Threadwatch Redesign BETA

Upload appears to have gone smoothly :)

There was a few mins I got the db error but everything is fine now in both IE and FF.

Thanks for the BBCode tags.

The only thing im not certain on is the "tagline" graphic, some feedback and suggestions on THAT most welcome...

Anyway, all this is somewhat different from the preview, earlier.

Hm. Whole lotta fonts and "blocks". Columns are good. Bold big logo combo is better. Bit of blue background: improvement.

Is this a beta "google style" (as in: this is it for the next couple of years)?

Rest seems pretty cool :O) Good to see you have friends in high places, help off Google with your adsense already? ;O) Did you implement any ad tracking yet?

Heh "DIV ID=ARSE" heh

No Wit, a couple of hours i hope...

Also, if you log out, you'll see a nice smiley welcome message at the top of each page...

Glad you like the html chris lol!

The design is nice - stays simple, but effective. Good to see we can switch the ads off - but they are actually pretty tasteful anyway.

yeah Nick, I'm sure there's something better than that ;)

I was amused to see the contextuals were spot on when I went to my account - in other words ads for Cornwall were shoveled up, and were spot on with the little info given on the page

I would be surprised if you get over 1% CTR or over $1 CPM, all you have to do is get the punters coming to TW by the million, and you are made!

The problem with blogs seems to be in getting more than the 5 cent a click stuff being broadcast, and then getting anyone to click.

I never bother logging out so I never see the smiley welcome!

But seriously, overall I think you should be very happy with your redesign

Gurtie, im all ears - i did rush that a bit, i made it 10mins b4 i was ready to go cos i forgot it heh..

Im open to all sugesstions!

thanks cornwall, and yeah, im aware the adsense wont be a big earner :) some stuff will do ok though i think, we quite often rank highly but briefly for good tems when some kind of tech is discussed...

Meaning the top right corner? IMO, it has a few too many font treatments. As for the tagline itself, perhaps it could be shortened.

On another note, where is the submit a thread button?

...AND geotarget.

Is that why I'm getting Public Service adsense, me living in a web 3rd world country and all?

Top left your_store..

Also an anon submit form for rumours and stuff if someone wants to remain anon - or just general feedback

As I went to turn my ads off, I paused to think, I do sometimes pause to think.

I assume you are paid CPM on the adverts, or do you have a fixed cost per month?

Either way it is probably worth your spelling it out somewhere as members can then make a more, shall we say, balanced decision on whether to turn them off or not.

If you are getting PSAs then take the few minutes, well half hour, required to set up a fallback ad or banner in place of AdSense serving PSAs. You don't want to be giving away free space.

Tells you how to do it on AdSense pages on G.

I actually prefer the straight down the center with the ads turned *on*. The posts are a little too far to the left with ads turned off.

Might be a good thing for you, Nick.

Other than that, I think you did very well. So far, everything looks really clean. I'll check more into it a little later..Off to run errands.

Looks great, Nick. I've no problem with the ads; will see about up-fronting some money too once taxes are past....

Why the switch with the navigation from the left side to the right? I'm all disoriented now!

Dunno if I am being thick but..

..have you just stopped this "group blog" from blogging. In other words I can see how to start a new "thread" (button top left) but I cannot see how I can just "blog" a new blog.

- finally all those refreshes showed something new *lol*

Comments/suggestions and random thoughts:

Tagline: Alt text should be same as graphic text, but of course you know that already ;)

Mid column seems too narrow: perhaps the right column is a bit too wide - as it has a darker bckground it makes the content of the mid column seem "pressed" (for lack of a better word)

Posts/comments are not as clearly separated now as before - perhaps it's just about getting used to it, not sure it matters much.

"By..." line is too close to the grey bottom border, imho, link underline blends with it. Also, for people with long nicks (eg Brian Turner) the links break to the next line. I'd suggest putting all the links on a separate line below the posters name and timestamp (for consistency)

Top of page:
Not sure about "suggest" vs "submit new" - havent tried either, and don't really know which one is for what. Ah, i see.. "suggest" leads to a page called "feedback" - perhaps those two labels should be aligned

Ads: Left boxes look great, so do the inline google ads. left adsense ads... dunno, i'd make the green urls blue i think.

Icons: Bloglines and Y! a little too unclear - i definitely like the alt text on the questionmark but it does nothing in my browser (yet, i suppose)

My blog: Uhm, where did it go? I can see that everything is now threads, but that leaves us with a lot of discontinued blogs that we can't write new entries in (can't really delete them either) - will these be converted to threads, or what?

No need vkaryl, far be it for me to turn money down but no one need do that if they're leaving the ads on, and no one should feel they *have* to if they turn them off..

If members can afford it, and think it's worth it, fantastic. If the ads are going off then it's a real help, but it's strictly a voluntary thing for those that really want to.

I put a lot of value in the members here, and despite having to monetize, have done what i can to put them first - im really not counting on subscriptions as a "source of income" - i think the ads, and some other things in the future will cover that..

But thankyou, im flattered that you'd think to do that :)

claus, i'll get to all that stuff, but it'd take me ages to reply to each point :) Most of it is SPOT ON, so thanks!

Personal Blogs

Well, the idea is that if you want to blog something, use the "submt new" but leave out a "source" (im about to alter how the form works, it's one of the things i mentioned needs doing on a live DB)

So, just one form - which will not be called "thread" so it doesn't confuse...

Is that ok?

I do my best to please clause heh..

It was set to the local url, no www, i've changed that now, it goes to that rss primer i wrote a little while back...

