New Design Relaunch
I activated the new theme this morning a little earlier than I wanted to, mainly because of a certain degree of fear put into to me by WordPress and DreamHost. DH has automatic WordPress updates, and as I haven’t moved over to 2.3 yet, I decided to upgrade my development server to see how things would work (I was basically done).
Imagine the shock when the upgrade threw tons of database errors and reverted my intensely modified PressRow theme to original style and structure. DreamHost does back you up on these upgrades, but I initially couldn’t spot the folder. This added to the ensuing crisis. Luckily I was able to remain moderately calm and restart Coda, which showed me the folder I was looking for.
PressRow vs. Cutline
This theme is based of PressRow, and the last one was based off Cutline. Cutline was built better and had more features in terms of templates, functions and styling. On the other side, PressRow was much easier to work with. I guess we’ll see the long term effects in a while, and I’ll compare them in a couple month’s time.
One thing I always forget in changing themes is to copy my Mint code over, so I lost about half a day’s worth of data. I’m not overly concerned about that, but I’m sure everyone would like to cut out the mild inconveniences out of their life.
Design Bugs
Just a quick note on things that may be wrong with the design, I’ll actually be on top of them this time. A few things have been reported so far, and if you do see anything wrong, just leave a quick comment and I’ll fix it as soon as I can.
The last design was pretty much one giant bug which went two weeks with many errors. With this design I hope it will be perfected over the next few days. I’ve already fixed some things during the time I was writing this.
Lower Ad Prices
Prices have come down from $50 to $30 for a month long image ad in the sidebar. The ads are 125px both ways and are sitting in some pretty nice real estate right now!
Instead of lowering them any further due to lack of any sales, I’ll just remove them after a while. This is something I’m not too concerned about anyways. The offer is the same as last time:
- I’ll design your ad if you need it.
- Any statistical detail can be obtained by quickly emailing me.
- Free AbFlexTron 3000 signed by Chuck Norris and Christie Brinkley.
So if you’re even considering it, you better hurry because it’ll be gone soon!
The Design…
Ah yes, the new design! I’ve made things very simple and stright forward, with the focus on content. I hope it’s not boring because of that, though. I did still try to maintain a level of visual things, but that came mostly as a last minute thing, like the sidebar link styles. I figured bulleted lists just wouldn’t cut it 
The thing I like best is the typography, with a mix of Helvetica (mainly in headings) and a nice big Georgia. Besides that, there’s not much I can say. I like to let you find everything out for your self.
Tomorrow I’ll continue with bug fixes and the like, but posting should resume as usual.
Leave a comment
Brad Purchase
November 18th, 2007 at 8:18 PM
Looks lovely! Definitely not rushed this time. Also, thank you for using Helvetica.
Connor Wilson
November 18th, 2007 at 8:22 PM
For the record- that last design that was very shortlived was using only Helvetica, with Arial for the smaller fonts
Deron Sizemore
November 18th, 2007 at 9:48 PM
I like it, very clean. Looks good! I liked your last one too, but I believe I like this one better.
Mike
November 18th, 2007 at 9:51 PM
Hey Connor,
Sorry about not explaining my self in detail in the other post, thanks for fixing that bug. As I am leaving a reply the text feilds where I would enter my name email and website only show up with what looks like a width of 5 pixels, if cookies didnt remember my name and email it would be hard to type in my name, email and website as its hard to see, once again I think this is only a IE bug.
Keep up the good work!
Connor Wilson
November 18th, 2007 at 10:52 PM
Mike: I’ve set a fixed width on them, and made it !important, which should fix the problem. Thanks for the help.
Deron and Brad: Thanks for the kind words.
Adam M
November 18th, 2007 at 11:19 PM
SO MUCH BETTER!!!!!
Man I love this new look. Great Job Connor
Razor
November 19th, 2007 at 10:45 AM
now this is more like it
darknesfallz
November 20th, 2007 at 9:43 PM
Love the new design, but perhaps one thing you should fix is this form area. In firefox the form area has different shaded borders and it looks like half of it is cut off. Probably because i am on the windows classic theme :S.
Freebies
November 21st, 2007 at 12:20 AM
Yeah, I’m loving this design about 20 times more than the orange and black one you tried out a while back. Awesome work!
Henry
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:15 PM
Ah i missed this post, it’s very very nice. Much better than the previous one, much much better!
Teejay
December 1st, 2007 at 9:40 PM
I think you’re missing your sitemap page. There isn’t a thing there.
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