It will take a while to get used to but I do like it.

Very very nice, Peter. I love the new design. It's definitely more user-friendly and much easier to navigate around.

Well done!!

Looks fantastic! Looking forward to the blogs and new content.

In terms of the space you benefit this is much better; but I think there is too much 'white' around here, which distracts the eye a bit.

It is going to take a while to get used to. Tons of new stuff to check out. However, I wish the main articles by Peter (as in the old site) were more prominently featured. Also perhaps, the white background could be toned down to something darker. Hurts the eyes. :)

Congratulations on your new website. It looks really smooth and professional, and I hope it will pay off.

However, I can't help noticing the irony regarding an earlier article on ChessVibes about FIDE's new website (http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/fide-launches-new-website/) which was described as "disordered", due to among others the unclear column layout (start with 2 columns and a photo, then switch to 3 columns, then back to 2). Now I notice the ChessVibes frontpage, and it starts with 2 columns, then switches to 3 columns, to finally switch back to 2 columns again.

(Maybe it would be an idea to also use 2 columns for the "other news"-section?)

But as you also concluded in that article, it was time for FIDE to get a new website, as the old design was from the Middle Ages. Certainly your new design is also a lot better :)

Not too shabby, but if you really wanted to set the chess website world on fire, you should have gone with the strategy presented in Jose Diaz's recent "Chess Makeover" 'toon.

:-)

---deleted--- Please abide our Terms & Conditions.

Where is the "I like this comment" botton?

Congrats with this very nice redesign!

love it!!

This pretty much looks like a Whychess site to me!

And, when I load the CB, in the left-top corner the "Play" video button appears for a second, anyone else noticed it?

1. Just 3 top stories is too few... often you need to put up 4-5 stories in a day (remember when we had 3-4 tourneys last month?). So i suggest that at the least, you show 5 more stories on a mouse-over on "more top stories" so i don't have to go thru one more page.
2. The new comments section makes for much more difficult reading compared to the older one. maybe color alternations (grey/white) can help... another problem seems to be too much whitespace in the comments' boxes.

+ve comments need more time in coming... :)

You were right about the "WTF" part. But it's a positive WTF :-)

Well done, must have taken some effort! cheers, Dick

CONGRATULATIONS! VERY NICE!

The weekly Study of Yochanan Afek is Dead ?

The weekly Study of Yochanan Afek is Dead ?

I think it's more 'modern' and organized, also more clean. Congrats and I can only imagine the hard work behind it.
Kudos on the hard work and the courage to decide such a move (decisions like changing also the logo must have been hard to take, I guess!)
Little 'negative' point: it really looks like whychess.org, but probably you two actually use the same template or whatever is its name.

Older was much better, this one is confuuuuuusing.....

It's a wonderful site and a very nice logo with different colours. I am very proud of my son! Good luck! I love you.

Ziet er goed uit Peter!

Nice guys!

I like it, clean and modern design. It clearly improves the previous one.
The only thing I miss is the "Current/Soon" box, which was an easy and fast way to discover what was being played.
May be it still exists but I couldn't find it. Please tell me so.

is someone looking at the many feedback comments above by the readers?

overall, i think i preferred the older one; the newer one is too jam-packed (kinda like whychess, which too i despise)

older was better, step back

Ziet er heel goed uit!!!

Very nice,much more friendly:)

Congratulations! Looks good, looking forward to more great reporting :-)

I do like the changes! Nice redesign!

I used Chessvibes as a portal to tournament webpages. I do not see the old list of current events anywhere, so guess I'll have to go elsewhere.

I do not see the need for a spam filter code at these forums and the need to press save twice. If you make it bothersome to post, some just won't do it.

Just details, of course, I'm sure the rest of the new design is fine.

Looks great, clean and minimalistic, I love the touch of the coloured dot. Also really like the blogs.
Constructive critisism:
1) I agree about the light background in the comment section hurting the eyes (even though it seems already a bit darker then is was). Though I guess making the background too dark would make the feel less 'clean' and more ordinary. Maybe the foreground a bit less white?
2) I miss the links to tournaments, I use that a lot. But I have probably been looking with my nose, they should be somewhere.

Anyway brave move and great job!

Impressive.! Quite Satisfactory.!!

Great improvement to the site. Looks very neat.

