As I’m sure you’ve noticed we’ve gone through some pretty dramatic changes around here. The most obvious change is the new theme, which is much different than what we had before; maybe even jarringly so. However, the new look allows us to focus on what’s important: getting some crowdfunding related gaming content our readers. My hope is that with this new theme we’ll be able to reduce the amount of navigation clutter around the site. Stay patient though, there’s bound to be lots of little bugs and annoyances that pop up.
In addition to the theme change, over the next few weeks you’ll also notice a few ads, some affiliate style posts, and a restructuring of our Patreon. While I don’t mind that between staff salaries and hosting fees Cliqist has never turned a profit, that lack of income has an impact on the coverage we’re able to provide. More videos, longer features, additional staff, a podcast, and plenty of pie-in-the-sky ideas that I write about in my dream journal cost money. Rest assured though, we’re not going to go crazy, and will be working to make sure that the things we beg you to click on and/or buy are relevant to your interests.
I’ll be keeping this post pinned to the front page for a bit to update it with changes, fixes, and enhancements we make to the site to not only inform you, but to get your feedback on things. Please feel free to comment below with thoughts, suggestions, and feedback.
Thanks!
Well, unlike the readers, I already knew this theme change was coming and have already shared my comments on it…
But here are my thoughts after viewing the theme in production: I think we will want to set the pages such as Support Us, About Us, etc as full width (aka without the sidebar content).
Also, maybe it was always this way but… the Calendar page seems to take entirely too long to load. Or rather, it appears to load up but continues loading something for a long while. It could just be that Kickstarter is having some weirdness right now, but I’ll have to revisit the page again later to see if the behavior changes.
As for ads, I think it’s important to note to readers that these ads aren’t going to be horrific blinky abominations which appear on every square inch of the page. My hope is that we go with clearly labeled affiliate links more than any other form of advertising, but of course that is also poised to generate a lower return than something graphical. Just my thoughts!
Definitely agree with the full width on those pages. I’m restructuring those since they are different in this theme. For example, notice how the About Us page doesn’t have staff info anymore.
Yeah, the calendar page is a beast. It loads a ton of information, including the full feature image for each entry as well as the Kickstarter info. I looked at a ton of calendar plugins when we launched it, but it’s been a while and would be worth looking again; especially since I have a better idea of what we need.
Definitely agree with you on the ads! No McIGN here! I’d love to be able to do it with just the Patreon and Affiliate links. Part of the Patreon re-do will be a goal where we remove ads; which would be nice. It’s also worth noting that I’ll always put a preference on direct sales ads, meaning ads from developers rather than ad networks.
Good stuff, and interesting to know that the poor calendar widget is such a resource hog. I only ever looked at it in the sidebar personally.
I’m also glad to reaffirm we’re on the same side as far as ads are concerned. Obviously no site owner WISHES to have ads, but it becomes an increasing necessity in this current age of websites and users with AdBlocker :p.
One more thing to note about the site design. As of right now the Cliqist logo looks quite lonely at the top of the page due to all the surrounding white space. Is it possible to post a larger version of the logo?
Agree 100% on the logo. Unfortunately this theme doesn’t auto-resize it to fix a particular size range, it just displays it as is. Will upload a new one! Not loving all the white space below it.
PS: If you need any assistance with small tweaks that need to be implemented in the theme’s code then I may be able to help.
Not loving that the links are light grey, makes them tough to see. Need to take a look at that.
I agree. Might be better to set them as a blue ala typical links (but maybe not that grating blue but something softer).
Yeah, I don’t like the light grey look too. We have a similar problem over at Kickstart Ventures. When I do links there I typically just bold them to make them stand out.
Can’t say I’m digging many of the changes.
The homepage looks chaotic; the “you may also like” section is hard to browse because the text and its background usually covers 80% of the background image; link color makes links difficult to ascertain, etc.
Looks like one of those early 2010s local news sites that switched to WordPress, bought a janky theme off the market place, and launched with a few minor tweaks.
Don’t take it personally. I like Cliqist’s content, just not it’s new look.
Thanks for the feedback Arron! Totally agree with you on the You May Also Like section, that’s very rough looking. I’ll add that to the list of items to look into.
I can see where you’re coming from on the overall feel as well. The silver lining is that it is pretty stock at the moment, and we’ll be making changes to design and the way we present stories (approaches to cover images, shorter titles, and so on) to better align with the minimalist design.
Thanks again for taking the time to comment!
I knew that there was going to be a change to the theme and layout but I guess I wasn’t prepared for such a big difference in the way the site would look. Honestly, I’m not particularly happy with it. There are good things and there are bad.
First off, there is way too much white space, especially at the top where the logo and top menu bar are located. One of the first things that I learned in my Web design classes in college was that you want to keep white space at a minimum. You don’t want to have an ultra busy page either. However, as Marcus mentioned the logo needs to be larger or have something accompany it to decrease said “dead space”.
And speaking of clutter, while the three column list isn’t bad it’s not the best layout either. I think Arron Washington said it best. It looks too…generic. Newsy? Something that I thought we were trying to shy away from. It’s hard to put into exact words what I’m trying to convey right now so maybe this is best to be part of a one-on-one conversation or something.
