A brand new 'magazine' look for BlenderNation!
After weeks of work, I'm proud to show you a new layout for BlenderNation. The old one was getting boring, and one of the things that always bothered me is how quickly great news would disappear from the homepage. I also wanted to have more focus on graphics and to make it easier to find the stuff you're interested in.
Some of the highlights of the new design are:
- Support for 'featured' content on the homepage, allowing me to 'pin' the best content on the homepage.
- Much richer content on the homepage and in categories, making it easier to browser through articles.
- Full support for Retina graphics! If you're on a high-resolution Mac you'll now see super-crisp images, provided the author supplied a high-resolution version.
- Historic headers. If you display an older post, you'll see the header graphic that it was originally published with. Again, with so much great art on the site, these images deserve more exposure.
- Fully responsive. The site will display much better on mobile phones and tablets.
... and more will follow soon.
I'm still working hard to convert all graphics in older posts, so not everything may display 100% correct yet. Also, if you find any issues with the site, please let a comment.
I hope you'll enjoy the new look!
Bart
114 Comments
Hi Bart - thanks for all the hard work you do on this site! Looks Great!!!
Much appreciated :)
Perfect choice! Looking great! :)
Thank you!
i like it very much, i liked that it displays the headers you select and see how it was! i also liked showing more posts and content in a single page, and the featured picture in the categories :D
the only problem now is that it takes a little bit more time to load with my slow internet, but it's not a big problem
keep the hard work admin(s) (y)
Thanks :) It should become faster once you have cached images etc.
I see you say retina users can see high resolution images, can we as normal pc users also see these said images, or are they limited?
You'll see them like you always have, but only retina users will see them at twice the resolution.
Ok, I understand. I really like the new layout it makes browsing my favorite blender news site much better. (blendernation is my default homepage) The tabs at the top are also really nice. Good work Bart!
there isn't a way to create an account here in this website where you can see all the likes, dislikes, comments, messages and all the other stuff? or it's not the way you want it to be?
I've decided to stick to Disqus for now. With the amounts of traffic BlenderNation is getting, I can't really let everyone log in and have a dynamic site.. Maybe if I was making a bit more money with BlenderNation, I could! :)
oh i totally forgot about the bandwidth and domain name thing, well i hope it will be possible some day
another question, when i click on the ads, does that make more money for you? or it's only PPV ads? and if yes, is it legal to ask people to click them?
Yes it makes me money, but I can't ask people to click. Also, just click on what interests you - if you click on every banner you see, they'll detect that as fraud..
ok, i will click some times (once per day), and almost everything is interresting since it's related to 3d, i'm more curious than george the monkey :)
Hi Bart,
I'm a old follower of this page. This third big redesign is very clean, fits in the modern time and stands for the content which it should be. Great choice of the wordpress SmartMag theme. :)
I just looked around and this is what I found so far:
1. On the front page, is there a ajax module loading or some sort of refresher? Don't know why but the comments counter for this post for example are frozen to 3 though here are 12 atm. (though I pressed STRG+F5 / STRG+SHIFT+R)
2. Your amazon sponsor link should need a better "howto" description. At the actual state it's a error page.
3. On your "about" page which I crawled from google there is a 404 link redirect to blender.org (gallery with cool Blender art)
Thanks for your work so far and keep the good work up! :)
Hey thanks for these issues!
1. Yes, I'm trying to get Disqus to auto-update these numbers. The pages are basically completely static in an effort to lower my server load. I'll get this fixed :)
2. Fixed! It may a while before all the pages are updated though.
3. Ah, I didn't even know I had that page anymore! That one goes to the todo list.
Thanks again!
No problem :)
1. usually it shouldn't be too hard for the server to load this short php code
''
(disqus doesn't like php code ;) I needed to spaced it)
This is how you get them wordpress internally.
If you need help let me know.
3. Yeah google will find much more about you than you thought :D
It isn't necessarily whether it is hard, but any dynamicness removes the possibility to aggressively cache the page, which is much, much faster.
Dykam is right, I have to use some serious caching for BlenderNation and I can't execute PHP for each single pageview. Disqus offers a service for this though, don't worry :)
I see your problem. Acutally it isn't internally it's from disqus ;)
Maybe this answer might help you too:
http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/10582/how-to-add-disqus-comment-count
Site is lookin good. But Disquis is all messed up. Only on Blendernation ... it's weird.
Messed up how?
like new comments appearing on top, and then after a refresh they go down again?
