Back in July I “realigned” this site’s design after having gotten bored with the old design. I began thinking this realigned design lacked some branding and could be tweaked up quickly. I ended up taking a break from watching all the cool SXSW happenings on twitter to “refresh” the design tonight. If you’re reading this through RSS, click on over to see the new look. The only real change was the header area. The new header extends across the entire site and houses the navigation as well. The header also includes a small blurb about me and a mugshot so that people drifting through from search engines can quickly grasp what this site’s about.
The sidebar also has a “popular this month” module that lists the most popular posts during the last month, ordered by number of comments. Hopefully that will stay forever – I just have to double-check that it’s not terribly database intensive as the MySQL query for it is freakishly long. In addition, the header has a small section with the total number of words from every blog post I’ve written. Just a cool metric to glance at every once in a while. I might take that down in favor of something more interesting (and less database intensive) though.
Anyways, feedback is welcome. Let me know if you see any bugs flying around. Down the road I would love to hire Mike Rohde to make a kickass logo for this blog; he’s done some amazing logo work in the past.
Update: I have yet to test in IE6/IE7. Maybe tomorrow I’ll boot into XP & Vista.
Oh and not related but my friend Dimitry met Samir from the hit movie Office Space. Too cool.
Update 2: I’ve added a superheader as per some feedback. Refresh a few times for the new CSS to kick-in.
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It looks great Paul, simple and elegant.
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Works fine in Firefox on Vista and XP, and looking great. I loved the sketchups on Flickr, and the real thing is awesome.
“Just a cool metric to glance at every once in a while. I might take that down in favor of something more interesting” I like it the way it is now, it’s… interesting.
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I like it. You would change it just as I refreshed my links page to use images! doh!
Just as an aside. How do you display your Twitter status and style it like that? I’d like to style mine but don’t really know how to go about it.
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Looks very good, nice work Paul! Just checked the site in IE7 on Vista and it’s looking good there too! :)
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A great improvement, definitely… I didn’t really like the old layout much, which wasn’t a fundamental issue as I read you for the content and usually stick to the RSS feed, but this is really nice.
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Jeez Astorg, not “that” much has changed. I debated having a real header on my own site, decided to go with it to free up sidebar space. I actually thought Paul’s site looked pretty nice before with no header, but I like it now as well.
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There’s nothing wrong with the new layout, but as you might remember, I loved the old layout :(.
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Awesome Paul. I like it because it still has the same basic look and feel of the old design. Feels familiar to me, I like it.
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Looks good Paul. Little changes go a long way.
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Looks great Paul. I think it gives the site a little more appeal.
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Looks 10x better. Small simple changes make a huge difference. Good job Paul.
Looks great in IE6 and IE7 too Paul. Looks pretty much the same in IE as it does in FF, always good. Although, I only looked at this post and your main page.
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Looks Hot. Or Blue. Or whatever.
I really like the idea of the ‘popular this month’ list.
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Great final design! I hope my suggestions helped.
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Looks good Paul. Definitely subtle changes for the better.
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I like it, but..
“Paul is a student at Georgia Tech who loves technology, California and all things Apple.”
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Maybe it’ll jjust take a while for me to get used to, but I preferred the older design. The whole spacing thing with the menu/font/colors just seems a bit weird.
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Your comments now look awfully sweet, but the header is somewhat odd. I still love your old header
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Looks fine. :)
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Well done.
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Thilak – there never was a header before
Paul – not sure about the color scheme either, probably could be better, it is drawing my eyes away from the article as well, that’s why I liked it before when there was no header
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@Andrew – it also brings attention to the navigation, which is a usability must IMO.
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Well the navigation just seems to blend into the header. I mean the tech news/reviews/guides seems more like navigation then whats actually there. I’m going to have to agree with Andrew that the header, especially in its current color scheme, draws attention away from the article.
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If you’re worried about the labor-intensive MySQL, setup a cronjob for every 10 minutes or so to generate that bit of HTML and include the file.
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@Richard – It’s 8pm cst and you’re in Austin at SXSW on a Saturday night.. commenting my blog. Go out and do something!
