New Theme

Written by Ryan Cullen on 16th December 2007 – 9:31 am

After spending all week working on this new theme, it’s time to launch our new look.


Posted in Site news

34 Comments to “New Theme”

  1. Richard Flowers Says:
    16th December 2007 at 10:30 am

    You’ve re-decorated! That’s… quite nice, actually :)
  2. Alix Says:
    16th December 2007 at 10:33 am

    Ooh, psychedelic! Maybe it’ll confuse the trolls for a bit.
  3. Chris Keating Says:
    16th December 2007 at 10:52 am

    Not entirely sure about the sort of diagonal stripes fading upward in the header.
  4. Russ Says:
    16th December 2007 at 11:33 am

    I’ll level with you, I’m terrified
  5. Barcharter Says:
    16th December 2007 at 1:05 pm

    Oh cool. Very nice. I love the re-design. 5*****
  6. Jo A Says:
    16th December 2007 at 1:17 pm

    Bit much for a hungover sunday morning Ryan!!!
  7. boldkevin Says:
    16th December 2007 at 1:25 pm

    As this is (primarily) a British site could we have the normal British dating convention i.e. dd/mm/yy.
  8. MatGB Says:
    16th December 2007 at 1:52 pm

    Hmm, not sure I like all the different colours for posts on the front page, but then, I never really did do colour well. Beyond that, yeah, works for me, will take getting used to but change always does.
  9. Alex Foster Says:
    16th December 2007 at 2:38 pm

    Ooh, wow, it lives, lives!
  10. Paul Walter Says:
    16th December 2007 at 3:24 pm

    Excellent - well done!
  11. Jennie Says:
    16th December 2007 at 5:03 pm

    Re: Mat at number 8. This is why *I* am choosing the colour scheme for the wedding. Brown and Orange? How seventies.
  12. Joe Taylor Says:
    16th December 2007 at 6:18 pm

    The Lib Dem Blogs section could do with a link to libdemblogs.co.uk like the old one used to have - just in case people want to read more…
  13. MatGB Says:
    16th December 2007 at 6:24 pm

    Jennie darlin’, I’m only looking at the layout, not the colour scheme, that’ll always annoy me, it’s not monochrome grey and black *shudders*.

    @ Ryan, on second look, not sure I like where and how the author pictures display, I was never keen on setting them to the side, but they did then also come with a little biog, now they’re just hanging there. Maybe put them in a box with author name underneath?
  14. Peter1919 Says:
    16th December 2007 at 8:46 pm

    I don’t like the bright orange header, it is very distracting and Lib Dem colours are a yellower orange than that.

    Also the old header and layout seems to still be on the forum page. A uniform design throughout the site is preferable

  15. Julian H Says:
    16th December 2007 at 9:07 pm

    Wo, wo, wo. Hmmm.

    Right.

    I’ll have another think in the morning.
  16. Julian H Says:
    16th December 2007 at 9:09 pm

    Actually, yes, I like it.
  17. Iain Rubie Dale Says:
    16th December 2007 at 9:37 pm

    Hmmm…………
    I suppose that we’ll all get used to it - eventually.

    Actually it’s not really too terrible but I would be a bit miffed if you didn’t put a Scotland header on the categories section pdq.

    Just one other little request: any chance of the little picture thingy (gravatar/avatar/whatever)appearing next to headlines from the Lib Dem voice aggregator? I’m a bit vain you see.
  18. Dominic Hannigan Says:
    16th December 2007 at 9:40 pm

    it’s not easy on the eyes. I don’t like it. The old sight looked really cool. Boo.
  19. Laurence Boyce Says:
    16th December 2007 at 9:57 pm

    You’re all being far too polite. It’s completely shite.
  20. Cheltenham Robin Says:
    16th December 2007 at 10:40 pm

    I don’t like it
  21. Nigel Ashton Says:
    16th December 2007 at 11:14 pm

    Terrible navigation and the text size is too small. Does the site meet accessibility guidelines? - I’m having trouble reading it and I’ve got normal vision with glasses on.
  22. Jennie Says:
    17th December 2007 at 12:41 am

    Nigel @21, the text size on here is bigger than I have it set on gmail. What browser are you using? IE sometimes messes with text size settings on random fora for no apparent reason (or it did do last time I used it, which was, admittedly, a long time ago).

    Mat @13, sweetie, as to the layout, I KNOW you love three-column, but I hate it. It’s too busy, too much to look at, you have to necessarily concentrate hard or you end up ignoring things; so far my eye is tending to skim over one or other of the sidebars because I am used to looking at Newspaper websites and this is where the adverts are that I wish to ignore. Simple is better IMHO
  23. Nigel Ashton Says:
    17th December 2007 at 12:57 am

    22 - Firefox. Another problem is that it is almost impossible to tell different types of text part - headlines, datestamps, messages, names, navigation panel text - it all looks the same. There are no visual clues, which makes parsing the site very difficult.
  24. Ryan Cullen Says:
    17th December 2007 at 7:55 am

    Alix, the glowing green and blue have been soften, the colours were knocked up as I was leaving the door for the weekend. You might need to do a Ctrl+F5 on the main page though.

    boldkevin, they were set like that from before and I’ve never noticed, however I have now changed them.

