Comments on: 7 Reasons Why The New SitePoint Front Page Rocks

By: O_o.moo

O_o.moo — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:08:39 +0000

no comment… well what I mean is, I don’t think I use the home page all that much *shrugs*

By: willdonovan

willdonovan — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:28:37 +0000

stike that last things about the 4 certificates,

The new design Rocks.

By: willdonovan

willdonovan — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:58:58 +0000

I like it,

I didn’t like the 4 certificate acceptance questions at the start though to load this page.

By: Skweekah

Skweekah — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:57:16 +0000

Nah, I like the old one better. It was cluttered, but in a bustling, things-are-happening kind of way. The new one is sterile, sleepy, nothing-to-see-here. The old sitepoint rocked. This one will have to grow on me. Dont take this the wrong way, it is great, very nicely presented, but I think you should have applied these minor aesthetic design changes to the old layout instead.

Skweekah

By: amelvin1968

amelvin1968 — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:01:50 +0000

I’ve been here quite a while, back when Tech Times had few enough letters that mine could be printed in full!

This is easily the best design that Sitepoint has had in the last seven years. Although the new Tech Times email format is poor; I thought that the orange obsession has finally been stopped, but was wrong again.

Finally I think that part of a comment I made in 2001 that was printed in the Tech Times:

I get more tips from TechTimes, that I actually use, than any
other such publication.

shows how Sitepoint has changed over time in both design and content.

The focus of Sitepoint was once as a tutorial, tips-an-tricks and ‘getting things done’ site. But as the site has matured it has become a book sales, tech news and new tech tasters site – and it is now right that this is reflected on the home page.

Its interesting that you have employed a RWW guy and it probably backs up this analysis that the likes of RWW and other tech bloggers are now your competitors where once it would have been 4Guys, CodeProject or ALA.

Good luck.

By: Steve Wa

Steve Wa — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:17:25 +0000

I hope you write a blog posting about your expecations of what users would think, and then compare it to the comments here. It would be very interesting to me (maybe others too) because:

1. This happens to me with clients, I present a design or idea that I think is great, but they shoot it down, then I get pretty depressed and don’t want to work anymore.

2. Being able to respond to criticism in a positive and constructive manner and keep your attitude happy is very important in being able to reach your goals. Unfortunately it seems hard for me to achieve that state of mind.

Also, you mention you wanted SitePoint to become THE destination of choice for web news. Can you explain in more detail how you reached this strategy, i.e. was it an internal tactic to support the strategy of selling more books, was it a feature request by visitors, or was it a trend you noticed in the analytics (visitors searching for news, or news content getting the majority of hits, etc).

I’ve had the depressing experience that many clients have an idea for their site that turns out to be 180 degrees opposite of what their users really want. Sometime they correct it quickly, othertimes they stubbornly march into the “shutdown the site” zone. So any insight you can shed light on that would be very interesting (and would also probably get a lot of incoming links). I’ll look for it in your latest email newsletter (which I do like the new design of that – open and clean, but leading with an advertisement amost made me close the email without reading further.)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 05:57:08 +0000

new centering and crazy line indenting on new tech times is not a favourite, just looks, not right.
sorry!

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:38:49 +0000

Maybe I got caught up in the hype, but I was expecting more. All you did was rearrange the content boxes. To me, it looks very Googleish (ie. dull) w/some elements of Yahoo thrown in (ie. having everything, but the kitchen sink on it). I would add some more color/graphics, remove some of the content, and make the topics box at the bottom (which should be at/near the top) all the same size. I know most blog sites do that, but I find the changing sizes for hot topics to be annoying.

By: bsmbahamas

bsmbahamas — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:09:32 +0000

just wanted to say i like the new design, was looking forward to it and happy that you guys have open ears and will tweak as you go. the only problem for me is more vertical scrolling, and maybe mixing blog and articles in one area.

i recommend you do change what’s hot, to “what’s hot on sitepoint” and maybe news and trends to “industry news and trends” as i thought both sections were exclusive items within sitepoint.

it seems the top whats hot section is related to sitepoint content while the news and trends is related to the entire ‘industry’.

By: mattymcg

mattymcg — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:23:01 +0000

@bvarvel I fixed the link that Kevin posted. I think he meant here.