Asterisk* Rebuilt - Third Time's The Charm?
August 16, 2003 | 
17 Comments
Update: Redesign still in progress, things may appear a bit funky, when in doubt, refresh. If the Song of The Week Player looks strange or really small you may need to clear your cache…
I’ve redesigned and rebuilt Asterisk* from the ground up. My main goals in doing so were to improve readability and functionality as well as have it be a bit easier to maintain and a lot more flexible.
The last time I did something like this I was simply modifying the default Movable Type templates to get the look, feel and functionality I wanted. This time I designed the site from scratch, built out static templates and made MT work for me and fit into my default templates. It worked out much better than I had hoped. My main problems being with the launch and rebuild of the site.
I’ve been toying around with this new template and it’s added functionality for a bit,and as far as my personal goals go, so far so good. I hope you all like it as well.
I’m not quite done. I’ll be making adjustments, fixes and tweaks to the site for the next few days and I plan to continue on with progressive enhancements to the site going forward.
So, feel free to let me know what you think, I promise I’ll listen and if you see anything that doesn’t look right, please let me know. I imagine it’ll take a bit for all the kinks to get worked out.
Thanks to everyone who helped me by taking a look at various ideas, builds and features and offered such great suggestions and feedback. I really, really appreciate it.
Filed under: My Sites
Comments
1. Ben said:
I just looooove the new design! The colors are just right (though dark orange isn’t my personal favourite) and the background tile is interesting without being distracting. Only thing is that at higher resolutions the text in the SOTW player is hardly legible.
Posted on August 16, 2003 02:51 AM | #
2. JumpTheGap said:
Well done Doctor :-) ! The pattern is nice and you’ve absolutely improved site navigation and readability… just a little microscopic thing: I can’t read the song’s title on the top.
bye,
jtg
Posted on August 16, 2003 02:52 AM | #
3. Christian said:
Looks good Keith! Nice job (although I do feel a slight pang of loss for the old site).
One minor thing–I think I preferred it when your music player was up in the header (more visible).
Posted on August 16, 2003 10:11 AM | #
4. Keith said:
Thanks for the comments so far. The player was moved down into the sidebar based on user feedback. I think I like it there a bit more as well.
As far as it being too small to read, I’ll be looking into that. I’m at a pretty high resolution with a small monitor right now and it looks fine. It could be that it’s a caching issue and bringing up the old player in a smaller box. That happened to me, and frankly I’ve no clue how to get around it except to clear your cache.
The player has a few other caching problems as well, depending on what platform, browser and version of the Flash plug-in you have.
Please let me know about any other problems. Thanks.
Posted on August 16, 2003 10:39 AM | #
5. Dutchcelt said:
Still looking good, I must admit I did like the old one too. Nice use of a pattern, it’s very ‘in your face’ on a large screen. The large pattern pushes the the site forward and might cause one to dribble. Okay, that last one is just me. I wouldn’t remove it though, it really works. When scrolling the thin background strip on the left connects with the rest of the pattern making it on big background, which what it is. The touch of orange / terra-cotta or whatever it is makes the site feel like it’s really colorful. There is one minor niggle; No trackbacks anymore.
Personally I think that, even though nobody is really using it, this technology could enhance online publishing. Adoption maybe slow, but I think it’s worth it holding on to. You never know, people might come around. Especially when bloggers switch or upgrade to new weblogging tools every year. It’s technology like this that could make the web more semantic, and thus more useful as a tool.
Posted on August 16, 2003 01:21 PM | #
6. Christian said:
Keith,
How about giving your readers the option to view the site in the old style as well as the new? I wonder if there’s a way to tell who’s using which style sheet and, therefore, which is the more popular?
Anyway, just a thought.
Also, when is someone going to write a Movable Type book for beginners? There’s a niche waiting to be filled…
Posted on August 16, 2003 03:34 PM | #
7. Keith said:
Dutchcelt - No one was really using the trackbacks at all. I mean 370+ entries and only 5 or so trackbacks, so I ditched it. At least for the time being, I felt it was more trouble than it was worth.
Chrisitan - Sorry you don’t like the new design. I could have kept the old one, but frankly, it was broken and harder to maintain in lots of ways. I would hazard a guess, based on most of the feedback, that most folks would prefer this one - if not it would kind of defeat the purpose now wouldn’t it? I decided to redesign because the old one had problems and if this one isn’t better (or as good) then I guess in your opinion I’ve failed.
