Your Site is Ugly - Or Things Your Friends Say
Posted on January 14th, 2007by Michael Gray in Random Thoughts
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So I was in the city today having lunch with some friends, and when someone you trust says “your site is ugly”, it’s time to make a change. Ok technically the redesign was in the works anyway I just expedited the process and accelerated the deployment schedule. I’m not entirely happy with the logo, and there are few more tweaks to make but let me know if you come across anything broken.
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January 14th, 2007 at 1:53 am
It looks like all the files for the Zugwang Posts
http://www.wolf-howl.com/2005/10/casestudy-zugzwang-post-1.html
are missing.
January 14th, 2007 at 3:02 am
this one is worse
January 14th, 2007 at 3:21 am
Ouch talk about a necessary evil! But it’s nice to see you can take a little constructive criticism.
Thank You
January 14th, 2007 at 3:51 am
One small revision would help the look of this design: The navigation links in white on red at the top would be better left-aligned than centered, as would the word “Sponsors” at top right, and the footer information (copyright, etc.). The style everywhere else is left-aligned, so the centered elements are inconsistent, illogical, and unattractive. It would be okay for these elements to be indented if you feel it’s necessary (since indentation is integral to the design), but they should not be centered based on the logic of the design
January 14th, 2007 at 4:00 am
I’m getting broken links for all the social bookmark links, from here.
Hmm, 403 when I try to pull up an individual image by URL.
Sociable installed correctly?
January 14th, 2007 at 4:05 am
The new design looks great. The old one was just fine though. No complaints.
January 14th, 2007 at 6:10 am
Get the broken images for the bookmark links too, like Lea. Thought first that it was a browser setting hehe.
I did not care about the design of your blog too much in the first place and if you would not have said anything, I wouldn’t have even notice the change
and to be honest, I don’t like the new design, too aggressive. The old one might have been nothing special, but it was at least not distracting the reader.
You reminded me that I have to get my redesign done too. I got the design done last week. Now its time for implementing. Did I say time? oh.. that’s the problem hehe.
Cheers
January 14th, 2007 at 7:04 am
Hi Graywolf,
This is my first comment on your blog although I have beem reading it for quite a while.
This is a significant improvement. The colors are a bit aggressive, but it stands out and the overall design is smooth.
Two points I would handle:
1. The logo - The wolf image is good but the typography is underdesigned. I would send your designer to do a once over.
2. The typography in the main bar is not good. Have your designer try some other fonts and select the best one.
January 14th, 2007 at 7:20 am
Looks good MG… and I did not say your site was ugly… what I said was “come on mg, you can afford a real design, what the hell is up with the design on your blog?”
Lunch was great - feel bad I created work for you though.
January 14th, 2007 at 9:11 am
Ach! When the content’s this good - who cares how it looks? I’m guessing they were Mac users.
January 14th, 2007 at 9:56 am
The CSS for the single page in Firefox 2 is currently broken, with the sidebar coming below the content.
It is good that you don’t have your front page blogroll on that, though I would have been tempted to move a blogroll to a page, although that depends on your relationship with the other sites.
Also personal preference, I would make subscription options a lot more prominent.
January 14th, 2007 at 10:32 am
>xensen: Ack left aligned are you crazy man! On a liquid full width left aligned is like wearing paisley with stripes!
>Lea: fixed.
>Cartensen and Yoav: too aggresive, well that’s part of competing in a playground, where everyone competes hard for attention.
>Yoav: yea the logo needs a little work but I had to get off my ass and push something out the door. The type style is verdana, nothing too complex there.
>Rae: true that wasn’t exactly what you said, but I think I captured the spirit in my own attention whore grabbing way. I was working on it anyway, just pushed it up. Lunch was great.
January 14th, 2007 at 10:36 am
You must really “trust” this persons opinion that your old blog design sucked eh? This “trust” thing is kind of weirding me out, is the machine really out to crush us?
I like black and white, it’s more honest looking. Also when there is three columns make sure you put monetizing junk is in column 2 because humans never hit 3. That is unless social stuff is more important.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:43 am
The animal in the logo in a fox not a wolf.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:56 am
>The animal in the logo in a fox not a wolf.
and there I was thinking people might notice it only had two legs
January 14th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Cool, sidebar seems to now be fixed
If you are going to use the sociable plugin, you might want to hack it a little as per
Nofollow and pink boxes
January 14th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
You should use your own wolf, the real wolf.. that from the favicon if possible.. Give Browsershots.org also a shot.
Success
January 14th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
I must admit, I think I prefered the old design. At the end of the day most of us have to work with pro designed sites everyday. So its actually more appealing to see a SEO site using a low key design, especially when the content is what I’m after.
I mean, just look at Matt Cutts’ blog.
(no offense intended, Matt
January 14th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Suit yourself.
January 14th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
I can’t say that I like the new design better, but I do understand how easy it is to get caught up in tweaking your blog…
January 15th, 2007 at 11:47 am
I kind of the liked the old design, wasn’t anything pretty to look at but it had character. My only complaint was it you didn’t advertise your consulting enough, i didn’t even know you offered consulting until a couple weeks ago
January 15th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
When your friend makes more money on the web than you do, then listen to him about ugly. Until then, do what works ..and sometimes ugly really, really works.
That said, I don’t have much positive comment about the existing site, it’s functional but looks a lot like Andy Beal’s site to me. I’m not overly keen on either of them, your or Andy’s. Two right-hand columns is one of my least-favorite layouts.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:46 am
The ugly ones need more lovins.
January 17th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
The red just doesn’t do it for me. I liked the version prior to the most stable about a year ago ?
Maybe you can try some color in the design ala stuntdubl
Then again what do I know ? I use some variant of “almost spring” for everything.