Secrets of the City

Wow, looks great and love that it’s on Wordpress.

I have a very strong bias against the GD. Posts look too much like comments and I think gray is the worst Internet color.

What’s GD?

Ahh, WordPress. Home sweet home.

Sorry. Graphic design. I don’t like how it looks, in lehman’s terms.

Ernest Lehman? The screenwriter for The Sound of Music?

Some of you already have icons on the site next to your name. Those that want one need merely sign up at http://en.gravatar.com/ with the same email address you use on MnSpeak.

Hm. clicking on the tags doesn’t seem to be working right now.

Tags are indeed not working at the moment. They will be added shortly.

I’m not exactly sure how posts look too much like comments — do you mean posts with the author block placed on the left? If so, I might consider tweaking the post lists to look more like the single posts.

pretty sure he’s talking about Tom Lehman, local boy golf pro and course designer. Or did he mean to say landsmen’s terms. oy vey.

Landsmens terms for graphic design is “Die gefutskete shmatta!”

Even though they’re not working yet, I like the tags. Prominent.

seems to me that redesigning a (arguably or once or not really?) successful web site is the ultimate catch 22.

PROS: improvements
CONS: how folks feel about change

(Also, for those who may not have met me or remember who I am, I’m the web guru behind SOTC. And yes, I’m listening. )

Ah, I was trying my old Word Press login, but I see my MNspeak/SOS ID works here. Perhaps it’s time I got an avatar for WP. Shall I use my Calvin from Twitter, or a real photo?

@kwatt: The delineation between post and comments appears to me to be rather plain and simple. But if one needs more visible separation, why not just use a serif font for the original post? Using serif would also better match it to the Tahoma font used for a post’s subject heading.

I love Wordpress, too, as a backend. I should’ve gotten more involved with it a couple of years ago.

It’s the little author boxes on the left. I associate those with comments, such as is the layout in this thread. Compared to posts on the main MNspeak page where it simply and effectively says by so and so.

Then again, I still don’t like this SOTC thing. So take it for what it’s worth.

Looks same-ish. No complaints. Got the red X for graphics, is that b/c this is only beta?

Ah wordpress. The best and worst software around. I hope you are locking it down. I’d also add to that list changing the database prefix from wp_ to something else. It goes goes along way against as a countermeasure against SQL injection since the WP sanitizing code is spotty.

Oh man. There was an SQL injection on MetaFilter once that destroyed the place for, like, four days.

@jane

Yeah, the featured events don’t have thumbnails at the moment, hence the red Xs.

@justinph

WordPress is indeed a package you need to play safe with. Rest assured it is locked down quite a bit.

Farewell thee drupal you were always a resource hog anyways?

In regards to the design- yur doing it rong.

IMHO the commenter/recent comments are the main reason I come here. They are the star of the show. Sorry Max but the actual articles are just fuel. The combustion doesn’t happen till you add the accelerant(our opinions).

I would make the recent comments the dominant visual theme.

Also how about some openid login access and did I see avatars over there, good thing I’m working on my mustache.

Finally I like links to participants websites it allows you to gain context on the commentors/posters.

As with the last switchover, let me add a plea that the background color be darker. Off-white, grey-blue, whatever. Something less bright, more easy on the eyes.

No need to apologize to me, ryan; I agree. Without the comments, to an extent, MNSpeak would be duplicating efforts that Google Rader manages quite admirably.

Don’t listen to users, max. That’s not what the Internet is about.

@ryanl

A dedicated recent comments page is in the works before launch, a la this page.

Running posts and comments side-by-side in a three-column layout (posts+comments+sidebar) gets to be almost overwhelmingly busy. And I would submit to you that while Max’s posts may be unimportant, they do provide at least a modicum of organization.

That all said, I will see what I can do to bring up the dominance of the recent comments column, though.

Links to commenters’ websites will also be added.

@Jerad

Sorry to disappoint…

@ryanl

OpenID may eventually make an appearance. While I’m wholeheartedly in favor of it, I’m not entirely sure many MNSpeakers would make use of it. (Even accounting for the fact that everyone here probably has an OpenID by virtue of AOL or one of the other big providers.)

