Making sure that your blog looks and works correctly is one of the major things you need to get right. Your readers will not take it kindly if something does not work on their browser or mobile device. But how to make sure that all works correctly? Today let us take a look at the top 5 cross-browser testing tips to quickly test your blog. [Read more…]
How to Redesign Your Blog for Improved User Experience
In blogging, there’s no such thing as permanent success. Everything comes full circle, from your content marketing, branding strategy, and web design.
It’s really simple: if you’re not adaptive to the latest trends, technology, and strategies, you get left behind.
For the past few years, the digital world shifted into a more consumer-centric path. Brands that offer the best user experience are rewarded, while those who focused on their interests suffered PR fire.
In this post, we’ll tackle the elements you need to review and redesign in your blog for the best user experience. [Read more…]
5 Tips for Recruiting a UX Designer
As your blog have increasingly become your first point of contact with potential consumers, you might want to look into hiring a professional UX designer to help you set your blog apart. This is because engaging and thought through online user experience could be very crucial to the success of your blog. [Read more…]
Is Your Blog A Bore? – 5 Ways to Make Your Blog More Visually Interesting
Black and white blog posts aren’t nearly as successful as they used to be. Though blogging is a timeless way to convey information to consumers and garner attention for your website, if you don’t have enough visual interest within that platform, you’ll have a difficult time making them stay. [Read more…]
Duncan Riley’s The Inquisitr Launches New Design
Duncan Riley talks about the recent refresh of his news site The Inquisitr and it is interesting to see how he views the site more and more as a traditional news outlet. Besides the obvious visual changes and enhancements, Riley talks about the syndication deals we’ve reported on previously.
I’ve only touched on this side briefly, but we started syndicating content a couple of months back. We started with Bang Celebrity content, and started playing with AHN. As of two weeks ago we expanded our AHN deal so we take on much more of their content now. We don’t post all of it, and we’re trying to work around content that might be interesting. At the same time though, the mere fact that we’re syndicating content makes us more traditional news site every day; both deals are like signing on with AP or Reuters to a degree, and I’d hope it’s the start of something better again for us.
Be sure to read his post on the fourth Inquisitr refresh, and check out the new look. It is a step in the right direction says the designer in me…
Vote App Lets Facebook Users Express Their Outrage
I’m not the right person to judge the new Facebook design because I find the social network utterly boring, and the only reason I even reactivated my account was to get in touch with people addicted to the service. I will say that the previous design was cluttered, while this one is nicer on the eye. That is, however, not the most important thing when it comes to app-like services and sites like Facebook, and a lot of users dislike the new design.
A new Facebook application, called New Layout Vote, lets you vote on the new design. These are disheartening numbers for Zuckerberg & Co., because as of now, some 900,911 users have voted and the score is a whopping 94% against the new design. As in don’t like it. The app will break 1 million in a few hours time, if the increase in votes right now is anything to go by.
More on Techmeme, of course.
So what do you think about the (fairly) new Facebook design?
Movable Type Monday: TypePad Connect, vpod.tv, Layout Switching, and More
Happy Monday, folks! The biggest Movable Type-related news this week was the release of TypePad Connect, a service from Six Apart that combines a Disqus-style comment system with MyBlogLog-like profiles. TypePad profiles extend the existing TypeKey service and allow you to connect it with your other social networking sites, turning it into a lifestream of sorts. TypePad comments supports OpenID login and has TypePad anti-spam built in. TypePad Connect will integrate with any MT blog, and it works with other blogging systems as well. More features are on the way, including the ability to import comments into your existing comment system.
I’ll admit, I’ve never personally seen a need for a hosted commenting system like this, but Disqus has become quite popular, and now 6A is entering the market. Have you had any experience with one of these systems? Let us know in the comments.
Plugins
vpod.tv — Six Apart Europe announced the release of a plugin that integrates vpod.tv into your MT blog. With this plugin you can upload video to your site and have it published on vpod.tv. The press release makes it sound like it should be available now, but I haven’t found it available for download anywhere. [Read more…]
Blog Navigation Innovations
Innovations in blog design are now pretty few and far between. Blog design has pretty much settled into conventions that work. It’s one of the reasons I can be so happy with settling on just the Thesis WordPress theme and why I love it so much.
Every now and then though someone still manages to come out with a tweak or idea that makes me smile. [Read more…]
Sandbox for Movable Type plugin now available
Movable Type has announced that its Sandbox for Movable Type plugin is now available, allowing the many Sandbox themes to be used on the MT blogging platform.
Beau Smith writes:
Ever thought about radically changing the look of your blog without much design work? Are you a designer who likes to work in semantic HTML and do amazing things with CSS? Maybe you’re moving from WordPress to Movable Type and want to keep your current design. Sandbox for Movable Type may just be what you’re looking for.
To install the plugin in Movable Type 4.2, it requires PHP set up on the server (pretty common) in order to generate dynamic CSS classes. The plugin is available to download now.
Scribd launches a redesign
Scribd, a popular document sharing service, has launched a redesign. TechCrunch takes a look:
One of the major changes in the design is a new emphasis on search. Scribd has seen impressive growth since its launch in Spring 2007, and now claims more than 20 million unique visitors monthly. But more than half of that traffic comes from search engines – something that the site would like to change. The new design is intended to make the search function more prominent, encouraging users to turn to Scribd instead of Google or Yahoo when they’d like to find a document. And CEO Trip Adler says that it’s working: while A/B bucket testing the new design, Scribd has seen the number of searches double (the number of uploads increased by 70% as well).
Scribd is a great service for incorporating complex documents into blogs via their widget for posts and other functions.
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