Vergelijk leesbaarheid van deze site met: http://www.standaard.be/
Mensen komen hier om te lezen, niet om naar de mooie layout te kijken.

(Niet dat ik geen opmerkingen heb over bovenstaande site, 6 menubalken bovenaan?)

The "other news" block looks a lot like Google ads in its design and placing.

I found my eyes ignoring it completely the first five times I saw the home page.

With the blogs, it should be immediately obvious who the author is from the front page.

I generally like the new layout. It has a clean look combined with a chaotic structure we like ChessVibes for. ;)
The logo looks attractive, but it's also a bit ... gray on gray.

Two things strike me as odd. Maybe Peter can comment on the reasoning behind the choices made:
1. Why is so little horizontal space used if you decided for a new layout? We're living in the times of 22"-26" 16:9 FullHD monitors in the mainstream price segment. Why not make it broader?
2. Why is the font so small, especially on the front page but also here in this comments box I'm typing in? It's so fucking small I have trouble reading it on my 22" TFT. I'd rather scroll a bit more to compensate for a bigger font size. If *I* force my browser to scale the page (just gray plus / minus in Opera), there's a certain risk the layout gets slightly harmed.

Keep up the good work. :)

Are comments manually approved? I typed something longer and it has gone missing.

Worst site redesign ever. Bring back the old site!!

It looks terrible for me right now. It will take some time to get used to it. But I'm pretty sure that I'm going to like this new design.

Soon ;P

The site looks great, but the RSS feed does not seem to work at this moment.

I love the content; I especially look forward to reading the new GM blogs, but I hate the new layout. It is just too busy and there is really nothing to distinguish the look of this site from the other chess sites that are using the same type of template. Plus you removed our ability to vote on each others comments - how could you???

I am probably strange alone person...but honist....I do not like it at all
1]it is messy and it reminds me of second class sites from last century
2]designers work on it? so where is design?
3] old versus new....so where is the improvement...I do not see it .. sorry
for those who celebrate this in their comment I have message:
have a look at internet first and compare...do not admire B movie if there is movie such as avatar....and this is not avatar of 2011 at all

I opened the latest article three times only to realize that it was not a "full story" and there will be "later more" because the lead doesn't fit fully...

And please, check how the comments (or rather the user/time data) look like in Opera!

Started visiting chessvibes around 3 years ago (was a regular at ChessBase before that); since then I always "looked forward to" chessvibes more than chessbase.

Today was the first time (in around 3 years) that I looked forward to chessbase more than chessvibes... and i'm in a dilemma bcos chessvibes content is still better overall.

Please don't spoil your fanstastic content by such fantastic web-page designs. Keep the looks simple (as before) and let the content satisfy the readers. Please....

I think the design in general is ok, - perhaps more of a 'framework for content' than a design per se. It's nothing fancy and could still use some freshing up in terms of color, but such elements will always remain subjective and hence pointless to critize.

At the moment the site is apparently a bit slow, thats my biggest concern. The site is navigable and contents easy to find for thos who seek it. Personally i would like more on the studies section; 'tactics trainer' with collections of interactive puzzles for the visitor, 'opening assistant' interactive reference database, maybe even play against computer option. watching live broadcasts can be a bit boring at times, and if chessvibes is meant to be a starting point for that, some additional 'enterntaintment' could be nice.

anyways, keep up with the newsreporting, that should have highest priority. :)

regards,
Dr. Friedel Craft

Excellent.

I applaud the new design, very sleek, but there is no need to use the term 'WTF' in the article. This is a very offensive term. Some people are interested in getting their young kids involved with chess, we don't need to see this offensive term on this website, it adds nothing positive and causes a problem. The English language is rich enough for you to get your point across without resorting to such inappropriate language.

Hmm. Well keep it up for another 10 years, and I will give my opinion on the look and feel of. But actually, the great news here is why I log in, not the touch and feel :-)

Rob.

Hmm. Well keep it up for another 10 years, and I will give my opinion on the look and feel of. But actually, the great news here is why I log in, not the touch and feel :-)

Rob.

Now just the favicon and it's done :P
Excellent job, very nice!

Call me a stick in the mud, but I thought the old site look was better. This seems to much like "other" sites, while the old one was very nice for mobile viewing. Oh well...

by the way it could be useful to post on the old rss address that the rss moved from
http://www.chessvibes.com/?feed=rss2
to
http://www.chessvibes.com/feed/rss2/

The layout looks nice. The colours can be improved. The dominant background colour is white, and the text colours are lighter than usual, grey and light blue.
I think it is less eye straining when you use light grey colours in the background and darker text colours. See for a good example the background and text colours used by www.whychess.org.

