Login

Register

Member List

RSS Feed

Amanda | Contact

Auguste | Contact

Jesse | Contact

Pam | Contact

Next entry: A Day In The Life Of The Only Appreciator Of The Masculine Life Force Previous entry: The Myth Of The Myth

Redesign The Second

Pandagon

Post-election, I’d like to do a redesign of the site again, focusing on fixing the issues in this one and also on any improvements we need to put it.

The first thing I want to say is that we absolutely need to put in a blogroll/blogrolls.  It really sucks from the perspective of the larger blogosphere that we don’t share any link love, and it’s a feature that I just forgot to put in this time around.  The second is that I’m bound and determined to find a way to integrate advertising in a less obtrusive way. 

There’ll be a vote and everything on some designs, too.  It’ll be awesome.  What else are you looking for in a new and improved Pandagon?

 

------

Registration is now required! We're still in the process of getting it all squared away, so for the moment don't forget to Login or Register using the links in the upper left menu before starting to write your comment.

Posted by Jesse Taylor on 11:13 AM • (53) Comments

Pie.

I’m really in favor of pie.

Comment #1: Hawes  on  10/08  at  11:29 AM

I like the idea of a blogroll that you just presented.

I also remember one commenter here noting that the Snorg Tees thing is irritating in that it always shows skinny white girls modeling their stuff.  Is there anything you can do to control who advertises?  It probably does sound petty, but on a liberal blog it does seem a little silly to reinforce this ideal of beauty that has thinness and whiteness at its center.  I understand y’all probably have nothing to do with it.

Comment #2: Atheist Feminazi  on  10/08  at  11:32 AM

RSS for comments, please!  I hate having to reload pages to get updates.

If lack of adverts is the issue, many of the other sites seem to have integrated at least one ad into each RSS item. 

I don’t want Pandagon to not get needed revenues, I would just like to keep up with stuff the way we used to be able to…

Comment #3: MikeEss  on  10/08  at  11:35 AM

I really like that in some blogs, when I load a story from my RSS feed, it goes right to the page with the full story and comments - right now, I go to only the part of the story above the fold here.

Comment #4: Mikey  on  10/08  at  11:37 AM

I’d love one of those “Recent Comments” sidebars.

Comment #5: The Opoponax  on  10/08  at  11:38 AM

Since I’m colorblind, it would be nice to have more blue (isn’t that the color of choice amongst Democrats?) and less—I’m guessing here—red (the color used by the Gross Old Pedophiles), green, and brown.

And what happened to August J. Pollack’s Panda?  Gitmo?  FREE DA PANDA!!!!

Comment #6: aginghippie  on  10/08  at  11:40 AM

Some blog designs I really like you could probably take inspiration from:

http://www.designobserver.com/
http://blog.pentagram.com/
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/

So, just have the design be cleaner and more open.  I’m also biased towards blog rolls and ads being on the right side of the screen instead of the left.  Definitely use color to separate sections so everything is more clear when you first look at it.  I’m also not a fan of the bright red. 

The panda could also use a re-design (I’d be happy to offer my skills for that ^__^).  The crazy font used on the blog name and subsection names also needs to go.

Maybe there could also be a section for readers to submit their own news links?  Kind of like this: http://www.underconsideration.com/quipsologies/

As you can tell, I am biased towards design blogs.

Comment #7: Nicole  on  10/08  at  11:40 AM

Ads/sidebar on the right or both sides, not all on the left. If my browser window isn’t huge, I have to resize it or scroll to the right to see the posts.

I start in the RSS feed and click the “read more” link to visit the actual post. But I’ve already read the post and want to see the comments now. Why make me click the comments link rather than taking me to a page that includes the post and comments? I know—more page clicks = more ad revenue. But those extra clicks are annoying.

Comment #8: Orange  on  10/08  at  11:44 AM

When you open up the below the fold, it doesn’t bring you t the previously hidden part of the entry, it goes right back to the top, and you have to scroll down and try to find where you left off reading.  The old site opened up where the fold was; please bring this back.

Comment #9: rowmyboat  on  10/08  at  11:49 AM

Please, please, please can we have an RSS Feed that tells you who’s written the post in the Author field?? And also, for those of us that only read the feed, could you post to say the feed url is going to change before it changes again?

Thanks!

Comment #10: Simon Middlemiss  on  10/08  at  11:52 AM

Another vote for showing comments as the default view when requesting a specific post.

I’d like to see author names above the article (instead of below). Could be the same for the comments, but it’s less of an issue there because comments tend to be shorter.