-it came out wrong above. Actually, the width of the mid column is very good and it should not be wider regarding the text, as that would slow down reading. It just seems like the content itself is a bit pressed (see here for a post with a wide image, and here for an opening post that almost disappears).

I'd go with claus on that one. Match the rest of the url's on the site

Yep, i will have to be, as i hope members will be also, more aware of the restrictions on hotlinking images - that one cant really be helped, but i will keep a close eye on it from now on of course...

Im not sure what you mean by "diappears" on that 2nd post?

That posts that are promoted to the homepage show the members website under the headline? Profiles are now noindex, as is trackback pages, though TB's that show up in the comments and are allowed to live are fine..

small spelling mistake in the ad :)

Got it, thanks Gurite :-)

I'm not good with words right now it seems *lol*

When i see that post i see a lot of links and text in very little space. It's a vey high density which makes it hard to read. As it is also separated from the headline by the tabs, it simply makes my eyes seek down to post 2 automatically - just like "banner blindness". It seems like post 2 is the natural starting point on that page (even though i know better). Don't know if that makes it any clearer...

What could make it better was a little more space - perhaps just a little extra line-height will do the trick. Whitespace makes things easier on the eyes, i guess that's what i was trying to say.

Extra space is also needed here. Perhaps that page illustrates my point better.

Study on whitespace and line-height:
http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/62/whitespace.htm
And related thread:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/8331.htm

1.3em lineheight and a 1em bottom margin on the author details etc....?

C'mon Nick... you're still using the "full target" favicon? Or do I need to flush my browser cache? ;-)

Otherwise, it looks good. I rather liked the old "lots-o-white-space" look, but it's a damn good job of integrating the ads without being obnoxious about it.

In the upper left hand corner, it seems that the 'suggest' link should be 'feeback'.
http://www.threadwatch.org/suggest

I may just move that right out of there entirely...

I wanted it to be a prominent link for people to anonymously submit links, rumours, stories etc but the module that provides, strangely enough called 'feedback', has 'feedback' hard coded into the page.

Feedback suggests that one should comment on the site, say well done! or poor show!, not, to submit stories anonymously...

I'll work on it :)

mivox, i'll try and find that icon, i must have it, and i think i know where it is, sorry!

Using IE6 with the ads disabled seems to bugger up the footer positioning, ending up with the footer positioned at the end of the *right sidebar* content rather than at the actual end of the page (ie it appears immediately under "turn ads off").

Overally a slick layout but the adsense block doesn't quite "fit" somehow - it's like it's trying to be part of the site but lacks those little touches that are a common theme throughout the rest of the design. *shrug* Maybe it'll grow on me <g>

with the column a little smaller, how hard would it be to do alternating row colors to help separate them some?

The column sizing seems a little "off" with the middle Adsense block on posts.

In Firefox, I normally have a sidebar open on a large screen (1024) and the Adsense block is being pushed into the right navigation.

I just went over to IE6 to look at an 800x600 screen and the left ads are sitting on top of the centre copy, while the middle ads are still jutting into the right nav.

Let me know if you need screenshots. Maybe it's something that a min-width would help with (haven't looked at the intricacy of Claire's CSS yet!)?

Did you increase the ems? I can't really tell the difference in line-height (i'm on Firefox, of course). Some of the underline on the author links seems to stay clear of the gray border (stever, above) while others still overlap (mivox, kpaul, above) ... Anyway, that's just details - generally it looks just great to me :-)

Okay, the IE problems will be sorted today, for now, as soon as i've got news out the way and checked all the posts, i'll put smaller adense unit in on the posts pages...

Thanks guys, we're working on it!

A quick and dirty fix has been put in, we're working on a better one later in the day

If you're still having trouble, browser version and screenshot to nick@threadwatch.org would be REALLY appreciated!

Thanks all, and sorry for the problems, it'll all get sorted today i promise..

Don't forget to refresh - just in case things still look the same, might even need to clear cache....

Don't know if this is possible, Nick ... but the only ads I'd prefer to turn off are the ones that I saw in between posts/comments. The ads in the left column are no bother whatsoever. If you can target the ad control that deeply, it would be cool. :-)

i'm also seeing it float to the right if i resize or am on a smaller monitor. maybe use a 234x60 in the middle column?

Can you send me a screenshot please kpaul? nick - threadwatch.org

No, not that much control pleeker :) Wanna keep things as simple as can be...

damn..this is dismal.

I love the new design. Much easier to scan and look at topics. Kudos Nick and to everyone else who helped.

>>so fuck em

Glad to see that this new "step up" to being all business-ey hasn't affected the spirit here ;).

... what grnidone said. That's a big block of dull grey on the right there (Firefox). I love minimalism meself, but for a place that's on a permanently opened tab, I find the 'grey everywhere' a bit sapping.

Text formatting and layout just fine, but a tiny dash of Spring colour wouldn't go amiss.

Right, im pleased to see we're down to minor things like choice of color :) As one member said to me yesterday, "Nick, lock that thread now, or you'll be designing by committee..." heh...

FWIW, when i tried blue, everyone hated it, and when it's in a big block like that, it changes things, the old blue just doesnt look goood - so i hope you guys can live with the grey, i did try to spruce it up just a little bit with the corner gifs :)

Problems

I think we've managed to sort out all the bigger issues, but if anyone has any problems with the site please pm me, or email me at nick-threadwatch.org and we'll get right on it.

Thanks ever so much for all the feedback, im going to slowly go through this thread over the coming days and start doing minor tweaks on things that could be improved upon based on your comments.

Thanks everyone!