We are getting closer!
See the latest version of the redesign here.
username: preview
password: nakedcap
When suggesting a change and/or making a criticism, please give your OS and browser (e.g. “Windows 7, FF 24.0”). We really cannot see what you see, and the pages render differently in different browsers, so without the OS and browser information, your comment is in no way actionable. Also, for those of you visited the redesign page before, please clear your browser’s cache so we can be 100% sure that you’re loading the fresh copy.
Please give us your reactions. We are getting closer to being done, so we are looking at refinements rather than big changes.
I know some wish we could leave things as is, but the current template is a kludge to replicate a Blogger template, and the kludge actually hurts us in a big way in where we show up in Google searches. That has implications in terms of that mysterious quality “influence” and eyeballs! Plus I hate the current ugly right column. So this fixup really was necessary.
One thing I am very concerned about is having the site be at least as readable as it is now. I had Kristin replicate everything EXACTLY regarding how the fonts display which means they should render the same way they do now (except the default sequencing, so some of you will get Calibri rather than Arial). I know some of you were finding the type smaller and thus harder to read. If for some bizarre reason you are still having trouble with rendering, we could implement a feature that would allow you to adjust font size of the text for Naked Capitalism only (as opposed to changing text size in your browser).
Other known issues:
1. We asked for the header bar to be less demanding visually. It still looks too prominent to me. If you agree, that means the fix is probably either to go to another color or use black lines, white field, and dark letter for the navigation items in the header bar.
2. I’m still not sure re the tagline (we need a tagline to satisfy Google gods). “Money laid bare” is too short. Taglines are supposed to be six to nine words. Taglines are supposed to be accurate but more specific and more braggadocio are a good things. “Money laid bare – commentary on finance, economics, politics, power” might work but that actually seems awkward. Suggestions appreciated!
3. The Tip Jar “please give” sentence needs to be one line only. It probably becomes “Please donate to support our work”. Any better ideas?
We also now need to come up with text for the header bar items! Aiee!
Thanks for your patience and suggestions!
59 comments
Comments are closed.
Windows 7 home premium. I did side by side comparisons with Firefox latest update and newly installed today chrome. Very slight differences with ads in Black title bar showing up in firefox: tradestation to the extreme end right, with white back ground. Also, Trade forex blurb in powder blue under links section dated 9/1/12 Lambert.
Right column is more aesthetically pleasing. I don’t know what you’re aiming for, but it looks a little more contemporary and not so 2006ish. Go with your instincts now, first mind is best mind.
Thanks! Basically I wanted the site to be decluttered. it’s busy in ways that’s aren’t helpful. But that actually entailed a lot of work with the plumbing, given a separate need to redo the template.
> Basically I wanted the site to be decluttered.
To that end, you might want to consider less ads. Particularly on mobile; I find the ads overwhleming.
Also, perhaps you could offer a membership to get rid of the ads? I am a daily visitor, and I would much rather pay than look at ads. Memberships could be a reward for writers too.
Just a thought, and keep up the great work.
No ads, no site. I don’t have enough readers willing to pay enough. There’s a lot of competing content in this space and everyone (save Ed Harrison) is free.
Windows 7, latest updates and service packs as of 11/16/2013
Firefox 25.0.1
Old Dell laptop with 13 inch screen.
1. navigation bar is way too prominent. I can see no design reason for the nav bar to be this prominent.
2. Font for iconic words ‘Naked Capitalism’ is pretty drab.
3. Light gray text does not work for me.
Again, why is text light gray? I see no design reason for this.
4. Overall, the design leaves about 1/3 of my laptop screen blank. Whitespace, Naked Capitalism, whitespace. I love uncluttered design (like the original web page) but this feels very odd.
5. Not sure what the tag line should be, but
brutally honest…’ does not work for me. No suggestions. Finding tag lines is crazy making and I have enough trouble finding them for my own work.
6. I like seeing the book ad right under the tip jar. Book ad appears to go away in the new design.
7. A random thought… you might be facing a ‘Drudge Report’ problem. Drudge did very well with his web page, and it still works. So he has never upgraded the original clunky design. I would suggest at least considering the idea of sticking with what you have now. It works, at least for me.
8. The new design feels much closer to working, and is almost there.
Best regards, and keep up the excellent work.
Thanks for the detailed comments. Where is the whitespace occurring?
Re the logo, that IS the logo, but if you were on a PC, you probably weren’t seeing it before (as in Mac owners get American Typewriter, which is the font, but most PC users don’t have it). It’s a “letter from the gulag” image, it’s not supposed to be snazzy.
On your “leave it the same,” you are missing the point.