Yeah I was experiencing that here as well - the sort resetting. Maybe Disqus is having some issues? That's not really something I can change.
don't know if this happens with other websites using disqus, and if yes, i'm sure disqus will claim it's a feature and not a bug like all the programmers do XD
Everything is working fine for me and how it should be.
It's only messed up when you are using Ghostery or other Blocker and blocked disqus. Or when you are on Internet Explorer but then you are helpless anyways ;)
I'm on Chrome 32-34.
at the top you can sort by time etc.
Disqus working too.
oh i didn't notice that i can sort messages, i started to use disqus a week ago only
but new messages also should be sorted by time, and not appear on top,right?
Unless you sort by 'newest'
right
Thanks for helpin me get this fixed up, Bart. It was just a cookie thing .. sometimes I forget the simplest fixes!
I can almost guarantee that any issues with Disqus being messed up is because DIsqus regularly sees such issues. I've wrestled with it for several years, across hundreds of sites. Disjointed parsing, duplicate posting, phantom posts returning as "guest" after you try to delete them, delay in posts showing up (esp. with an image attached). The list goes on. Though, it's like democracy--a bad form of government, but the best one we've got.
nice layout! really great change :)
Thanks Jan!
can i suggest you to put disqus notifications and login on the home page if you can? because i have to click on a post to see if there's any new messages
Sorry, what do you mean? I'm working on getting the comment counts on the homepage to update correctly - is that what you want?
that's a good thing to do but not what i meant, wait i will show you a picture
i'm experiencing problems while uploading pictures
here it is finally
Se vé bien la web. Gran Cambio! Mucho más cómoda para buscar contenidos!.
Thanks you!
WOW
Thanks :)
one more question, do you create the html and css with notepad or you just select templates and using html editing software?
I'm using WordPress
that explains the unreadable source code then lol
still better than microsoft's website source code XD
I'm running a source code minify process to remove comments etc and speed up the page load :)
ah ok, but make sure you let one with comments for you if you ever want to do some maintainance
the site is looking really good. thank you for your hard work on keeping it going.
just one thing there is no favicon.
It's on the todo, thanks!
Woah. This is going to take some getting used to...
Good or bad?
Actually the more I look at it the more I like it! Everything's arranged in a really nice logical order now, and there is access to a lot more content. Was just really confused when I loaded up the page at first, thought I clicked on the wrong bookmark lol. And as long as you're making changes, one thing thats bothered me for a while is that external links don't open in a new tab, any chance that could get changed? Just a personal web design pet peeve of mine.
Ha yeah I can see how it would be confusing if you suddenly saw another site :) I'm not a bit fan of opening new windows, I usually use middle-click on links to open new tabs.
And also, since I'm sure you don't hear it enough, thank you so much for all the work you put into this site. Its always the first thing I check in the morning, and my favorite news I read all day. I really appreciate everything that you are doing for Blender and its community, and its really great that you do what you do. :)
Looking good indeed. Two things however:
1. disqus CSS is not loaded so comments are not looking pretty!
2. I always find it hard to read when image header is BELOW the actual image. I read the caption, look down and realize it's got nothing to do with it. :)
1. Hmm, can you try clearing your cache? It works fine here.
2. Agreed, I find that a little distracting too. I'll leave it as it is for a few days to see if we can get used to it (I like the way it currently aligns). If not, I'll swap :)
Congratulations, Bart! Very refreshing experience.
Thanks Spelle!
Great work Bart, looks awesome!
Cheers :)
Love it! Excellent job!
Thanks so much!
Nice, much easier to read and navigate! The one thing I noticed is that when switching between tabs (at the top), the fade between flashes white because of the fade out. I recommend delaying the fade-out animation (but not the fade-in animation) by the animation time (0.2s).
Otherwise, great work!
Ah, I'll put that on my todo, thanks!
I look at it every day and glean a lot of great tips and inspiration!
Glad to hear it. Having daily readers is amazing :)
I'm taking some time to get used to it but it is looking great!
Well done Bart!
Cheers!
some when in future i will make my peace with it. so far ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVDk_PXutK0
;), its the schock.
It's bigger on the inside now though :)
geronimo
Mobile site looks great.
Thanks Duncan!
Cool update, looks fresh.
Two things though:
1. disqus' CSS does not load for me (404 on http://a.disquscdn.com/next/styles/lounge.8c06f0a023b095da9547ed886d42d8dd.css)
2. caption should be before images IMHO.
Other than that, all good.