And it would be nice if user accounts (in the admin) showed “all comments by this author” as well as “all posts” (which only works for the four main site authors).

Comment #11: Cris  on  10/08  at  12:04 PM

numbered responses.  It’s useful when it comes to finding where I left off from the last time.

Comment #12: melaka  on  10/08  at  12:09 PM

“numbered responses.  It’s useful when it comes to finding where I left off from the last time.”

Yes.  Right now they get time-stamped.  However, this is relative to your timezone (or can be) so it’s not always accurate (at least for me)...

Comment #13: MikeEss  on  10/08  at  12:13 PM

Another vote for author’s name above the post rather than below.

Comment #14: Donna  on  10/08  at  12:18 PM

I hesitate to bring this up, because 1) it shows what a technological retard I am and 2) it’s fairly selfish. But Pandagon is one of the sites that my pokey DSL connection takes a long time to load. It’s not as bad as certain other sites I visit, and oddly enough, it’s the main page that’s the problem; once I drill down into the comments, everything flows fine.

I have no idea what there is in the main page that could be causing the trouble (see (1) above), much less if it can be changed. Just thought I’d throw that out there.

Comment #15: Bitter Scribe  on  10/08  at  12:27 PM

Oh, and the bookmark links for comments (e.g. comments#46359) don’t actually work.

Comment #16: Cris  on  10/08  at  12:33 PM

“When you open up the below the fold, it doesn’t bring you t[o] the previously hidden part of the entry, it goes right back to the top, and you have to scroll down and try to find where you left off reading.  The old site opened up where the fold was; please bring this back. “

“Ads/sidebar on the right or both sides, not all on the left. If my browser window isn’t huge, I have to resize it or scroll to the right to see the posts. “

These have been my complaints since the 2.0. Even if my window is huge I still have to scroll over to see the other quarter of the post. I debate looking past the fold with some articles. Yes, I’m that lazy that I find it that grueling to scroll down to find where I left off. Maybe, the below fold stuff can have a diff. font/colour/shading? Like when you see the full review on e-music.

Comment #17: dooflow  on  10/08  at  12:44 PM

Another vote for having the RSS link go directly to the full post with comments, and for moving the main content further to the left. And as lovely as the panda pic is, I wouldn’t mind having the header be a bit shorter. Now that I’ve joined the era of “widescreen” laptops, screen height is the one thing I don’t have to spare.

Comment #18: Redshift  on  10/08  at  01:08 PM

Count me in as another who really misses the RSS feed for comments.

Comment #19: hanna jörgel  on  10/08  at  01:15 PM

Center the frame that has the posts in it.  Put one column of links on the right and one on the left, not two on the left and none on the right as it stands now.  It’s odd having the main content of the site, so far off center on my screen.

Comment #20: Voice in the Crowd  on  10/08  at  01:38 PM

On the comments feature: the hyperlinked reference actually takes you back to the whole comments list, not the individual comment; you might change that.

I agree with those who prefer the main body in the center if you are going to have two sidebars, which I assume you’ll need to keep for advertising.  The blogroll idea is a good one: what are the odds that my site would actually make it?  smile

Those of us who are still (slowly) climing the blogging ladder would appreciate a trackbacks feature.  I know that the bigger blogs have mostly disabled this feature, but it is one way that we both let you know specifically that we have addressed a particular article, and yes, it is a way for us to try and increase our readership.  Remember: y’all were small once, too!

Comment #21: Dana  on  10/08  at  01:52 PM

I second the ‘get the content back in the middle (or even on the left!)’ comments, and third and fourth the ‘author name up top’ comment. The first is my preference; it seems like I have to slant my whole body to the right to read the site, and since i got a new widescreen flatscreen (22”) it makes it very unbalanced.

The author name up top is crucial since WHO you are is a big big part of the context of the post. If I’m reading Amanda or Jesse or Pam, I know who the three of you are (or who you write as). If I start reading something I want to know which of you’s got it, particularly if, say, you’re writing outside your standard topics.

That’s all.

Comment #22: nihilix  on  10/08  at  02:00 PM

Please put the blog posts in the middle of the page, so we don’t have to keep scrolling to the right in order to read them.

Comment #23: Katherine  on  10/08  at  02:54 PM

Center the main text, please.  My brain goes “Splorgle” on the off-centered text.

