I know, I know, you don’t like purple. Or black. And that font over there is too small to read. And don’t even get you started on squares, they’re almost as bad as having to walk around with a rock in your shoe. These are all valid complaints and are being taken very seriously. Or at least, somewhat seriously, because there was this one email that was very passionate in its hatred of this change, and she was all DIE! DIE! DIE! and then there at the bottom was her signature followed by a quote from Jesus.
I’m going to let Jon talk about all the technical issues surrounding this redesign and why we decided to go with a different content management system, because all I did was draw up a design in Photoshop and say MAKE IT LOOK LIKE THIS. He has been knee-deep in code for almost two months now, and the only way we were able to launch the new design this soon and not, say, after we had both died of old age is because he had help from two expert developers, Ben Durbin and Bill Bostick. The amount and quality of work that they did was indispensable, cannot recommend them enough, and mostly I just want to thank them for all the support they gave Jon because without them he would have gone completely bald.
Yesterday as we neared the final stretch I decided to take Leta out to run some errands so Jon could project manage those last few tasks without being distracted by the sound of her body tossing itself on the floor. He briefly got up from this desk to kiss me goodbye when I noticed two giant sweat stains underneath his arms, and I was all, are you running on a treadmill while coding my website? Isn’t that complicated? And he’s all, yes I’m running on a treadmill, WITH MY BRAIN.
So what did I hope to accomplish with this redesign? First and foremost, I wanted to be able to post bigger photographs. That was a huge problem with the previous design, and for years I could only post photos that were 450 pixels wide. Which is why I always posted vertical photos, just to get as much out of those 450 pixels as possible. Now the width is almost double that, which gives me so much more freedom with the camera.
Two, I wanted to start a Daily Style section, some place to store my thoughts and photographs on the design of things in everyday life. When brainstorming ways to incorporate that into the site it made sense to make it a feature like the Daily Photo and Daily Chuck, mainly because I wanted it to include a photograph I’d taken of the object myself to emphasize the fact that these are things I use, these are things in my home.
Three, the Daily Links section has moved from the sidebar into the main content column. This is to give those links more emphasis, and sometime this week the background color of those entries will change color a tiny bit to differentiate them from the other posts. Also coming this week: a “previous” and “next” button at the bottom of all the posts for easier navigation and a redirected RSS feed (so you won’t have to re-subscribe to it).
Finally, I’m hoping to be able to open comments more frequently with this redesign. In recent months when I opened comments my server would crash under the 17 million scripts that ran to publish a single comment, and often people would think that their comment hadn’t published only to have it publish ten times in a row. That had everything to do with how the pages were built, and we think we’ve solved this problem.
Soon we’ll find out because I’m going to open up comments on this post to get your feedback, and I just totally winced writing that. Please be gentle for I am a delicate flower. Also, before you leave a comment you are required to watch this video. Twice. (video is not completely safe for work, but worth getting yelled at for it)
Also also, while comments are open, is there any question you’d like to see answered in the FAQ? Other than SHOW US YR TITZZ!!!!!!!!!! Because that question is getting old.