A Fresh and New Blog Design

Welcome to the new World of Matticus! As you can see, the blog has undertaken an entirely new look. Special thanks to Brian Hough from Raid Warning and The Creep for his design work and Brandon for his development work. Those two know how to work miracles. I know that No Stock UI has seemed largely abandoned for a while right now but it will also be undergoing a design reboot and that will also be happening some time soon.

So what exactly is new?

Updated featured posts list – See the featured articles scroller at the top? Its been updated and modernized. Dare I say it looks much more slick.

Comment threading – It’s finally been enabled. You can now directly respond to other comments that have been left on posts. It’ll show up right below it.

Updated footer – There’s a new interact section with a few blogging guidelines and a brand new Plus Heal section. If you’re out of things to read, there might be a topic in the footer that you’ll find interesting.

The hotness – Oh yeah, it looks hot. Real hot. Ragnaros hot.

If you happen to spot any major bugs or errors, feel free to leave a comment below along with the page you saw it on (and what browser or platform you were using to view it with).

36 thoughts on “A Fresh and New Blog Design”

    • Thank you, it really means a lot to me that a few people remember me. I miss posting, too, but the time commitment is pretty steep (when you factor in the play-time to get the material.)

      Was there something specific you wanted me to write about ?

  1. Do you have a thread or a post anywhere that we could give you screenshots or examples of any bugs we’re finding? I don’t want to make this post feel like we’re bombarding you with stuff, but I also want to make sure you can see what we see so you can get it fixed.

    Reply
    • Mingus, if its not IE related, fire to my email address (matttz@gmail.com). We all pretty much stayed up till 4 AM (and these guys stayed up way later actually). but yeah, the IE issue is something we know.

    • Shio: Yeah for sure. Somehow the truncated feeds was active for a few posts and I didn’t realize it before switching it off again. Everything should be back to full feeds. Believe me, I know all about the benefits of full feeds and wouldn’t try to take that away from anyone who reads from work.

  2. The site starts to load in IE9 beta, but doesn’t finish loading. I suspect there is some nonstandard code in there, since IE9 is pretty much acknowledged to be considerably more standards-compliant than its predecessors (right on par with Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari—or even ahead of the latter two).

    But in Chrome, the site looks pretty snazzy!

    Reply
  3. Okay…must have just been a glitch in Windows under OS X: The site’s now loaded and I’m commenting in IE9. About the only difference I can see is that comment input in IE9 is Courier (or some fixed-pitch font), while in Chrome the comment input font is a sans-serif, proportional font.

    In IE9, the headings in the footer (About the Blog, Interact, From Plusheal) have no shadow.

    Suggestions: Editable comments, and implement CommentLuv.

    Reply
    • They’re on the do list. I remember how useful they were in the previous system. But it was decided to nuke all plugins and restart from scratch. But those two will definitely be on the to do list.

      Now I just gotta remember which Editable Comment plugin to use…

  4. Hey guys, Thanks for all the input! All the IE problems were an oversight on my part, which happens at 4-6am. The site is coded with a handful of HTML5 (which IE6-8 don’t support natively). Everything is 100% working in IE8 now, and I’ll be squashing the few bugs left in IE7. IE6 users – time to upgrade.

    Reply
  5. Oh and one more thing: I think you need to look over your blogroll now that you’re making an overhaul. You’re linking to blogs that have closed down or moved to another address. Keep it fresh!

    Reply
  6. Wow, it looks fantastic! I love the way the headlines wrap around the edges of the main segment here. (Can you tell I don’t know anything about web design? I’m sure those things have names).

    Anyway, it looks amazing!

    Reply
  7. Holy crap Matt, you’re getting in with the frogpants crowd now? (a good move if you ask me :P)

    The new design looks pretty sweet, too 🙂

    Reply
  8. Great look, like I already said on twitter. I always liked your old design, but it never hurts to keep things familiar but fresh (and I’m a huge fan of using orange in website.)

    Reply
  9. Great work (and i can say it, trust me). But I used to read your site with my iPhone and there was a mobile version much easier to read. Now it seems there isn’t anymore. Any hint?

    Reply
  10. Looks great all!A couple of ‘tweak’ comments –

    1. The tag line in the header is a little hard to read with the text colour similar to the header colour even with the drop shadow etc.

    2. The text in the panel over the main image is also hard to read – I would suggest increasing the opacity on the panel slightly and increasing the line height as currently it is looking a bit crowded and busy.

    Reply
  11. It looks pretty sweet. Personally I find the new layout tends to pull my eye away from the text im reading.

    This tends to be an issue I have depending on color schemes and layouts and I have met a fair number of others who have a similar reaction. (happens frequently with guild website redesign). On these pages my eyes tend to be dragged towards the big dark headers on the left making it a little tougher to focus on the text of the article.

    Reply

Leave a Comment