Acute Fractalitis

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After a week of polishing (doesn’t matter what I type, it all sounds dirty) the nerdery behind the scenes of the new dooce.com, I’m able to catch a breath. I should add that it’s gone much better than I thought it would and the results so far have been promising.

As Heather said in her launch post, this redesign was a long time coming. I think my first WordPress migration from Drupal was in late 2010, early 2011, just as a test. A few things have happened since then and we went the rounds on the homepage. I’d say we spent more time on that page design and philosophy than I have done with any other site, including working with the design firm while I was at Red Herring in 1999. Which is as it should be. I hear you about the excerpted feed. It’s about content theft. Straight up. It doesn’t stop the theft, we understand that. But it makes more hoops to jump through for the thieves. As always, we are grateful for your support and feedback.

On the community site, I said that I knew we had taken some things away from readers, but I hoped that we had replaced what we removed with something that readers love more. I restate that here in the hope that you understand that we took all of the considerations about the current environment of reader loyalty, web publishing and changes in devices used to access the site into account.

This is not the nuts/bolts/code/duct tape post about the new dooce.com. This is the post that lets you know that the other post is coming. It will be nerdy. You will know be by the trail of dead CSS.

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Affirmation for tomorrow: You can’t drive the car unless you get it moving.

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  • http://kristanhoffman.com/ Kristan

    Content theft? Interesting. And unfortunate. But I truly do appreciate your taking the time to consider and address people’s concerns. That attention to detail and connection to your audience is a big part of what has given Blurbodoocery its success and longevity.

  • http://blurbomat.com/ blurb

    Sorry to hear that you feel like you are being punished. While I hear you about the pain of having to click away from your feed reader, if you are using an iPad, have you checked out Reeder? Great interface, hooks into Google Reader, and getting from feed to content and back again is very seamless It’s one of the reasons I started using Reeder from the very first of the iPad specific apps: so many of my feeds had gone excerpt only and Reeder was the best way to view them on an iPad. By far.

    I’ve got some optimizing to do for the iPad version. So far, we are serving the regular site to tablets. I’ve gone back and forth about doing a specific tablet version. Are you connecting via WiFi or using a broadband provider (ATT, Verizon, other)? I did want to scale things down/up a bit for tablets, so the image loads wouldn’t be quite so heavy.

    Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback. It’s not about people mistaking a site. It’s about content theft. I appreciate your link to the boingboing piece. There are a few differences in the analogy, but I get where you are coming from. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. We are watching how people come to the site and determining the best course. I knew we’d have a lot of upset readers, while I can’t speak for others on the redesign team, I’ve been surprised by how few comments and email I’ve received about excerpted feeds. One other note, if you click and hold a link on the iPad

    One final note, and this is an afterthought, but it is a benefit: if you are connecting via a mobile broadband provider, the feed is much lighter in weight and faster loading than it used to be.

    • http://art.lismitchell.net Pixelfish

      Thanks for the measured and thoughtful response. I debated about my original reaction wondering if it was too harsh, but thought I would explain, because my time, more than anything else, has become important, and if my time is a factor in reading your site, I thought you’d like to know. Thanks for the tip about Reeder–I’ll definitely check it out.

      I’m primarily connecting using our home WiFi (here in San Fran) and we use Das HellBeast (I mean, Comcast). The transition to the iPad as my primary surfing-reading device (at least at home) is pretty recent, and I realise not everyone will be reading the site the same way.

      Anyways, thank you again for taking the feedback into account. I know it must be hard trying to reach so many different needs in your readers.

  • americanrecluse

    Even though I know my brain is going to start going ‘bzzzzzdt’ halfway through your upcoming nerd/geek/tech wizardry post, I’m totally looking forward to it. Congratulations on that CSS corpse heap.

  • http://twitter.com/sehrgutts Sara

    You know the mobile site is busted, right? Viewing dooce posts on my phone is a pain.

    • http://blurbomat.com/ blurb

      How about now? I’ve made some tweaks to the CSS… Shoot me an email and I’ll do my best to sort this out.

  • hilaryfranklin

    I’ve been using Bloglines as my RSS, and I miss being able to read all the content. Since I’m a multitasker at work (and thus shouldn’t really be reading you or Heather during the day, Bloglines makes it easy — I don’t like Google Reader), it’s less efficient for me to have to click on another link in order to access the full post. However, the way you have it set up on the main site seems similar to an RSS snippet, so I see the parallel there.

    One thing I would suggest — is it possible to have the cropped photos/posts open as a pop-up? I realize that’s not friendly for tablets, but I see that you’re working on a mobile version, anyway. The reason I’m asking is that it would be nice to be able to simply open the full post and then close it and voila, already back on the main page, without having to navigate back.

    Just a thought…

    • http://blurbomat.com/ blurb

      PC or Mac? Have you tried holding down the control (PC) or command (Mac) key and clicking a link? It is awesome and how I’ve read feeds prior to using Reeder on the Mac.

      • hilaryfranklin

        I don’t follow. You and Heather both have truncated RSS feeds, so I have to click the link in order to open the full post on the site (really, no big deal). But Ctrl + click doesn’t do anything different…. (yes, PC)

        • http://blurbomat.com/ blurb

          If you are using a browser that supports tabs, Control-clicking keeps your RSS reading window open and opens up a new tab with whatever you control-clicked. You still have to click, but the control click/new tab lets you keep scanning your feed and then hit the tabs you wanted to read after you’ve scanned your feeds.

          If you aren’t using a browser that supports tabs, go download Chrome from Google. If you already use Chrome, tabs are the best thing for those pages you want to read in a minute.

      • http://blurbomat.com/ blurb

        Control clicking opens a new tab. You keep your feed window and open the post in it’s own tab.

  • http://blurbomat.com/ blurb

    How about now? I’ve done some refactoring work. Let me know if you are still experiencing any weird image stretching or other display issue.