements. No biggie right?
- Expandable Posts; Most of you won't notice this, but I lost (at least temporarily) the ability to break up long posts using the "expand" or "read more" feature. I hope to have that back soon.
Any help / feedback would be appreciated.
PWD
11 comments:
I like the redesign a lot. One comment from my end: on the archive list on the left, can you invert the order of the months, so that the most recent past will be at the top of the list? Seems like readers will more likely check the last couple of months, instead of the first few.
The site is clean and no major bugs viewing on Safari (Mac). Good job.
Ditto on mcboyt's comment.
looks great on Firefox Paul
FWIW the new site holds up well on windows mobile. the reading pane is smaller than the last site, but the pictures no longer cut off some of the type. I'm sure it'll be fantastic when i see it for the first time post-vegas. Great job!
Only comment I will make is on windows mobile, the left most section comes up first. So I have to scroll through the archives before I get to the current posts. That is a small price to pay for reading the georgia sports blog goodness though. Maybe that will prove to be a deterrent from checking this site as much as I do when I am at work.
PWD -
1) Re: the comment section type size... Go into your template and change this line as below.
#commentInline { margin: 10px 20px; text-align: left; font-size: medium;}
You can then change "medium" to any of the following:
xx-small
x-small
small
medium
large
x-large
xx-large
smaller
larger
**px
**%
The font-size property can be added to the other comment-related lines in your css if you want the author's name to be a different size than the comment text, etc.
I also just noticed that #CommentInline and several other comment-related items show up twice in your CSS. Probably best to delete the second set, although usually browsers ignore such redundancy and go with whichever is first.
2) It doesn't look like your sidebars are set up as UL's in your code. If they were, you could add this line to your CSS:
#SideLCol ul {list-style-image: url(*url to the bullet image*)}
If you choose to leave it as-is, there's a way to create the same effect with a little extra work by making the bullet image a background image and bumping the text to the right. I think (not positive) that this is what you'd change:
#SideLCol a { text-decoration: none; color: #C11B17; }
to
#SideLCol a { text-decoration: none; color: #C11B17; background-image: url(*url to bullet image*); padding-left: 10px; background-position: center-left; background-repeat: no-repeat;}
There would also be one more coding step after this so that it wouldn't put the bullet images in the "Site Feed" section, which I assume you would want.
3) Making a post's title into a link to its permalink (a single-entry page) is easy - I just would need to see your Blogger template to do it.
Let me know if I can help.
Thanks Dave.
I'll review those suggestions tonight!
McBoyt,
The order of the archive is driven by the blogger template. I can't change that.
However, the guy I got the template from is preparing to upgrade his template builder to the new blogger functionality. Whenever that happens, I'll move the entire archive back to a drop down list feature like it was before the redesign.
Not sure what order they'll appear then, but it'll take up much less space.
Comment problem appears fixed per Dave's tips.
I like how bourbon is a tag. "Vast Bulldog related expenses" indeed.
Dave gave me the code to fix the archive. It now lists from most recent to oldest.
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