65 Comments
Dear readers,
After more than two years with the same front page, we have decided that Bwog is in need of another makeover. The new version will be launching today, and we’ve kept pretty much all of the features that we had before, merely reorganizing them for an even more streamlined look.
We have added two new features, and will be adding more in the next few weeks. First, the “City,” “Arts,” and “Hawk” tabs will be used for easier organization, and will also (like the hawk blog) get their own exclusive content. Second, we’ve added a Lost and Found box to put lost and found announcements in. We’ll be tweaking the site over the coming weeks, so please let us know what you think in the comments.
Thanks for reading,
James Downie
Bwog Editor
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65 Comments
@when are you going to fix this, bwog?
@Uber Designer says this layout needs serious work. PLEASE reconsider how you’re presenting the information. This layout looks looks like you got it off a WordPress theme site; I give it 2 out of a 5 stars.
And what the hell is with the cartoon laptop in the header? The USB cords make it look like something out of the repair shop horror scene in The Brave Little Toaster.
@UGLAY shudders.
@ehh this layout makes me uncomfortable
@Ahhhhh My last grade was finally posted and SSOL isn’t loading… WHY ISN’T SSOL LOADING BWOG!!!!!!!
@so... so you basically copied one of the default wordpress themes?
thumbs down
@... It’s pretty good…
But I think that you guys should center the main content… The two skinny columns on the right hand side of the screen could be put on either side of the main content
@iujijiji looks good!!
@older one was prettier
@noooooo i loved that old banner!!!!! this looks like livejournal!!! I want the old design back!!!
@jquery you should really put cursor:pointer on the h2 you’re using for the jquery drop-down effect in the schedule column. It’s fairly unclear that these things are even links/actions. Also, don’t put padding/margin on the dropdown descriptions; that incurs a jolty dropdown effect. Also, don’t put stupid borders around the comments. This redesign is sloppy.
@the events side bar does not work. you cannot click on any of the events for more info and thus, the sidebar is totally worthless.
@: | This is HORRIBLY off centre. Please, as people above have suggested, move the body/main content to the centre. Or move of the sidebars to the left. Something. I keep shifting my body to the left to try and compensate!
Otherwise, I like it!
@sorry, *one of the sidebars to the left
@sees through lies so this is like new coke, right?
*waits*
@:(:(:( can we have an option to switch to the old layout? i don’t understand how people think this looks more ‘professional.’ if anything, it looks very cartoonish and juvenile (especially the header and color scheme, wtf?) it does seem more refined in some ways (font, organization) but that sacrifices its identity and charm. also have to agree with comments about centering the content.
sorry to be a complainer, but i thought more specific feedback would be appreciated.
@opinions Far right column needs to be on left side of the screen, that will improve the design vastly.
I agree that the font selection looks disorganized. Choose one.
I don’t mind the colors.
I don’t mind the little laptop graphic.
I think the overall look is a lot more polished though.
The masthead font is bad. The weather is a good idea, but needs to be relocated on the top of the sidebar, maybe?
@BLERG WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM FACEBOOK??
(I HATE CHANGE.)
Bwog, seriously. This blows.
@hmmm there seems to be no continuity to the design.
@Thanks Ignore these people. This looks fantastic, BWOG.
@Thanks Ignore these people. This looks fantastic, BWOG.
@This is much better than the old design, much more professional. Although I must agree that the little laptop drawing in the logo kind of sucks.
@U-G-L-Y you ain’t got no alibi you ugly what what you UGLY
@notab this new design really sucks…
@Opinions I have a lot of opinions on this redesign.
@redesign 1. textured/shaded/patterned light blue background. Something about the light blue just makes it look too cheesy by itself.
2. logo should stretch across top, maybe thinner, and needs a better design. i would personally not make this my homepage if bwog continued to look like this
3. the tab, the “blue and white” should not be included as a tab–it is a link to another page, and its annoying to accidentally navigate away from bwog.
4. i think the tab bar should stretch all the way across underneath the logo banner. additionally, i think it would be nice to differentiate the tabs by icon/color. for the hawkmadinejad blog, how about a cute hawk icon, etc?? just a thought…
5. i like the weather indicator on the logo, but as it is, it is too small to be useful at a quick glance. it also really muddles the simplicity of the “Bwog” logo. perhaps a separate icon for weather to the right of this?
6. why not make a bwogroll tab, instead of putting it on the screen for clutter? if you intend people to use the tab functions as much as people will use bwogroll, this move makes sense to me.
7. i definitely think the events calendar thing is useful and has adequate placement, but it looks too plain. perhaps make icons/little pictures for each new event? it also really should not have the same color scheme as the boring stuff in the column to the right of it.