Hey, hey, hey! I didn’t say my posts were unimportant!

@Max

Just teasing.

Yeah give me that page with a mouseover effect that switches the display ad to a snapshot of the original article then thread comments to like articles together and no…your talking.

Just a reminder (Max explained this up above)

To get an avatar, you need to sign up at http://www.gravatar.com/ with the e-mail address you use to post a comment. If you don’t know what e-mail address that is, it’s the same one you use on the current site. If you haven’t changed it, it’s the same one you used to sign up for MNSpeak when it was still a standalone site.

Once you sign up at Gravatar, your avatar will start showing up alongside comments and posts on the beta site.

Thoughts on visuals…I like that the banner image rotates cool local photos, but it’s too greyed out — maybe upping the contrast on those images to make them stand out more would be more eye-catching.

Also, I do agree that the Talk posts look more like recent comments. Maybe arranging them more like articles would be helpful? Why not throw a pic into the mix?

@Kate

Agreed about the banners being too faded out. I’ll up their contrast a few notches at some point. I’ll also add a few more to improve the variety.

@all

It appears I’m in a small minority (population: me) on liking the MNSpeak post styles as they currently are. I’ll look into making less comment-looking and more post-looking before we launch.

Re posts vs comments, maybe the posts are aired out a little too much. Tighten space between lines (as in this post by Matt).

err build it in google Wave that seems to be what all the hip kids are doing.

I only hope that the comments function won’t be buggered by my work firewall (which is what they do with a lot of WP based sites).

… maybe upping the contrast on those images to make them stand out more would be more eye-catching.

One of most confounding things I encounter when I do web site production are the differences that exist between various monitors, esp. CRT vs. LCD. What looks good in one won’t necessarily look the same in the other … and the differences are only magnified when people start setting their own monitor contrasts/brightness/etc.

It makes my work complicated and, sometimes, frustrating. I’ve had to tweak things to satisfy a client’s wish based on their monitor settings when I know their settings are … awful.

Even with my own personal work, I have to keep in mind the difference between how monitors bias looks. Heck, even the LCD I use for my desktop displays contrasts and color depths differently than what my notebook LCD displays.

Whoa, the thing I was going to mention that I didn’t like already got changed! Good mind reading!

I’ll be sad not to be able to post articles like I do now on the front page. They obviously come second in popularity between talk and daily Secrets, but since we’re ramping up l’etoile’s “features” I’d still like to share content to beef up SOTC, even if we don’t have our own staff writers. Is this at all possible?

@esquared

Happy to oblige.

@noodleman

Man, I hear you loud and clear. Monitor color differences are almost more annoying than the browser quirks in things like IE. At least with browser quirks, there are workarounds.

@aliecat

Let me know if you do have trouble posting at work. Maybe I can do something to mask the URLs WordPress uses to post comments, and that’ll fool your workplace’s firewall.

@all

I’ve been making tweaks all afternoon. Notably, the posts now hopefully look more like posts. I also made comment links actually link to the comments in question. And now, all MNSpeak pages have the recent comments block in the sidebar.

I’ll be adding links to personal sites really soon. I’ll also be moving search into a nice location in the header, bringing the recent comments column up a bit higher on the page–I feel like I wound up shoving it down a bit too far.

I find it a pleasure to watch a web designer at work. Thanks, mamu, for letting us collaborate! Very few sites take the time, and make the investment, to improve and reconsider their visual presentation. I like the clean look and layout.

To be honest, I was a bit upset when the former MnSpeak layout morphed into SoTC. I was comfortable with the way it was, and the change was jarring. But I got over it. This change won’t be as jarring.

@noodleman

I’m glad this change doesn’t seem quite as jarring– I’ve been trying to keep some familiarity while making navigation easier and more consistent.

@Jerad

I’ve faded the post text color to an off-black. I hope this helps reduce eye-strain.

@all

New things since my last update: tag pages work now, there’s a site search bar in the header, and I’ve changed most of the MNSpeak text to Verdana (which I find to be a bit easier to read at small sizes). Coming soon are: a dedicated recent comments page, and the return of linking back to your homepage in each comment.