It might just take some getting used to…I don’t want to sound, well I don’t know, but as much as I care what my readers think (and I really do listen to them) I’m not going to offer them a choice that I have no intentions of supporting. I’m not running a “which design is more popular” contest here. You can do that on your site. ;)
But really, thanks for the idea, I think for some sites it might be a good one. I guess I can’t please everyone. That’s why perfect Web design is a myth.
Posted on August 16, 2003 04:00 PM | #
8. Joshua Kaufman said:
Excellent work, Keith! I love the colors and feel of the new design. It makes me feel right at home.
Posted on August 16, 2003 04:01 PM | #
9. Christian said:
Hey, don’t get me wrong–I prefer the new design; really I do. What I meant was that whenever something that you have gotten used to goes away (even if for the better), one tends to feel a pang of remorse for that which is lost.
That’s one problem with the web: there is very little archiving of the progression of things in order to show how we got where we are today. There’s no *history*.
I was always taught that you learn through history–seing how things were done in the past and improving on them, learning from past mistakes, building on previous ideas, etc.
A new visitor to your site would have no idea what the old one looked like and what improvements you made in designing the new version. Hence, as they have no way of comparing the two they will not be able to learn and benefit from your redesign experiences.
It just seems to me that this lack of history on the web is a problem, and we will ultimately be worse off for it.
Posted on August 16, 2003 04:12 PM | #
10. Keith said:
You have a good point there. Still, I kept my first design around when I last redesigned and no one looked at it. It eventually kind of fell apart. A side effect of template based design.
I’m not too sure if we are really worse off for losing designs here or there, I just don’t know if keeping old designs around is really helpful or not. Anyway, my site is mostly about “content” and the content is still there.
If you wanted to learn something about writing for the Web or how a blog gets built up, you can always go to the archives…there is your history.
Or, I guess, if you really, really want to look at the old designs…
Design number one - July 2002
Design number two - January 2003
These are unsupported and frankly I don’t really want to open a discussion comparing them (unless you really want to) but for historical purposes you can have a look.
See, I listen to my readers.
Posted on August 16, 2003 04:31 PM | #
11. Bob said:
Excellent job, Keith! I’ve been so busy with this silly ReUSEIT contest thing that I haven’t really been paying attention to other things, including what my small daughter is doing with that box of broken glass… (just kidding - I know exactly what she’s doing with it… ;-))
Anyway - very nicely done. Of all three designs, I think I prefer this one.
Posted on August 17, 2003 08:48 AM | #
12. redux said:
love the “grandma’s netted curtains” background… :)
Posted on August 18, 2003 03:03 AM | #
13. john said:
Nice look in general, although I’ve never been a fan of the content on the left, background on the right look. On my 21” screen at 1600x1200 your righr black margin strip is right in the middle of my screen and finding myself looking to the left is disconcerting. Include the gray linksbar and the padding in your content and you are only using about 30% of the screen
Posted on August 18, 2003 04:09 AM | #
14. Mr5by5 said:
Hey, I think this site looks really nice. To be honest I liked all of your previous sites, so this one just slides in there nicely. Working with orange is “zeldman” bold, and not everyone risks doing it.
Nice job there.
As for the left content, I think it is nice, but I’ve never been one of those people that “expands” their browsers to fill the screen. That’s real estate too precious to waste on browser usage exclusively.
Keep up the music selections, I’m one person who looks forward to your choices.
Posted on August 18, 2003 06:18 AM | #
15. Adam said:
Gee, another nice layout with organic elements goes boxy - damn! Designs look so much better when they’re *de*rectangularised.
Like the 80’s concrete architecture aesthetic - If a building’s made of concrete, it’ll damn well look like it’s made of concrete. It doesn’t have to be that way, but doing so requires imaging skills to round it out.
All said, i’ll still be coming back and listening to what you have to say, and that’s what’s really important. ;-)
I agree with you about ditching trackbacks, and still love your song of the week feature.
Posted on August 18, 2003 05:47 PM | #
16. Mike Steinbaugh said:
I like the new design, Keith. Well done!
Posted on August 18, 2003 09:39 PM | #
17. Kevin Davis said:
Hi Keith, congradulations on the redesign of your website! I especially like the way in which you offset the body content to produce a patterned left margin. Very good work! Also, I’ve been enjoing your articles, you are a very good writer!
Posted on August 21, 2003 08:06 AM | #
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