Comment #24: syfr  on  10/08  at  03:29 PM

Center the main text, please.  My brain goes “Splorgle” on the off-centered text.
syfr on 10/08 at 02:29 PM

Couldn’t say it better ‘cept Me the fuck…exactly too

Comment #25: has_te  on  10/08  at  03:33 PM

A link that lets you skip the left hand sidebars to get to the content from a handheld - this site takes more scrolling than any other I frequent just to find out if there’s a new post.

Comment #26: brenda  on  10/08  at  04:21 PM

By the way, when I first saw the title, “Redesign the Second,” I initially thought that this would be an article on changing the Second Amendment!  smile

Comment #27: Dana  on  10/08  at  04:31 PM

I do most of my reading via RSS, so making that work better gets my vote. In particular:

- embedded videos sometimes don’t show (is the difference between how different writers embed the video?)
- currently the author name is hardcoded into the post body; it should use the author field so feed readers can pick it up properly and use it
- an Atom feed alternative would be brilliant. While RSS 0.92/2.0/etc is an ambiguous standard that is inconsistent to implement and parse, Atom is solid.

I’ll give a ‘yea’ for a center main column, too.

Comment #28: Sax  on  10/08  at  04:47 PM

Another vote for showing comments as the default view when requesting a specific post.

Yet another vote for same.  I’m not using fancy-shmancy RSS, but when I follow one of the links under “Recently,” I get the post, but no comments, and I find that odd.

Comment #29: FlipYrWhig  on  10/08  at  04:49 PM

I think it would work better if it went Navigation (including the blog roll etc.)-Blog-Ads, as opposed to the current Navigation-Ads-Blog. The ads stick there in the middle of the two parts I’m interested in.

Comment #30: JPlum  on  10/08  at  05:40 PM

OK, additional vote for:
Move real content to the left (we are left wing after all)
Authors’ names at the top
numbered responses
prettier colors
idiot buttons for href—seen it elsewhere

Comment #31: Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes  on  10/08  at  05:42 PM

Honestly, I liked Pandagon better before this recent design change. And, ya, those ads with skinny white grrls right in the middle of the page - irritate the #$%^ out of me.

Agree with:
RSS
Less red
Center most stuff
Blogroll

Comment #32: AnthroBabe  on  10/08  at  05:50 PM

I like the feature on some blogs/websites that permit immediate uploading of a post to a social networking site, such as Facebook or Myspace.

See an example here.

Comment #33: Ereshkigal  on  10/08  at  05:56 PM

I’d really like to be able to actually load the site in older versions of Firefox. I can’t send links to the blog to my SO anymore ‘cause he’s old fashioned and this version of Pandagon won’t load in Firefox 1.whatever that he’s running. Also, I can’t read it at work unless I use the hateful Safari browser, cause I can’t upgrade the older (1.something, I think, though it might be a 2.something) Firefox on my work machine.

And here’s my additional vote for centering the text, or left-aligning it. ANd for having the jump link bring you to the jump point, not the top of the page.

Comment #34: Caja  on  10/08  at  06:05 PM

The ability to edit posts for a brief amount of time.  Balloon Juice’s new format did this really well.

You might also consider adding buttons for html tags since most threads end up having someone who doesn’t know how to do it.  And it’s obnoxious to type out “blockquote” so often.

Comment #35: Loneoak  on  10/08  at  06:34 PM

Yeah I second the idea of being able to edit your commentary for awhile after you post it. I am Queen of the type O.

Comment #36: Renee  on  10/08  at  06:41 PM

I liked the older Pandagon as well.  Something about this new design doesn’t work for me (but I still read every day regardless).

I like what Shakespeare’s Sister does where I can click “Open wide…” and the post just expands instead of taking me to another page. 

I print out a lot of posts from this sight to read during breaks at work.  I wish I did not have to navigate away from the main page to print out several in a row.  It’s time consuming.

Comment #37: Heather M  on  10/08  at  07:08 PM

Now that I’m reading everyone’s comments - I agree a big distraction is that the main content is on the right.  I much prefer the middle or left placement.

Comment #38: Heather M  on  10/08  at  07:12 PM

I second the Shakesville preference. 

Also center the posts.  I find the current design sufficiently irritating to look at that it has noticeably reduced my reading of the site. 

Simple HTML buttons for quotes, links, italics, bold, strikethru, and underline.

Comment numbers.

Comment #39: togolosh  on  10/08  at  07:20 PM

As many people said above, make RSS links point to full posts with comments, please.

Moving the content to the left is also a great idea.

Comment #41: suncon  on  10/08  at  10:16 PM

Ditto on wanting to see author names up top, and wanting content in the center so I’m not constantly scrolling to the right.  (I use Sage to read the RSS feed.)