    MatGB, the colours have been used to separate the posts by the owners, from the posts of the members. The old theme didn’t actually have bio’s, and only Mark had his picture. Again they are there on the main page to separate each post and allow people to glance at who’s doing what.

    Joe Taylor, a link to LibDemBlogs is now at the bottom of the section.

    Peter1919, the forum will be next, just need to make my mind up if I upgrade them to phpbb3 or not.

    Iain Rubie Dale, there is a Scotland link ;) Also it’s not possible to have the gravatars on the LibDemBlogs bit as the authors email details aren’t parsed in the RSS feed.

    Nigel Ashton, the fonts are no smaller than before, and also they are now Sans-Serif instead of Serif. You can use your browser to increase the font size if require.

    Jennie, one of the reasons for the 3 column was to allow for our “site sponsors” to appear near the top, whilst not taking up too much space.

    Thanks to all those who like it, sorry to those who don’t.

    Ryan

  25. sanbikinoraion Says:
    17th December 2007 at 1:07 pm

    I like the dark grey section at the top. Very “Web 2.0″ (and I mean that in a good way!)

    However, the heading itself is just too busy - three different shades of orange, plus the yellow text stencilled in grey, with black tagline text is just overkill.

    How about something more like this:
    http://pics.livejournal.com/lieutenanth/gallery/00008tak

    Having done internal web design for Vodafone, and understanding that people were rightly sick of bright primary red everywhere, I think the trick is to be a bit understated, and that’s where the old design was superior IMHO: there was plenty of plain white. Similarly, I’d make the background colour down the sides a lot paler, or a non-yellow colour.

    Secondly, that bold dark grey swathe with the video window in it really dominates the page - which is good - but it makes all of the content under that video window seem minor and unimportant.

    Since the poll answers clearly are not fitting in their section widthways, I’d be tempted to put the poll immediately underneath in a section as wide as the video box, in a halfway house colour like a mid grey or even a bright yellow-orange. Also, the poll bars don’t have enough contrast to them to show up how big the bars actually are. That needs sorting out whatever you do.

    Finally, when you get further down the page it feels quite cluttered due to the two additional columns of text on the RHS. Could the “categories” and “recent posts” sections be closed at page-load and pop open with a click if required? Otherwise they introduce a lot of clutter.

    Anyway, it looks a lot more professional than the old site, but I think it has a few bugs that need ironing out before it will truly shine.
  26. sanbikinoraion Says:
    17th December 2007 at 1:09 pm

    Also, I just noticed that on page-load (in firefox at least) on is treated to a vast expanse of pale yellow (with all the post text on top) before the white body gets rendered, which looks really ugly.
  27. sanbikinoraion Says:
    17th December 2007 at 3:00 pm

    And the “latest comments” section is way too big, and looks like an actual post.

    Sorry, I’m nitpicking now :)

    All of this IMHO of course.

    I am slightly distubed that Ryan appears to be my doppelganger. Have I been sleeping later and later? Have I been being Ryan more and more?
  28. Ryan Cullen Says:
    17th December 2007 at 3:29 pm

    If the site has suddenly gone red, please hold Ctrl and press F5.
    Thank you.
  29. Alix Says:
    17th December 2007 at 5:51 pm

    I really like the idea of colour-coding the posts by category, should have said.

    Have you been playing with Lib Dem Blogs too? My browser suddenly doesn’t know what it is anymore.
  30. Jo A Says:
    17th December 2007 at 6:11 pm

    Yes mine too - keeps asking me if i want to download a file…
  31. Jennie Says:
    17th December 2007 at 6:41 pm

    Nigel: “Another problem is that it is almost impossible to tell different types of text part - headlines, datestamps, messages, names, navigation panel text - it all looks the same.”

    Yes, some form of bolding or something might come in handy. The datestamp is in black and everything else dark grey, but, as you say, this doesn’t help with parsing.

    Ryan: I wouldn’t worry about what I think. In fact, putting me off is probably a wise move on your part and will save time for me too.
  32. Ryan Cullen Says:
    17th December 2007 at 7:09 pm

    Alix and Jo, my webhost have been pissing about again with the server settings, making quite a few of my script break. I’ve put a temporary fix in for the main site, however the Gravatars and LibDemBlog box won’t show. It’s the same for people who have my Amazon Sidebar (and possibly other) scripts on their sites.
  33. Jo A Says:
    17th December 2007 at 7:59 pm

    Awww - that’s OK - no worries - just really really miss your site when it goes down ;@))
  34. Nic R Says:
    18th December 2007 at 10:30 am

    The new site isn’t as easy on the eye as the last one - any chance of softening it a bit? Doesn’t feel like LDV anymore… :(

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