I have re-designed The Advanced Apes site. I feel like this is more professional and an easier site to use navigation wise. Thanks to the Hubski community for support and encouragement so far!
Your pinterest link is borked. Design looks pretty clean. I would bump the font size for legibility. I personally would avoid having tags in a tag cloud having larger font sizes than my main content, it is somewhat distracting. I think I would lean towards surfacing "related content" next to each post instead for discovery. I would change the latest entries to take up both middle and right column, and, most importantly, add a single paragraph summary/teaser from each post next to each title/image. Right now the title and image gives me very little idea of what the post is about. The main image looks very blurry/over-compressed, I would definitely suggest replacing it with a cleaned-up version. The thumbnails also have inconsistent levels of quality, some look clean, some look over-compressed. If you are linking to pinterest and facebook, I would suggest also creating a list page on stumbleupon, might be helpful. Here's an example: http://www.stumbleupon.com/lists/840022691085624002
Hey aeontech, A lot to take in here. a) I'll try and increase font size and minimize the tag cloud. b) I should definitely include a related content feature next to each post. I like that idea a lot. c) I think your point about the middle/right column is also good and I'll see if I can somehow incorporate a single paragraph summary for each post. d) changed the image already! e) I definitely have to work on image quality. I'll probably do that this weekend. f) Not sure why my Pinterest button isn't working. And I'll have to do some research re: list page on stumbleupon. It looks like a good idea.
If you want. Let me know the header px size and I can resize it for you. Or tell you how to do it in photoshop.
Looks better already, I like the tag cloud on the bottom of the page, much less distracting. a) the pinterest link is broken because it is linking to
http://pinterest.com/http://pinterest.com/theadvancedapes b) the front page image is whopping 400Kb. That's, er... excessive. Run it through http://imageoptim.com/ or http://trimage.org/ c) I agree with @mk regarding the size of the header. I don't think that your content has to always be above the fold, people have learned how to scroll by now, but you can easily combine the header image and the site byline into a single 200-300px tall header without any loss in clarity, and save a large amount of space. d) I don't think you need the comma in the Hitchens quote.
It looks better already. One more thing to consider: on laptop screens it is likely that your content links are below the fold. I understand if you want to keep it big and open-looking, but you might consider tightening up the top to bring content links either into the landing view, or closer to it. I was messing around on my screen, but even with tightening it up quite a bit, I only got the quote in there. Before: After: I have a small font/image bias though. So I probably would go too far in that direction... I do agree that moving the tag cloud was good. BTW, I always thought that was a Sagan quote!
Carl Sagan definitely popularized that quote, but the first time I heard it was in Christopher Hitchens's book "God Is Not Great". I understand what your saying about the content on laptop screens. That does concern me a little bit. I'll see what I can do. I like smaller font/images as well, but I have had some people tell me to enlarge the font as well! So I'm not sure what to do.
I'd peruse blogs that you like, and ones in the neighborhood of your content. I do believe that the proper aesthetic is content-dependent. I get conflicting feedback here all the time. At some point, you just have to go with your gut for starters, and modify conservatively from there.So I'm not sure what to do.
Looks nice! I can't remember the last time I've seen a tag cloud. As a UX designer, I recommend against them since they're not typically useful to users. Well-organized navigation and on-site search tools are usually effective. But maybe on an educational site like yours, where there's emphasis on learning and discovering, listing everything might actually be a good thing. Also, thank you for using the correct Twitter logo. One of my biggest personal pet peeves of mine is the bubbly "t" logo!
haha I much prefer the actual Twitter logo as well. I'll toy around with the navigation, I think I can improve upon it. And I'll consider getting rid of the tag cloud or changing its position on the site.
haha, I'll have to diversify. And I'll see what I can do about the keyword cloud.
Looks great on my phone so far. Will explore it further later on. Congrats! You move quickly.
Thanks. I think I'm going to be doing my first podcast this weekend too!
Hey, I started listening to the podcast and it sounds fantasic. I look forward to picking back up tomorrow. It occurred to me that you might want to check out mpoe and his New Books Network It seems they are branching out in to more genre's of books and perhaps you could cross promote? Interview someone that is recently published in Anthro and have the interview featured on "newbooks" and then also have a podcast version that dives deeper. Just a thought. I've had a theme song in my head for your podcast for the last 3 days. It's cheesy as hell, but I may record it and send it to you just to get it out of my brain. Nice work Cadell, I look forward to following your podcast.
That's great. I look forward to listening, let me know when it is released.
Hey mk, Ya I definitely need to get a clearer image. I'm currently having a friend design an official logo for the site, so when that is done the current image will be replaced. Hopefully it will be completed sooner rather than later.
I found a higher res version here: just in case..jpg)
wow, that is a million times better. I'll use that until my friend is finished the actual logo.
Ha. I just threw it together. There was a recent post about Hubski logo look-alikes.
That's amazing. So you want more Hubski imitator logos out there?!