We actually have to redo the design. It is not the visual aspect but what the person who replicated the Blogger template did to make it work. What he did on that level was a kludge, and is apparently VERY offensive to Google (as in Google cares a lot about weird microtagging and non-standard microtagginw, which we have in abundance, loses you major points).
Unlike Drudge, our current template is actually ACTIVELY hurting us. And our ad people separately say the look is also hurting us in terms of ad placements as in advertisers see the site as looking seriously downscale. Unlike Drudge, we are not unique in our vertical and are compared with other sites in the finance and econ space, and we look shabby. Regulars may be used to it, but newcomers don’t get a good first impression. So on two fronts, there are strong imperatives for a redesign.
…on OSX 10.9 – yes the black bar at the top is a tad too black for me – actually (ahem, apologies here) i prefer setting my browser (icab) to use its own selection of colours instead of your nice new design – it gives me a light grey page bg (my choice for easier on the eyes), narrow white lines in place of the black bar and my own colour settings for type highlighting (bliss) ….
….otherwise it is clean and sweet for me….
….on IOS 7 – well, it’s lovely that it is now possible to change the size of the page (not possible before) – the only noticeable prob seems to be that the Occupy slash is on top of the Capital Markets Data advert at the page top….they may not like this….plus your ‘naked capitalism’ title on the left looks overwhelmed by that ad….
….thanks for all the work – i like simple and clean
Mac 10.8.5 and Opera 12.5 (not current) because they are being stupid with Bookmarks
Looks good….engage!!
Social structure laid bare – commentary on finance, power, politics and humanity.
IMO, If you shorten the Tip Jar ditty to Please Donate or Subscribe to Support Us!….it fits on one line without having to muck with the font/size too much.
How do readers catch up after unplugging for 5 day road trip? I can’t keep up with the spinning world as it is….i will have to have a blank spot in my NC memory bank.
….it’s nice to switch off, drop out and tune in to nature, no? …. but for those of us who can’t abide getting lost, there’s always RSS to keep you up with those thousands of messages that you must read….for the memories of what might have been….
Looks great but will have to agree with others the navigation bar just doesn’t fit in with that stark contrast.
I understand the wit intended by “money laid bare” in the tag line, but think the title Naked Capitalism already says as much and is very catchy and suggestive on its own. Maybe change the rest to “Indepth commentary and debate on finance, economics, politics and power” because the ongoing depth of coverage of topics here is one of the blog’s strongest points and the dialogue amongsts the regular posters is an attractive cut above the average.
can’t spell! “In-depth” (but it’s still one word)
Must the tagline describe? Or can it advocate? How about Money laid bare – you need to read?
How ’bout
King Kapitalsm Sans Clothing – The commie pinko welfare queen exposed for what it is.
Or too strong?
probly not too strong but it might be too allusive.
how about
“Showing you what’s up your butt.” Oops. Not PC.
or
“Here’s how you’re getting screwed.” That’s more democratic, no pun intended.
or
“It doesn’t look pretty with its clothes off.” I kind of like that. So true. All it has to to is lose some weight and it’ll look much better.
or, on the same theme,
“Shining a light into all the holes and cracks.” ROTFLMAO
And not a hair too soon!
Instead of “in-depth” use a word along the lines of “honest” or “accurate”. frank, real, straight, true, truthful, ‘not bought and paid for’, factual. (My thesaurus is buried somewhere around here.) Something concrete from our Saxon vocabularies.
Just so you know, you already give me everything I want. But if it makes you happy and strong to dress up, and if it helps others to see the beauty of your mind(s), then this is something you must do.
But for me? Helvetica on bare white, I’d still read every word.
Mac v.10.6.8, Safari v. 5.1.6. I read your column almost every day. The content is wonderful and I also try to follow you on TV; I saw your Bill Moyers appearance.
My comments come from over 20 years in Direct Mail Marketing, where one of the criteria for success is ability to enhance readership–better readership means more orders. I don’t like to say this because it sounds like bragging but I was successful. (You will know some of the clients I worked with and if you e-mail me privately I’ll disclose some to you.)
Yves, I would not change your website too much. From an objective viewpoint it’s better than you think, Typeface choice (I get the serif version) is good for readership but the grey could be a little darker. You really should, however, change the yellow/orange type color as it’s hard to read on white. I’d suggest a reddish/brown or rust. Red alone would scream too much but you should know in Direct Mail it draws the highest readership. (Blue is cold, Green is weird, if you consider other colors be very careful.) The Google gods are right, you do need a tagline. This will not only add energy and clarity to Naked Capitalism; it will also help in search. You could consider revising what you have written to “Finance, economics, politics laid bare” (drop the “and” for the same reason they dropped the “the” in Facebook.) For the Headline “Recent Items” drop the “Recent”.