8. it really bothers me that the fonts are not consistent. mishmashed fonts make the site look really uncoordinated! pick one and go with it for everything. the mishmashed fonts bother me the most when you look across from left to right across the top “all, city, arts, …. events, search”
Case Example: i like nyulocal.com’s site. i like the “top 5” function to point to which articles are most popular. that way light bwog readers can become informed even more quickly as to what’s causing a stir on campus. I also like their polling function. the logo is very legible, and the tabs are well organized. it has a pretty good look/feel.
@consultant-y feedback yeah about (6.)
i want to add that it might be cool to have bwog editors do a “quickbwogroll” in the same vein as quickspec
@good idea... good idea, but i think that the comments are much more hard to read now than they were. too many non-serif-fonts?
@I like it... But the new header/logo sucks big time. The grey coloring and the clip-art computer look not good together (or apart). Oh and question, if the City and Hawk stuff have their own content, will I have to click on those things to see the content or will it all be on the main page as well?
@this is stupid, please put it back
I really dislike this
@not to complain But the laptop thing is really not attractive. Please bring back the old, classy Bwog logo.
@........fail sorry Bwog. I liked the old one. maybe new is good, but this one isn’t good….
@oh god also that clip art laptop thing is not appealing.
@non ugh. the font on the masthead. ughh.
@afraid of change im sorry bwog, but i hate your new look. i’m going to have to end things between us.
@calendar a complete event calendar would be great. approved commenters could add events so there would finally be a place to find out about more department & student group events. unfortunately nobody uses campus playbook and the fliering is out of control.
@Anonymous Double check your CSS–the sidebars render completely wrong in Firefox (see http://www.columbia.edu/~jda2129/bwog.png).
Here’s a hint: 50em + 19em + 19em != 82.35em.
@Anonymous The link replacer doesn’t work too well either. That should be
http://www.columbia.edu/~jda2129/bwog.png
Other than that I actually like the redesign.
@ZvS Hey, you punk kids! That link replacer’s been there since 2005. Unfortunately, parentheses and dots are valid URL characters, so Publicate treats them as such. To see an irritating example, try linking to a photo at the Library of Congress without them.
@listen up up, kids, elder statesman talking
@listen up up, kids, elder statesman talking
@challenge accepted http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/pga/00400/00401r.jpg
Also, is there a way to make it ignore those characters if they come at the very end? Or at least attempt the version with the last character deleted if the first one doesn’t work?
@ZvS Hell, probably. I don’t know, I don’t work here anymore. I just scour the Internet for complaints about my software all day.
Now I can’t find the LOC page I’m thinking of, but some of them link to these weird, chained-together groups of parenthesized strings like (foo)-(bar)-(baz). Hmm.
@hint: the font-size changes
@hey are you guys doing a best music of 2008 thing? i really like those.
@agreed The main content should be centered, but other than that, I think it looks great. I love the header image.
@monica yeah i also kinda wish the main content were centered. Other than that I think it looks incredible!
@yuck It looks gross. You should have some sort of vote to see if people want the old one back.
@argh! where is the bwog newsfeed so we can complain even more??
@imo Site doesn’t look bad. The polished look does take away some of bwog’s independent identity, and the far right column should go back to the left. But, it looks fine otherwise. Certainly a lot better than those eyesores of Spec blogs, anyway.
@web designer THIS SITE IS FUGLY.
@hmmm i like it! i thought i clicked the wrong link when it first came up.
it looks nice, and it’s been up for less than a day so obviously some things need to be worked out, so everyone should stop being such grumpelstiltskins and take some tylenol for their hangover and go back to bed.
@oldbwogger would be way better to center the content between the two columns, imo.
otherwise, it just looks a bit too…anodyne. cliical. it needs to feel way more lived in. it could be the lovechild of a new york times and a wordpress blog the way it looks now…which is to say, it feels like it’s lost a degree of its independent identity.
@On an iPhone The banner isn’t centered.
@gramps I hate change!
@stop whining Bwog, this looks great… a huge improvement to what came before.
@disgusting looks amateurish at best. Hate the colors, banner, and extremely unbalanced layout. Way to go bwog!
@yay yay for the temperature thing on the header!
@eww New format is gross. What the hell is that cartoon laptop? If you changed the header thingy, then maybe, maybe it’d be ok.
@whoa whoa
@nice! Looks great–the only concern is that you have a lot of dead space due to the second column, which doesn’t go down very far. Any way of merging the two side bars?
@varun looks nice, though keep aware of a few things:
1) search bar spills over outside blue background
2) when the page isn’t long enough (i.e. short post & comments are few), bwogroll spills FAR below bottom background
@now it pretty much looks like wordpress. Please clean up the bwogroll!
@Woo hoo! Looks fantastic! Well done, Bwog kids.
@I disagree Ugly! Ick!