We have recently made some changes to our blog. The format has been refreshed, and a structure was implemented that will allow us to offer several, multilingual blogs. Unfortunately, the changes made interrupted the RSS Feed for the ChinesePod Blog and Blog Comment RSS. You will need to re-subscribe to the RSS Feed in order to continue receiving our posts and discussion comments in your RSS reader. Sorry for the disruption.
Regards,
Matt Park 段伟
Is this how it’s staying? If so I’m not too keen, it feels like it’s detached from the rest of the site now.
I like the new style.
The right column comments section lists the first few words of a comment, but no mention of the thread topic. Much better the old way by listing the thread.
Otherwise, I’m not sure where you’re going with the new theme… Hmm…
NEW DESIGN?
Some comments on the ‘visual brand.’
-I agree with Bazza, the blog seems quite detached now. I’m guessing that not having a direct link in the left-hand navagation buttons in the Community tab on the homepage is an oversight. Right?
-Ohh, I found the new ‘little itty bitty’ blogs link next to the home in the homepage upper left hand corner. Itty-bitty yah that’s what it is.
-The new look, it’s new, it’s disconcerting, I don’t know if I like it, it seems harder to browse and less continuous. The old one was very simple to scroll thru, like a newspaper. But change, we must embrace it!
-The idea is good, obviously JohnP has convinced Cpod of the power of the blogroll and expanding participation. It will help with your search rankings. But things need touching up a bit.
–The banner is stylistically not in synch with the Cpod homepage, that’s not good. The new buttons with Ken and Jenny, that matches in both places and so design-wise is fun and good.
–As a reader, I’m going to be first looking for the Comments, rather than the Catagories, so put that after. I already have scrolling-itis.
–The banner and button images don’t line up, I looked on two browsers, it bugs me. It looks unprofessional.
–The date under the blog banner, there’s no line break…that bugs me too. Whitespace, it’s a good thing.
–All of your banner text has been in white, the blog text “Chinesepod Blog With Ken Carroll”, it’s black. It’s a style-book, let’s not get into the typical Chinese website design of flash popups everywhere, every color in the palatte text, and every color. Brand and money, they are connected.
–The homepage banner has a fade, the blog banner doesn’t. The homepage has red sub-title text, the blog is black. Headlines in black on homepage, reddish in the blog. This all is adding to my ‘cognitive dissonance’.
–The ‘home’ and ‘blog’ links on the homepage are on the right, in the blogpage it’s on the left. Why make my eyeballs work more than they already do?
–The homepage say’s ‘Blogs’, the blogpage says ‘Blog Homepage’. That’s nine characters of difference. 开玩笑。
–There is no longer any clear visual separation line, except for white space for each posting. Arguments could be made that it’d be nice to have.
–My last jab, it’s fine to introduce a new Wordpress Style template, but look, Cpod is now a company, merge the Sirius Theme with the key elements of a ‘Chinesepod’ Wordpress theme.
And yah, this is my passive-aggresive vent for all those ‘critiques’ I had in design courses. They’re never pretty, despite the products that come out.
Not much liking the layout. 30% of my screen is blank, since the CSS flows it to one side.
I’m just glad it hasn’t occured to you to have Aric play the pipa on a continous midi loop.
Pssst… whoever scrubbed and polished the right hand side if the page here, must have rubbed off a couple of letters. Someone needs to go back and change the word “Dutch” to “Deutsch”.
Aunty,
On the case.
Ken
Oops, don’t worry Ken, I cleaned my glasses and now it looks perfect
The old one was very simple to scroll thru, like a newspaper. But change, we must embrace it!