It’s been a busy week in the world of web design and content management. Three websites near and dear to my heart have either completed or are nearing enormous overhauls: Facebook, the William & Mary homepage, and yours truly, andydesoto.com. Here’s a brief report featuring what to expect.
My personal favorite social networking website, Facebook, recently began to roll out its redesigned profile as of yesterday. Sleek, simpler, and a total rearrangement, this well-done design is guaranteed to bug thousands of Facebook users for at least several months. Personally, though, I think it’s great for a number of reasons:
- Better user control over items in the Mini-Feed (the most groundbreaking part of the site)
- More space for media such as photos and videos
- Reduced application clutter (thank goodness!)
- An interesting tabbed interface that will surely become increasingly useful
William & Mary
A little closer to home but no less majestic, the William & Mary Web Redesign team is putting the finishing touches on its marvelously-designed web presence overhaul. Redesign Chair Susan T. Evans has really done an exemplar job at integrating the suggestions of students, faculty, and staff into industry-recommended standards and practices to produce a fantastic site.
Don’t believe me? Compare our current homepage to the redesigned one. Yeah, I drooled too.
A small pleasure on my part was seeing the beautiful new News page prominently feature an RSS link. Now I’ve got nothing to complain about anymore! (Don’t be too picky, though, we’re still under construction over there.)
Be sure to check that site again soon: you might see a familiar face pop up around there once or twice in the near future.
Here
It seems like just a few days ago I was modifying the look and feel of this site, and here I go again. Why, you might ask? Although I love the marvelous Options WordPress Theme that previously graced the site, I felt it was detracting from the overall readability of this blog and was potentially overwhelming for a casual reader. I am currently trying out the luxurious Thesis Theme provided by Chris Pearson, which really is a work of art– tell me what you think. Suggestions are always highly appreciated.
Something else that you might notice is that I disabled Disqus integration on this blog. Although Disqus is a great plugin and has a bright future ahead of it, it severely limited the portability of comments left here on andydesoto.com: it’s impossible to import WordPress comments into Disqus and virtually impossible to go into the other direction, too. As I value the comments you leave here more than my posts themselves, I’m not going to mess around with them any further.
What’s your opinion on any of these three facelifts?
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Facebook redesign … YES! Looks great. I think they did a great job.
WM redesign … WOW! Much easier to look at and figure out what you want to click. Nicely done!
Your redesign … Nice. Looks good, clean, easy to read.
Hey, TJ, glad you approve! Happy that everything’s moving in the right direction. I’m particularly amazed with the W&M team’s work.
As for this site, there’s a lot more work to be done, but I’m excited with the prospects. Gonna be solidly readable and eye-catching soon enough– just have to figure out what sort of functionality to build into the new plan.
Any recommendations?
“official” confirmation that the microblogging or lifestreaming interface and publishing by typology (text, photo, video…) are indeed valid for the public at large.
José: What a great way of putting it! You’re absolutely spot on and I’m looking forward to utilizing the concept of “Dayflow” in future writing. Thanks for the comment!