As a long time reader, and professional designer, I feel obliged to share my sentiments:

This effort to have clean graphics, unfortunately does not feel sharp. The designs of the pieces at the bottom feel like chess clip art, or just sillhouettes of real chess pieces rather than a sharp design of them.

The 3D board in the background is distracting from the actual content, and it's resolution feels cheap towards the foreground. I hope the staff is looking at this on large moniters. (24").

The "logo" chess vibes now feels generic and run of the mill and that it could be used for a myriad of other websites or products. One word regular one bold... It's not memorable. The old logo had character, and could have been incorporated in a much more clever way to a sharper design. This feels like a stock logo, unlike the old one, and has nothing to do with the site or chess.

Netflix is a great example of a site that kept it's charm while upgrading it's design. I'm not crazy about the site or the look, but their success speaks for itself.

This renovation feels more like a collage of "what's current" rather than an identity. It's trying but isn't.

I loved the old site, and still love the content. I am very sorry to see it go for something that is so impersonal and yet doesn't feel sharp. The crux of the problem is that this site feels like "plug and play" and perhaps it is. Anyone of thousands of sites could work with this logo and this format. It's not welcoming, is very bright and doesn't feel warm and inviting like the "chess vibes" I remember did.

What made your site nice, and perhaps successful was that the site was warm, and it was fun. You have Diaz cartoons, and interviews with the players, and great photo video expositions on tournaments in addition to the "colder" analytical sides of chess games. This new site doesn't reflect this. It feels like a run of the mill stock trading site.

A redesign was welcome, but this threw away what made the site warm and fun. You guys lost sight of what was working, instead of just improving could be better. I'm sorry.

I have a problem with the rss: some of the images are not displayed on my web site. It seems that the link of those images are relative (i.e. <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/images/kingsvsqueens11/960_1.jpg" style="width: 300px; height: 300px;" /></p>.
Do other people have the same problem ?

I do not like the new design, can I switch back the old one? Thankyou

money and effort (and coffee!) have been poured in; so no normal human would accept it's a failure and revert back....
alas!
though i do wonder why sites like you don't do some sort of a reader poll before making such drastic changes.

This new site hurts my eyes.. so much white. Agree with the comment that the old design was warm, this just isn't.. It seems like a trend, wherever you look, to recreate design once in a while. I don't like this trend, call me conservative but i just really miss the old chessvibes site.

Peter,

If you are including mandatory word verification, please ensure that the CAPTCHA appears before you click "post" as opposed to appearing along with an error message after.

Is there any way to register on the site to skip this process?

I appreciate the effort that goes into this site. The content and sense of genuine interest in chess it conveys are great, so it is my favorite and principal source of chess news; however, I prefer the old format.
The comments above sum it up, hard on the eyes and a bit derivative.
Hopefully the next Chessvibes incarnation can bring back some of the old page. Until then, though, please keep up the great work.

As many people critisized the bright background color, maybe a little idea. You could change it every month or through seasons or let the user choose it himself. I mean the background have basically same color, so you can make it something like for example here http://immortalchess.net/ , there are some buttons on the top right and you can choose the color you want.

Could you please write the name of the GM along with the picture at the front page blog section? I do not recognize them by their picture alone and I tend to have heard their names more often than I have seen their faces.

The new version is better with PC, but worse with Android smartphone. Half the time I read CV, I am on the move.

-Maybe it's allready mentioned by you, but you really should have Android and iIhone version.

Thanks for great (new) site anyway!

Tip for improvement: You can only see the latest 6 blogs. It would be nice if it were possible to see al list of all the blogs, or at least a list of all the grandmasters that contribute. If you would e.g. click on Michael Adams you would get all his blogs to date. At this moment, if I were a first-time visitor of ChessVibes I would not even know that Adams or Vachier-Lagrave occasionally write blogs at ChessVibes, which is a pity.

I really dislike the new design - not the design per se, bu the site is now atrociously slow, and about 1/3 the time the site comes up in "mobile" mode, even though I'm on a desktop. This latter case only seems to happen on Firefox, but the terrible performance is on Firefox or IE, from home or work.