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New design
11 January 2008 10:36 AM | Last modified: 20:24
Wow, that’s a bit of a shock, isn’t it? No, you haven’t typed in the wrong address, this really is ChessVibes, but in a new jacket. But why, for heaven’s sake? We’ll explain.
We wanted something new, but that probably won’t be enough answer for you. So let’s point out the advantages compared to the old design:
- We’ll make no secret of it: there’s more space for advertisements. In the header, for example, there’s space for standard banner size of 468×60 px. You probably couldn’t care less, but for us it’s important, to be able to run and expand the site further. In this design, the ads don’t stand out too much, we hope.
- There’s more space (as in: width) for the articles. Not on the home page, where they are slightly tighter, but when you’ve clicked on them they are (when you’re reading this you know what this is about). This extra space can be used for all kinds of things.
- This design has a more ‘news site feel’. For a while now, we have been more than just a personal blog, and now we hope to be able to combine the advantages of both types of sites. On the one hand, you can know spot very quickly what’s new (under ‘Latest News’), without having to scroll all the way down. On the other hand the comment box is still there, so the site is still interactive.
- We had been planning to add some new features that were difficult to implement in the old design. Examples of new stuff: ‘Latest news elsewhere’ (an RSS feed of the most important chess sites in the English language - this you’ll find on the home page in the central column), ‘Our videos’ (we’ll probably put our latest videos from Wijk aan Zee there too), ‘Latest uploads to Flickr’ (here you will always see our latest photos) and ‘Quick contact’. We’d like to stimulate contact with our visitors, because many of you probably have good ideas for articles often, or perhaps you’ve written a good piece yourself, or you’ve got a simple link tip. Let us know!
- The new design opens quicker in your browser, and is also more suitable for a number of new features we’re planning to add. Later more about that.
Hopefully you feel at home soon, in this new neighbourhood. And, don’t hesitate to give criticism, because one can always do better.
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Wow! That looks cracking hot!! Keep up the good work! Perhaps a donate button is an idea also?!
The new design looks very nice .. and the banner hardly has a negative experience on the chessvibes experience. The only thing i personly think is out of tone is the big red stop sign at the books .. it annoys me
It’s even cleaner than before, creates more space and a fresh look&feel. Nice work!
The “Latest news elsewhere” is a very decent idea and shows that you run a very open-minded site that doesn’t fear competition.
Just three suggestions:
- You should add dates to the news on the front site. That makes the front site look more, well, up to date
- The comment form (name, email, website, speak your mind) is too large for my taste. I would only keep the size of the “speak your mind” box and shrink the other ones.
- What I would like as a daily reader of chessvibes is a special “news page” for bookmarking, where the news frame gets 2/3 of the vertical space and on the right are the events, “latest comments” and “latest news elsewhere” (+ your ads of course). That’s because videos and photos don’t change that often and for me they are only interesting in the context of an article. I don’t have to see them a dozen times a day.
Keep up!
Cracking new look to the site, nice and fresh for 2008!! Good job, keep up the good work!!
wow, I actually like it! it is very very easy to get lost when upgrading from a simple-ish site to a more complex, but this new site is looking promising. I have lost interest in a number of sites in the past because they went from being very basic and user friendly to being more complex and it just didnt work. they always became too crowded with too much flashy banners, not good enough structure and too many different colours etc.
I can think of a couple of suggestions:
-I liked seeing the daily puzzle as soon as I entered the main page. now it is sort of invisible because I gotta scroll down to see it. You could put it above recent comments instead. the daily puzzle gives a lot of things to the site, first of all it looks updated and active (because it’s new every day), and second it gives a “fun” touch to the site, and third it just adds a nice chess touch to the site to imidiately see a chess position when entering the page (or I always thought so anyway.).
-the latest news is probably necessary since there are only room for 5 (?) articles in the left frame. But it looks a bit weird with the latest news mirroring the left frame, especially the two newest articels. on the left, “new design”, in the center, “latest news / new design”. you could put the latest news window on top of the left frame instead, it would look slightly more logical maybe. but it has downsides too so I dont know. something to think about.
-Im sure it generates good money, but the ad on the top frame/title sign (or what to call it) doesnt look that great. It will look a lot better without that ad. It is in fact the only thing that looks really messy right now. On the top of the main page I now have chess vibes to the left, and an ad to the right that is in fact larger than the chess vibes title, and says “free web rpg”. It will look so much more professional if you remove that ad! (if you really want to sneak it in on the top, maybe you could enlarge the language bar slightly and put it in there on the right, under the web search? something like that..)
Congrats on your new looks: cracking!
Most of the time you have to get used to new designs before you like them, but this one didn’t have that effect on me! I like it, well done
Maybe a few more rounded corners here and there, but it looks sleeker!
I like the new design, it is a good surprise. Clean, practical, easy to understand. My only criticsm would be that it is not necessarily clear that the added translations (Spanish, German, French, etc.) are automatic translation, as opposed to the usual two languages. In this context, maybe the text “Google:” should be replaced with “Automatic translation:” or “Links to Google automatic translations for this page:”.
Many thanks for this great web site.
What I’m totally missing is a sort of sign up form and automatic login button. This way you really stimulate the viewers to respond quickly and you know it’s the “same” person talking again if the loginname can only be used by one person.