I could offer more input but I don’t understand what you mean by “Kludge to replicate”. And, as you say, the Donate line should be fixed. (I’d have to think about that a little.)
Anyway I wish you luck in your revise. psz
Windows XP, SP3–site renders the same in Opera (latest version), Firefox (latest version) and IE8. Black bar isn’t as obtrusive as before and no longer blocks out other site elements. Real problem for me is the font: it comes out small, thick and difficult to read. Looks identical in all three browsers. At least in Opera I can boost the type size using a slider bar at the bottom of the page, if I have to, but the thickness of the font still makes the page more difficult to read. It renders as a Bold type style, regardless of browser. The light gray is also difficult to read, but more as a function of scanning the page–just as long as it isn’t the primary font color used for the main article! Otherwise, looks very stylish. I would use a header of “Help Support Our Work” and then separate buttons or boxes for “Donate” and “Suscribe”, depending on what people can afford. Or else just a “Donate” button that leads to a separate link giving people the option of either a one-time donation or a subscription. For tagline, perhaps “An unvarnished view of economics and finance”.
Windows XP SP3, Firefox 23.0.2
There’s not much grayslady said I don’t agree with here. that being said, especially on the light grey text, all I can add is if you’re trying to get us to ignore the text in light grey, it’s perfect as is.
A tiny font boost would make a world of difference as well.
Thanks. We’re a tough crowd :)
I like it. Again, not so much the black menu bar as you mention.
I don’t have a replacement tip jar sentence, though I would exclude an exlamation point.
I will miss the shag carpet the most.
win 8, ff 25.0.1
One thing that came to mind, can you add an alterative colour for headlines in the main page listing so that we can see which pages we have already seen/read. Or if there is one, it’s not visible to me now.
Win7, FF 25.0.
Windows Phone 8.0, IE
Latest Comments, Money News, Topics, Blogroll all appear vertically above the normal posts rather than on the side so you have to scroll through them all, on a phone, before you get to the tasty content.
IOS 7 on iPad still looks cluttered . “Tip Jar” swapping animal pictures for current graphic makes it too easy to ignore when clicking on email link to read article at web site. Now “donate” and “Subscribe” buttons stand out.. Graphics in general seem intrusive and add to cluttered look but given the comments above not sure how many readers are using tablets so it may not be important. Some form of notification regarding follow up on comments would be helpful but I assume costly. For example “New Economic Perspectives ” has a button that provides a follow up. I once clicked on “Subscribe to Post Comments ” and it brought me to a podcast subscription page I am probably the only subscriber using Verizon MIFI and I don’t do podcasts so as in above change may not be desirous .
Report from way out in left field: I run linuxmint Debian (squeeze = testing version), with a Firefox browser. Generally, it’s pinned to an old version (16) because I got tired of them jerking my user interface around. It looks fine on that setup. Also fine with latest Firefox 24.
I sent a long response rather well considered (I do have experience in enhancing readershipearlier this morning and it didn’t show up in your replies. I tried to resend but the site said it had already been sent.
Can you find it? How could it get lost?
I regret my not being able to get my input in as I read your column almost daily (even watched you on TV (Bill Moyers)
psz
Aiee, I looked in Spam and don’t see it there. I’m sorry, it appears to have gotten eaten. This happens occasionally and I’m sorry it happened on a comment you labored over. We’ve asked our tech people and they are stumped.
It did appear, see higher in the thread. Due to the way we cache the site now, once in a while it can take as much as 2 minutes for a comment to appear, so please be patient!
apple maverick safari
orange fonts hard to read; was also hard in windows nt, 7, and umpteen apple iOS
if you are wedded to orange, how about bolding it?
please????????
I really hate it when websites I read often undergo “redesign” when I thought the current design was just fine.
Sooo, I have no complaints about this redesign, as it is so much like the old one, and yet sleeker.
I use Firefox 25.0.1, on a Dell PC, flat screen monitor with 1680 x 1050 res.
In addition I use the addon NoSqint Site Settings to customize text so my nearly-70-years-old eyes can see it better, so have put your site at 115%Full Zoom/100% Text Zoom, and it’s perfect.
I like all the fonts you use, very clear and elegant.
The only so-minor-it’s-hardly-worth-mentioning quibble I have is I always liked the antidote directly above the body text, but I’ll adjust.
Congrats on another coup !
Oh, and the orange text marks it as your site, to me it’s like a visual brand, I’ve changed it before in the NoSquint Settings, and it definitely takes something away from the site.