Thanks! Did you try clearing your cache? I don't have any control over what Disqus tries to load..
About the captions; I'm not convinced either. I'll wait a bit to see if it grows on us. If not, I'll swap it around :)
Very nice modern look! At first I thought I had gone to the wrong favorite, But then I realized that it was the new look. It will take some getting used to, but it defiantly looks really good. Coming from a guy with a Retina Display Macbook Pro, the graphics look epic! Keep up the hard work!
Haha, yeah I understand it must be confusing :)
Ah, no wonder I had a bit of an issue with trying to visit the site last night--you were renovating. ;)
And I can see why--looks like you had your hands full. I know it isn't easy. I'm doing a bit of website redesign myself. A lot of playing things by ear, and getting things settled down. It's quite the balancing act. And then you have the issue of wondering how folks will like it.
I think for the purpose of this site, the changes are beneficial and positive, and things feel open and yet more direct. It's a bit disorienting initially if you're used to the older site, which is natural, but I think once folks gets more acclimated to it, they'll come to find the changes pleasant and very helpful. I think people who aren't sure about this redesign will come to love it once they start using it practically.
I can tell you that I personally love the site, particularly because it's more specific categorizations, making it much easier to find what you wish to find. I did have the small issue before in trying to hunt down past posts that I wanted to revisit once they got pushed further down the articles list. Now, I can find what I want, where I expect it to be. I need to revisit a past contest, there it is in "Contests." Small feature, huge help.
Anyways, congrats on the redesign! And good on you for actually doing some quality assurance in the comments, listening to feedback. Thanks for all you do!
My pleasure Brian, thanks :)
Hi Bart, nice look, pleasant to use. The only downside is that to me showing the related posts before the comments is not very handy and a bit confusing ...
Yeah, I'm not totally convinced about that either. I may decide to change that!
I love the awesome design! At least you didn't fuck it up like DVICE did. (That big pinkish purple font that blinds the eyes. *shutters*)
I also love the mobile version. Better than the previous.
Thanks!
Checking it out on chrome for android (Galaxy S4) and it looks great in both portrait and landscape. Great work.
Cool, glad to hear it.
Loving the new design, congrats!!
Thank you!
Great job! Thanks Bart! I only wish I actually used Blender like I used to a couple years ago... the progress is incredible.
Thanks! Well, you can always get back in the groove :)
It is nice but I have a problem that if I use the magnifying glass on safari (iPod touch 4th) I can backspace but can't add text to where I put the marker. Nice work though.
Where are you editing text? In the comments box or the search box?
The comment box
I don't have an iPod, but just tested this on my iPhone 5 with iOS 7.1 and it works fine. I'm not sure what would cause this function to break on your end :-/
Hmm unfortunate. Another thing I noticed is that when using the discus commenting or browsing through the comments everything is laggy and the page appears to be continually loading (the loading symbol in the upper left corner is spinning) I don't think it is lack of memory as I have only one other tab and no others apps open. Just sitting doing the nothing the screen is continually refreshing. This is only happening in the discus section though. But on Blender Guru I don't have the same problems. I dunno what is causing it.
Lookin' good!
Cheers!
Superb! Now BN looks much more "mature", like an online magazine!
This is the ultimate end of the old "linear" ("the newest news first") look. Now its contents is much better exposed.
Bart, you did a wonderful change!
Thanks so much Witold!
This will take some getting used to, but I must say...it's beautiful! Something about it feels cozy and nice. I like it :)
Awesome, glad you like it!
Amazing. You made all my wishes come true ;-) thank you for this effort. It is a big step forward for blender nation.
Thanks :)
Oh, Horizontal Tiling... sorry, but
It divides significance of each of the news /2
There is an effect of Control Panel in win7 - there are also no clean order, that messes up presented information.
Note, I have a hi res monitor on Linux, found this can be used to fake a retina display, though not totally sure if this is working for Blender-Nation: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15551287/how-to-test-a-website-for-retina-on-windows-without-an-actual-retina-display
Great update
It's easier to read, calm to the eye
Responsiveness: nice on iPad / iPhone, no problems seen here
Blenderheads ... shall we all donate a little ;)
This must be a lot of work, great job !
Any chance you could add the "previous post" "next post" or something back in? I enjoyed coming here, opening the oldest article I hadn't read, and flipping through chronologically.
A huge amount of work with a nice result has been done here.
Indeed :) Thanks!
Super nice! Well done Bart :)
Thank you!