Another thing, even though I complained about having both a “Popular Discussion” and “Top Story” section seeing it conspicuously absent from the main page is a bit jarring too. Sometimes I’d actually like to see what people are reading and commenting on without having to open up an article.
Finally, regarding the articles themselves, I’m not a fan of the dropcap. You can barely see it with the light grey. And, as mentioned in another comment the light grey links are hard to see too. I also kinda miss the parallax look we were using in articles. The main image just sits there below the title. I also much preferred the previous quote look.
Overall, I’m not really digging the new look. I’m most certainly not resistant to change, but this is too drastic of a change for me, to be honest.
You’re fired!
Ok, but seriously, some great concerns you shared there! I’m especially with you on the excessive white space. Some is good, but too much or too little is bad!
Got the popular posts stuff only being in articles, I’m actually taking a bit of a calculated risk there. Nearly all our traffic comes to the site via articles, and not the front page, so the design is aimed that direction.
One issue with the front page is that it’s a strange mix of organized and chaotic. Lots of boxes is very set rows. That’s because we’ve used the same size ratios for all of our cover images. Now we’re free to use tall and wise logos as well, which will help mix it up on the front page. The new post types will help with that as well since now we can do stuff like embed a youtube video directly to the front page without needing to have it attached to and article, that sorta thing.
For what it’s worth, I miss the parallax as well, that looked really cool sometimes.
Yeah, well I’m gonna build my own crowdfunding site. With hookers and blackjack. In fact, forget the crowdfunding site.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGi6Q1pNbS0
Can I come work for you? It’s too bright and not hookery enough here now.
Not a big fan of it either..
Hoping to convert you over time!
Just like to throw in my two cents. I know I already emailed you once already about this, but now that I’ve had more time with the new site, I’ve got some other input.
Like Serena, I’m not a huge fan of all the white space, but in the articles. I think the problem is the Popular Discussions and Popular Articles stays near the top of the article, leaving the rest of that column empty.
My biggest problem is how quotes are handled though. They’re far too big, taking up the bulk of space in articles that have them. I also don’t like how much of a gap there is between paragraphs. It just feels like whole chunks of text are floating together rather than forming a coherent article, if that makes sense.
The gaps between paragraphs are actually something I didn’t notice until you pointed it out. With that said, I agree that it looks weird.
I’m curious if pressing ctrl-enter instead of just enter will make them disappear. At least in Word that will set a different sort of line break which is smaller. Even if that does work, though, it’s rather silly if we have to enforce that on every writer putting their content into the WP backend. There’s almost certainly a way to modify it in code, too, so will see about investigating that.
Indeed. I can see that becoming a problem over time.
You hit exactly what I was getting at about the new look of the quotes in the article. One thing that stood out for me was just how big said quotes are. I checked out my Jack Houston piece and the quote I used in the old layout looked good but now it looks like it takes up half the length of the article.
Yeah, I was surprised when I saw some quotes from one of my articles. I thought I formatted it wrong at first until I realized that’s just how they look now.
Woah, those are some pretty big changes indeed! I can’t say that I don’t like the overall design though, as I’m kind of a sucker for minimalist and sleek layouts to begin with.
I definitely agree with the concerns raised by others, all are very valid points. If I had to add one thing, it would really be to adjust font sizes on the front page for each article. As it stands now, images are not aligned and seem a bit jarring to look at – if longer titles get shrunk and shorter ones scaled up, then I think an even line of images on each row of articles would look way way better! Also, the logo would really look better if it were a bit bigger 🙂
Something like this perhaps:
Sorry, not a fan. The new layout looks like one of those sites you end up on when you accidentally fall for a click bait link that takes you to a page full of mixed articles that probably all go someplace else. It was so pretty before.
Sorry I’m 4 days late, but I had places to be. Well, maybe I should say that it took me 4 days to find this particular article. As most of the other posters have said, I think the new main page looks chaotic. I’m viewing this page on a computer, with a full-HD monitor (landscape orientation), not on a tablet (portrait). I don’t need huge fonts and big buttons. Instead, I like structure and as much information at a glance as possible. The main page offers neither right now.
The way I used to read Cliqist was: Go to the main page, skim the headlines and number of comments, middle-click (Opera) on topics that interest me or topics that have a number of comments. When I scrolled far enough to reach an article that I’d seen before, I’d start reading the articles I’d opened in the background. I wasn’t a fan of the big header images of the last redesign (and particularly not the parallax effect), but they didn’t bother me either.
Now, though, my eye wanders across the main page, frantically comparing dates and looking for comments counts – to no avail. My suggestions would be to return to a vertically scrolling layout (maybe loosening it up by having the header image on the side instead of above the excerpt), use a smaller font for headlines, show more text from the article’s beginning (or a teaser summary?) as well as the post count.
For the time being, I’ll just leaven an article open and only use the “popular” and “popular discussions” suggestions.
P.S.: Just because most external referrers link to the article instead of the main page doesn’t seem to be a good reason to shift your focus away from it. The main page is still the face of a website, after all…
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