So I scroll right.  Read the first part.  Click to see the full article.  Scroll to the right again.  Scroll down to get back where I was.  For every post.  (At least the ones I choose to read.)

Also ditto on wanting the full post/ comments to load from the RSS feed, not just the teaser.

Comment #42: Michelle  on  10/08  at  10:16 PM

I was going to suggest some things but I see that ‘brazillain ass’ above me beat me to it. So, I’ll just add: Marmaduke. Everybody loves Marmaduke.

Comment #43: tbogg  on  10/08  at  10:22 PM

It never really crossed my mind before, but now that so many people have mentioned it, I really like the idea of moving the content pane to the left-hand side of the page, with the navigation bar and ads on the right side. At home, I have a wide enough screen (that I set at super-high resolution) that it doesn’t affect me there, but if I’m trying to read it at work or on my phone, I do have to do a lot of scrolling.

Also, numbered comments, author’s name at the top of the post rather than the bottom, and a drastic color-scheme redesign. This red/brown/yellow/beige thing is pretty visually clunky. It makes me think of the 1950s, for some reason. And not the good 1950s, either.

Comment #44: Dan, Grand High Emperor of Bananas Foster  on  10/08  at  11:12 PM

The author name up top is crucial since WHO you are is a big big part of the context of the post. If I’m reading Amanda or Jesse or Pam, I know who the three of you are (or who you write as). If I start reading something I want to know which of you’s got it, particularly if, say, you’re writing outside your standard topics.

I agree, except that I like to play a game with myself where I try to guess who wrote the post just from the title and maybe the first paragraph or so.  I usually do pretty well at this.  And I know I’m lame , so no need to remind me.

But I agree with the centering of content (or putting to the right), it is much better on handhelds that way.  And when you click on comments or read more, it would be nice to be taken to that spot in the post instead of always going straight back to the beginning.  And I’d really, really like for it to automatically do a preview as I type a comment instead of having to click through to see the preview.  Otherwise, while I did like the old design better, I’m mostly used to this one now.

Comment #45: ks  on  10/08  at  11:18 PM

Actually, like ks, I love guessing the author from the voice.

Comment #46: Samantha Vimes  on  10/09  at  12:36 AM

I like to open up all the separate threads that interest me in tabs. (I’m currently using Firefox). And sometimes I like to save a page—something I haven’t yet tried in Firefox but I used to always do it in Safari.

Before, that is, the current redesign. Before, a particular entry, when opened independently, had its own name—-“Interior Design for Choads at Pandagon” or “Who the F is Sarah Palin at Pandagon” or what have you, some truncated version of the post title, with “at Pandagon” appended. (A bonus was that that added tag often went hilariously with the post title…)

Nowadays, every tab and every saved page has the same name—“pandagon.net”. It makes both tabbed browsing and the saving of really great threads far more difficult.

Could y’all please bring back separately named pages? Or at least include some sort of alphanumeric code distinguishing them opaquely, so that saving a batch wouldn’t be trying to save them all to the same filename?

KTHNXSBAI!

Comment #47: Mark Foxwell  on  10/09  at  08:41 AM

I just don’t have much to say lately.
Eh. Not much on my mind lately.
adipex no prescription
http://adipexadipexonl.blog.ijijiji.com

Comment #48: cheap adipex  on  10/09  at  10:39 AM

Another vote for having feeds link directly to the post’s comments page.

Comment #49: tps12  on  10/09  at  11:30 AM

so, my main hope for the redesign is that i get to actually see the website. i’m on my fiance’s computer right now, but mine (mac OS10.2 with whatever outdated firefox browser that entails) can’t seem to load pandagon pages, ever. i have to read it from google’s cache if i read it at all.

i’ll get a new computer eventually, but in the mean time, here’ hoping i can read the new one.

oh and also, i liked the earlier design and on this one the ads are way too prominent. but you knew that.

Comment #50: lowtech  on  10/09  at  01:17 PM

Please, please, please change the background color on the header.

Everytime I bring Pandagon up on-screen, I think “Who pissed on the panda?”

Comment #51: Bruce A.  on  10/10  at  03:11 AM

I would like more posts per page.  I realise this would increase the amount of time it takes for the site to load, but it’s annoying to me to have to go back two pages to get to yesterday’s posts.

Comment #52: XtinaS  on  10/14  at  01:46 PM

While I’m thinking of it, I would love forever if I could see the title of the post in the browser title.

Comment #53: XtinaS  on  10/14  at  01:57 PM
Page 1 of 1 pages
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.