Most browsers allow you to modify the text you see. If you use Firefox (which you can on the Mac, you can use NoSquint as an addon and modify any and all site settings to your customized taste.
Layout looks great on Lubuntu 13.10 with Firefox 25. I’m viewing it on a laptop with a 15.4″ screen having a 1280*800 resolution.
I like a tagline that emphasizes looking past the surface glitz of capitalism to its actual workings. “Peek behind the robe to see the dirt” or something like that. “Strip the glitz to make the dirt visible”, “Even gaudy clothing can’t hide the dirt underneath”, “A gilded curtain can’t hide the machinery from us.”
Layout looks great on Lubuntu 13.10 with Firefox 25. I’m viewing it on a laptop with a 15.4” screen having a 1280*800 resolution.
I like a tagline that emphasizes looking past the surface glitz of capitalism to its actual workings. “Peek behind the robe to see the dirt” or something like that. “Strip the glitz to make the dirt visible”, “Even gaudy clothing can’t hide the dirt underneath”, “A gilded curtain can’t hide the machinery from us.”
Hi! I’m struck by the prominence of the ads. First reaction: seems designed around the ads and images, not the content. Andrew Sullivan has had really good success in adding the so called “Pay Wall” — subscribe and the ads go away — have you considered that? (bitly link to report on Sullivan –> http://bit.ly/1gW1HbI) his price point is $1.99/mo or $19.99/yr and he’s pushing $900 thousand revenue in first year out. (see report –> http://bit.ly/1bazp9t)
Windows XP, Firefox 25.0.1, 1680×1050 screen res, 22in screen
Bob
Financial blogs have not had much success with paywalls. Calculated Risk, which has a bigger readership, tried a paid newsletter and dropped that. Ed Harrison has gone to an entirely paid version, but he has hard core investment related content. There is too much perceived to be similar content out there for free, between the economics blogs and financial blogs (Business Insider, for instance).
I don’t have Sullivan’s size of readership. And this blog has policy reach. I’m read on the Hill and among regulators. Congressional staffers have had their budgets for publications cut so they can’t afford to buy trade journals for industries relevant to their bosses’ committee assignments. I’d lose them if I went to a paid model. I’m not about to throw away a model that works for one that probably won’t.
Very nice, I think its come along way over the last couple of months. Clean, modern look- I think you have a winner. Glad you kept some of the orange, it would have been a shame to get rid of it altogether.
Mac OS 10.9 w/Safari 7 and Firefox latest: like many, I find the menu bar too strong, and rather out of harmony with the rest. Otherwise, a subtly cleaner, more elegant presentation–nicely done.
IPad with iOS 7 and Safari: much, much better for me–I find the current version very difficult and annoying to use. This reproduces the regular site much better, so I’m looking forward to that.
IPhone 5 w iOS 7 and Safari or iCab: I only get the right hand column–can’t see the articles. Occupy banner covers site title–I gather this preview isn’t set up for iPhone yet….
As an older guy, my chief concern is readability. The new layout looks good and works for me on OS X 10.9 in any of the following browsers:
Safari 7.0
Firefox 25.0.1
Chrome 31.0.1650.57
Epic 27.0.2443.0
OmniWeb 5.11.2
In Safari on iOS 7 (iPad Air), the only obvious glitch, as noted by others, is the Occupy banner being out of position (in middle of banner ad rather than along right border).
As for taglines, fonts, colors, and such, there’s no pleasing everyone. Don’t sweat the small stuff.
Header suggestions
Unorthodox , Hetororthodox, out of the mainstream, unconventional any of these along with Comments on Finance. and theEconomy plus links to the oddball
The links to social media on the current version home page serve as a boundary between posts that makes it easy for a slightly visually impaired person like me to parse the page. The dotted line between posts in the new version doesn’t work as well to help me get my bearings, but it’s not a big deal.
I don’t think it’s relevant, but I’m using Firefox 25 on Linux.
(Windows 8, FF 25.0.1)
Menu bar too heavy/dark for me
Also I like how the old menu bar was staggered slightly to the right, that’s a nice asymmetric compositional element
There is an issue with copying links that might be revised. There are many links given for Financial Times and other content, which are subscription only. The work-around is to copy the link, and then paste it into the Google search feature embedded in my browser (I have a Mac running Safari). Then I CAN access Financial TImes content. Yay! But instead of copying just the link, a long string of NC text piggybacks its way onto the Google search field. Here it is:
Man appreciates women’s arses on a feminist level Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/links-71713-2.html#HVJ8rRLWiULQJWOV.99
I have to back-space almost 100 characters to eliminate the ‘read more…’ blurb.
