Given that it's getting a little cooler out and I've been wearing more long sleeve t-shirts, I decided to update the look and feel of my blog. My friend Kevin Menzie - the CEO of Slice of Lime - who has been doing some amazing work for a number of our portfolio companies - did much of the work.
We're still shaking out a few things, so be patient if you notice a problem. I'm interested in any feedback - good or bad - as I've got a new blog in the works with a similar look and feel. Please comment freely on my new wardrobe. Of course, if you run into any bugs, please tell me.
Posted in: BloggingCOMMENTS (14)
Love the new design -- great work. I will be contacting Kevin shortly
I don't like that you need to click 'read more' to read a post. Even the short ones have this. Very few of your posts are long, so I think you should include the whole thing on the main page.
Otherwise... nice fonts, nice colors. Not sure the changes really add anything substantive other than make it feel newer.
and we'd welcome the chance to send you a few free long sleeve tees. if you'd like something printed on them please email in 300dpi
Ahhh.... much better. Nice work Kevin! Congrats Brad.
Brad I like the colors and look, don't like the read more stuff though. I often will not read more and leave an article with that kind of stuff. I don't like it in my RSS feed and certainly don't like it on the blog itself. Otherwise it is pleasing to the eye. From a functional prospective though, what did you gain?
Nice, very nice. The post titles seem a bit large to me. I love the colors.
Like the new look, but I have to be honest, I never actually go to your site. I use an aggregator... NewsGator of course. Only reason I came to the site was to see the new look.
Fred talks about this, but in a different context.
For new visitors, it is certainly a great first impression but for us loyal subscribers we won't get to enjoy Kevin's fine work :)
I like the fast load with the badges/widgets/stuff on the right.
I dislike (pretty strongly) the "read more" stuff. Maybe set the "read more" threshold higher? I don't want to click 5 times to read your day's worth of writing.
"Read more" appears to be unanimously hated. I will abolish it shortly.
I like it ... a LOT. The indented highlighting of the post titles and "thought ballon arrow" from the posted comments is a very nice touch.
How 'bout considering a fully liquid display - i.e. on my 1280x1024 screen, I'm seeing fairly wide grey bars on the left/right - looks like it was designed for 1024x768 (I'm too lazy/budy to grope around the HTML source to confirm exactly what was done ... although I should to check out the nifty CSS being done).
Ditto other comments on "Read More" - just give us the content w/o the click-thru ... and with a more liquid design, wider screens should have less vertical space for your stuff.
Overall darn impressive - I'd love to have Kevin provide a few pointers on my "halloween celiac charity" page that I mentioned to you earlier. Along those lines, maybe have Kevin do a "guest post" (or provide a pointer to a writeup on his site) of what he did "under the covers" - would not ony be interesting, but a good/appropriate attaboy if nothingn else.
I love the bubbles for the comments, and the triangle at the title of the post.
Since you're abolishing "read more", I think it looks great. Although the color scheme did remind me of the Colorado Avalanche which is probably not what you were going for.
I think this is a overall improvement. It is definitely moving in the right direction, but seems a bit cluttered. You may want to have a mouseover effect on your main menu words. I agree with having full posts (up to a certain length) shown on the homepage as clicking "read more" for a short post isnt helpful. I think the added shadows, fonts, and graphics look great but the header image could use some refreshing. If you have the original background you could also get a designer to add the font without it being distorted around each letter. Nice sidebar widgets now too!
Also - I use cocomments to track my blog comments and I wanted to let you know its working on your site.
Brad,
I like the abbreviated articles (read more format). I believe that's how most people read. If I think you give an indication of how the article will end, "I like this, I don't like this, etc.) I will skip the rest because I have the general idea of the subject, the characters and the plot. In other words, I don't need to know all your exact words about the topic but your opinion, feeling, emotion, instinct of the subject. That is how I get to know you, not by memorizing your words.
Kevin, great job. The page loads MUCH faster then before. Whatever you did, keep it up!
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