It certainly has been a long time coming but Mike and I are pleased to present the new ErieBlogs. The design has been in the works for over a year, and despite some unforeseen challenges and seemingly insurmountable work and family schedules, the day has finally come.
Much thought and hard work has gone into the redesign. Take for example the text you are currently reading where the width of this column is set so as to “optimize readability.” (Yes, that’s how particular we’ve been in this redesign.) You can even adjust the font size for entries according to your preference. Here’s a number of other changes:
- Comments are now managed by Disqus, a global comment system operated off-site, which will make commenting more interactive and faster (remember those wait times on the old site?). You can create your own profile or comment anonymously. Choice is yours.
- The BlogBrowser has been updated with a new streamlined look. Gone are the frames. Instead, we present you with an ordered list showing the relative time a particular blog entry was posted. It’s a little different look than what you’re used to, but we think you’ll like it.
- We’re running new publishing software on a brand new host. As much as we love Movable Type, it had a number of limitations including the inability to effectively publish tags and it ran sluggish. ErieBlogs is now running WordPress. Also, we’re hosted by EngageIT located here in Erie. (EngageIT also has a nifty business search called Erie County Yellow Pages.)
- And finally, advertising. Don’t worry, we’re not going beat you over the head with pop-up’s, strobe like banners that cause siezures, or pages so loaded with ads you don’t know if you’re coming or going. Instead you will see a few well placed ads for maximum exposure that are friendly to the viewer. If you are a local business interested in advertising on one of Erie’s premier websites, then check out our advertising rates.
We hope you enjoy the new look. If you have a comment or a suggestion for the new site please let us know by leaving a comment below or use the contact form to communicate with us directly. We are interested in hearing your opinion so please take the time to let us know what you think. Over the next month or two you will see additional changes being made as we incorporate your suggestions. Over the next few weeks we will be hammering out the more pressing matters including putting the finishing touches on the BlogBrowser, recently updated blogs, and a few other features.
Thank you very much for reading and supporting ErieBlogs. Although it has been a long, hard road to get to this point, both Mike and I enjoy contributing to the Erie community by supporting local bloggers and bringing together different readers. Stay tuned for more exciting developments!
Love all the work you guys do but this new look is has a very generic, mass produced, and sterile feel. My first thought especially seeing the URL name change was OH NO! they sold out. Love all the technical changes look and feel needs major work.
Glad you switched to wordpress…
The 'Theme' you have chosed is a little generic as last commenter pointed out.
Not all that crazy about comments handed out to another provider. As they now have ability to capture emails, web sites, etc. Also if down the road you decide to move to another platform such as MT, Drupal you are going to be finding a way to migrate your comments off their site.
Guys, thanks for the comments. We're happy with Wordpress, its speed and extensibility thanks to the many plugins that have been created for it.
I disagree with the thought that the look of the site is generic. It's clean and readable. We have a large amount of content to organize and this look (which we developed in house) gives us the ability to do that. If that ease-of-use makes it boring, then so be it. Our goal is to provide interesting content, not waste a lot of real estate with graphics and flourishes that aren't needed.
We looked at other sites in Erie, especially media ones and they're all terrible. YourErie, Channel 35, GoErie – they are all a mess. With our site, you can visit the page, read the blog post, maybe look at the recently updated list and go about your day.
re: Disqus. First, the fact they can capture emails and websites is no different than what any web spider, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and so on are already doing. As for moving to another platform, Disqus will move to MT with no problem, but if we aren't happy with the service, exporting our comments out of their system is as easy as a click in an administrative area.
The nice thing about Disqus is the ability to manage and track your comments on a variety of sites across the web. If you post at a lot of different sites, that's a useful feature.
I'm with clean over cool! Besides, in my RSS reader it doesn't matter anyway. I want the information, not the glamorization.
To follow up with what Mike said, the site design is actually not a template you can either download for free or purchase for WordPress–it was practically built from scratch. We knew going into the project that a new site design had to be able to handle the amount of content yet not overwhelm the reader. Because of this, very few (practical) design choices are available. When designing this site we went with a first column that is optimized for reading with a second and third column to house the various content. The whitespace is pretty decent as well and the “hover shadow” is a nice visual clue for the reader too. Although I'm not sold on the blue, if not blue then what color? At the very least it is a little bit of continuity from the old site which was blue as well.
We will have no problem taking the comments elsewhere–they reside in WordPress! We're using an API that shares duties between our WordPress install and Disqus. You can't imagine the amount of resources a comment system places on a server. With all the spam-bots out there we had to come up with a viable solution. Also worth mentioning, the Disqus terms of use and privacy are good: “We will never share your email address with any third parties. We will not sell or distribute personal information.” I'm actually pretty excited about Disqus because it will only enhance the user experience on ErieBlogs.
i like the fact that the full text is back in the rss feeds… was that on purpose?
also, i would like the “comments” link on each post to show how many comments are attached to the post.
finally, what about bringing back the “continue reading..” links to each post to shorten up the content on the main page?
those are just my thoughts… great job on the redesign. keep up the great work.