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Paul this is amazing! My only suggestion is to change the colours of PaulStamatiou.com to a black so that it stands out more than the tag-line.
Are you going to be doing the same for 281?
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I suppose I could adapt the changes to 281.. it’s in need of an update anyways. =) Maybe over spring break when I can find some time.
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Clean and simple does the trick. I like the randomized information string displaying word count, post and comment count, and the akismet count.
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@Brad – refresh more.. it shows 2 more things. =)
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i like it, and especially the flickr integration.
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the old layout was better dude. it was cleaner, simpler.
just my 2 cents.
Gav
Andrew: Yeah, but it was still cool. Current header looks somewhat like a contextual ad. Maybe Stammy should try changing the color scheme.
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I’ve messed with tons of colors, I don’t think it can get better. Have any hex# suggestions?
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@Thilak and everyone – how would you feel about this? http://flickr.com/photos/pauls/417080043/
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Nice way to show you’re a avid flickr user, with all the links to your photos.
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Paul Stamatiou: Did you move the blue bar to the extreme top ?
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@Thilak – the main difference was that the blue extends for the length of the page horizontally – a “superheader” if you will. It was moved to the top but that’s just a photoshop mockup so I would likely put some padding back.
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Stammy: A super header would look much better. You current header mocks at contextual ads.
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Yeah, I definitely want to avoid that look.
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The header isn’t text-zoom friendly.
I am aware of that and
don’t plan on fixing it. Also, the old design wasn’t text-zoom friendly either – it would mess up the nav too.edit! – might have a fix at hand.
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Looks great. Simple & Professional. Keep it!
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Paul, nice idea, my only suggestion would be to add a bit of top & bottom padding to the header and navigation, since they are pushed right up against each other (at least in Vista FF). Other than that I like the new direction, keep it up :)
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I think the full-width header is more pleasing to the eye.
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But the nav elements need more padding, IMHO.
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I prefer the super-header, looks a lot smarter and integrated into the design. But I agree, the nav looks a bit cramped.
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I like the rotating stats. I really love stuff like that. I gives a smaller incentive to read articles on your site than in my reader.
The nav does look a little cramped. Maybe put some more padding in between the top content and the nav bar. as well as spreading out the navigation. Perhaps not making each page name in all caps. It looks like one big block of text.
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Another vote for slight more padding between the super header and content. It’s a little bunched up now.
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Your rotating stats are clever indeed .. Care to share your technique? :)
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Nice example of how subtle changes can make a large impact. Nice job!
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Stammy — wow! I’m very honored. :-)
Drop me a line when you’re ready, and I’ll be happy to talk about logo work with you.
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I also like the clean new look. Myriad is a favorite font, and I like that you’ve compressed a good snapshot of your info up in the header for quick reading.
Looks like you are placing the emphasis on the text of the blog, which makes tons of sense.
That Twitter status block is good idea as well. :-)
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The new headshot is much better.
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fucking perfect. very well done. i like the comment/posts at top. can you post the code to the sql query or wp code to do that?
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Looks great, better than the old one.
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Hey man, great new layout!
I`m using right now the IE 6.0. it seems to have some problem in the comment box. But you know, its IE, so there`s a problem with css.
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I would add a bottom left curb in that horizontal main nav … now it looks rather boring. Just a thought …
But who am I …
@Johan – what do you mean by “curb”?
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Sorry about that (I messed up) – I meant curve aka rounded. You could add a little curve going outwards instead of the blue bottom border, more like add a curve to the top thick border instead.
You could also make a letterform mark from your initials PS.
Hey Paul — did you use a Wordpress plugin for the “popular this month” section and the “popular posts” section in the Archives, or is it just some custom SQL queries you cooked up? I am looking to setup something similar and wanted to know what you were using. Great job on the re-design.
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I’d like to see a wordpress plugin that displays the most popular posts on a blog. But, instead of hitting the database constantly, each night it would regenerate a static HTML include that contained the list of popular posts. Gets the job done and doesn’t burden your server.
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@Blake – I get around that by just caching the entire site. :-)
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