Simplehelp has a new look! | Update 1

October 31st, 2007 by Ross McKillop | Print This Post Print This Post

If you’re an RSS reader, please take a moment to view the site itself and take a look at the new design. I’ve been having some (to put it lightly) “issues” getting the template to display properly, and I think I have it worked out now - but your help would be hugely appreciated.

Assuming I don’t have to revert back to the previous design, I’ll do a much longer write-up on the amazing developer (Jamie) who is solely responsible for what I think is a fantastic upgrade.

Please feel free - no, encouraged - to leave feedback. I would ask that it be constructive. Comments like “it sucks” will be flat out deleted. Thanks!!!

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Update 1: I’ll update this post a few times as things progress. Jamie has added a new style to the items in the nav bars (the icon before each entry) and made the title for each section stand out a bit more. He’s also fixed some issues that were showing up for folks running IE at 1024×768. I’ve re-enabled the Related Posts plugin, and am working on getting them to show up in RSS feeds (thx How2Geek). Also I shrunk the category icons so they didn’t blur into the post divider. Up next are fixes to blockquote, unordered lists in content, adding a search widget to a sidebar and a couple other minor things. Thanks once again to everyone who offered feedback via Pownce, Twitter, Facebook, IM and the site itself.

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  1. 15 Responses to “Simplehelp has a new look! | Update 1”

  2. By Ross McKillop on Oct 31, 2007 | Reply

    Known issues so far:

    1. Blockquote needs some better styling.
    2. The listed post on Oct 15th is too far left aligned (thanks Jordan!)

  3. By qureyoon on Oct 31, 2007 | Reply

    nice ! layout is very nice !

    1. the grey color on the logo is a little turn-off (for me)

    2. the ads on the right sidebar is not blending, not as the ads on top here ;)

    3. on front page, some icon is overlapping the footer, if the post are too short

    other than that, all is NICE ! kudos to Blog2Life :)

  4. By Ross McKillop on Oct 31, 2007 | Reply

    qureyoon -

    Excellent feedback. I’ve updated the icons so they don’t extend into the footer (I just shrunk them all to 50px x 50px (give or take).

    I’m working on blending ads and trying different ad formats - you should see a gray one from time to time (they rotate) in the sidebar.

    Thanks!!

  5. By Ari on Nov 1, 2007 | Reply

    This looks great ! I like the colours and the layout, but i don’t understand the mirroring in the top banner. It is hardly visible, and I had to look a little to notice it.

    The placement of the google search box is also a little of. Hard to get to and hars to see since I often scroll down when reading and If i would be looking for a search bar i wouldn’t scroll far enough up to see the box since I am not accustomed to having functionality integrated into the banner.

    Thats my two cents, but this is just nagging ! You asked for it ! I really enjoy the change.

    Ari

  6. By Ross McKillop on Nov 1, 2007 | Reply

    @Ari:

    Yes I totally did ask for it - and THANK YOU for providing honest and constructive feedback. The mirroring thing is just one of those silly web 2.0 deals that I’ll probably eventually kill. When we (and by we I mean Jamie, the guy responsible for putting up w/ my constant “please change this and please change that” stuff) first put the reflection up, it was VERY obvious. I asked him to tone it down a bit, and that’s where we ended out. I kinda like that it’s very subtle, but if more folks agree with you - I’ll absolutely have it changed. I’m all about “what the user likes best” rather than what I like best.

    I think you’re totally on to something with the search box - I’ll see what I can do about adding ANOTHER one somewhere in the sidebar. Two searches is a bit weird, but it can’t hurt right?

    Thanks again!

  7. By Jamie on Nov 1, 2007 | Reply

    Brilliant Feedback on some of the things we’ve completely overlooked. There are so many little pieces of code that its so easy to miss something off.

    Thanks for all the feedback on the design, I realise now I should have checked the website more thoroughly with internet explorer (the darned thing).

    I appologise for any problems that do arrise and will try to fix them as soon as I can.

    Thanks again, Jamie

  8. By The How-To Geek on Nov 1, 2007 | Reply

    Good work!

  9. By Keith Dsouza on Nov 1, 2007 | Reply

    Nice and good goes with the title simple and fantastic.

  10. By Steven Hodson on Nov 1, 2007 | Reply

    While I like the overal “clean” look I personally find it a little bit of a “cramped reading experience”.

    I just recently changed themes as well so I can relate to the “getting the tweaks worked out”. Unfortunately I had to go with a free theme but hopefully one of these days I’ll be able to afford a custom theme as I think that really helps with the whole “branding” concept. It’s either that or I have to breakdown and learn the ins and outs of PHP and Wordpress.

    The only thing I miss here Ross is a subscribe to comments options.

  11. By Ross McKillop on Nov 1, 2007 | Reply

    @Steven Hodson:

    Thanks for the feedback! I agree about the cramped thing, I’m still trying to tweak spacing between text and sidebars (and the left align for that matter).

    Re: subscribe to comments - I actually disabled that plugin a few months ago as someone (I never figured out exactly who I think they were hiding behind a PC w/ a trojan) figured out a way to massively screw up WordPress by abusing the subscribe to comments plugin. I’ll check again and see if the plugin has been updated or maybe a different version that isn’t vulnerable…

    Thanks again!

  12. By Tom on Nov 2, 2007 | Reply

    Nice job Ross & Jamie. The new design looks great.

  13. By Shankar Ganesh on Nov 2, 2007 | Reply

    Yup, it’s looking great. I like the colours you’ve used in this layout.

  14. By Shankar Ganesh on Nov 3, 2007 | Reply

    Hey something I wanted to tell you.

    The title tag on individual pages goes like
    Simplehelp > Blog Archive > Post title

    I think a better one would be just the post title. Do take note of it :)

  15. By Ross McKillop on Nov 3, 2007 | Reply

    @Shankar Ganesh:

    You genius thank you for spotting that! I changed it back to what it should have been and resubmitted my sitemap manually. Darnit Google already noticed the change. Hopefully they notice it changed back soon.

  16. By Shankar Ganesh on Nov 3, 2007 | Reply

    You’re welcome :)
    Just spotted it while I was wandering around here. It’s great that you changed it immediately.

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