I’d greatly prefer to be able to copy just the text of the link, without any spam.
Winxp sp1 FF 3.6.x
Comments from a cranky old MFA:
Looks good with these caveats:
–Body text is too lightweight, or too light in color (fatiguing to read compared with your regular font).
–I like that you still use your black & orange.
Testing the copyspam issue: –strips links but no addenda for me.
Site looks familiar but frankly, more generic than you deserve. It feels like a WP theme out of the box.
–Perhaps my old browser renders your subheads in an overly bland fashion, but the font looks unserious.
While sans serif fonts are most of what is web-safe, they are less readable for comprehension than serif fonts. (And yes that is backed up with testing, I can root up the cite if needed.) Your new bodytext font is less readable than the current page. On a shopping or entertainment site, that would not matter much, but comprehension is major here.
The dotted line divider between posts is a bit clunky (but not as clunky as the nav bar, which is I think too high; it does feel like a unibrow or walking into a lowhanging branch.
Please think about not centering the pics floating in space; can you flow text around them?
The readability is for me difficult as there is not so much difference in visual importance between headings and body; please consider using indents; they are IMO as important as paragraphing for readability. If there’s no place to get a toehold, I scroll on past and do not read.
(I told you I was cranky).
Looks just fine!
Windows 7 NSA version
The new design is easy to read. I understand that this change is to attract advertising. Does any reader of Naked Capitalism actually pay attention to any of the advertising?
Shhh! Don’t tell the advertisers!!!
Windows 7 – Chrome v. 31.0.1650.57
The layout is makes it much easier to shift focus around on the webpage. Great use of the white space! Would like to see the text size of the recent posts section appear larger. When comparing the old site and the beta site side-by-side in chrome the text is noticeably different. I prefer the larger text size for some reason. Looks great!
Latest Chrome on Win 7 here. The header bar does look pretty stark to me, although it doesn’t bother me particularly.
For the tag line, how about “Exposing the truth about money, politics and power.” I like the mentions of finance, politics and power in your alternative version but I think this is a bit catchier, fits the word limit better and still ties back to both the words in the blog title. I also like that word ‘truth’ in there, given how much time you spend on teasing out sources of bias and corruption in the mainstream media.
“exposing” is good with -Naked-, “truth” is one of those things that none of us is supposed to be certain about nowadays.
lookin’ good, from this here IExplorer 10, Windows 7 computer. I say roll it, naugahyde!
What was broken?
See this comment:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/please-check-out-the-latest-version-of-our-redesign.html#comment-1619911
In W7x64, Firefox 25, fine.
In Chrome, similar save for the blue band that follows logo that is about twice height as black nav bar with five repeating cartoon cloud like shapes reversing out in white, for whatever reason.
All in all it’s getting there, keep hammering on it and good luck.
Hi Yves,
I like the New redesign very! much. Simple, intuitive, has a very pleasing! look. I viewed it in Chrome Version 30.0.1599.101 m.
Great! job, Thanks,
Looks much better. Uncluttered, easy on the eyes and a pleasant layout. I saw it on Chrome latest version and Firefox. I always have a gray-tone on my browser backgrounds because white is much too bright. The redesign
still looks good.
System: Galaxy Tab 7.0, GT P1000
Android: Gingerbread
Browsers: Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, Default Browser
Old site would display a two column layout, but the new design is one column display only (the old site “right hand” column is stacked on top of the old site left hand column) for on all 3 browsers. To see the entire site, and the current postings, etc., I have to page down, I can not slide left or right.
I can live with this display type, but would prefer not too. I don’t read NC almost every day – I read it EVERY day. Every day, vacations, Sundays, on the beach, …
By the way, am I the only one with a handphone / smart phone that NC is displaying this way on?
Good luck with the roll out, I’ll be reading regardless.
it still does not change the colors of the links to blue after I click on them (i.e., after I return to the original page) to indicate that I already visited that link.
Win 7, Firefox latest version (25.0.1)
osx 10.9 firefox 25
the header takes up too much real estate – i know i’m on ‘naked capitalism’. the tip jar should be a tip jar and not cute animals.
otherwise i like the layout and colour scheme. it’s nice and clean.
iphone running ios7
a total failure. unreadable. upi need to design a responsive website. having a seperate mobile site is a poor alternative – which appears to be the way the current site works.
hope you get the mobile side sorted – there’s a lot of promise in the layout.
Looked good in Comodo Dragon 30.0 running under Windows 8.1!
Congratulations!
I like seeing antidote d’jour on the side and cleaner banner ad location.
Thanks and keep up the good work !