Site redesign in progress

I LIKE it! It seems the colours are more vibrant as well, making the pictures stand out even more! And moving all the other sections to the bottom is brilliant, I think. Makes you read the chapter before getting to the "extra" stuff available to read/see. Can't wait to see the rest of the changes coming. Having each person's avatar outside their comment post looks great too. Plus the colour distinction between yours and ours. Is that what's intended? Or can everyone choose a colour for their comments? All in all .... F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S!

Gets a thumbs up from me

Hmmm... there must be something wrong with my browser. I'm still seeing the old format on the chapter page, in both Firefox and Chrome. I'll maybe check again later.

I have both Firefox and Chrome and I'm not having that problem, Van. Did you try refreshing the page?

I love the layout! I especially like seeing the preview pictures is awesome.

Refreshed a whole bunch of times... nothing

Maybe it's a problem with the cookies or the cache or something. I'll look into it when I'm not being torn to shreds by a fifth-done essay that's due in half an hour :S

Just wanted to say I really love the new, lighter color scheme. I liked the old one too, but the super dark (black?) background would make my eyes hurt if I read more than a couple of chapters at a time. And, of course, the front page is pretty too

I like the characters thing on the right. This way, I don't have to scroll down to look at the who's who and then spoil all the picture.

I'm not so convinced about the absence of the comments on the right anyway. One have to go back to the main page if one doesn't want to miss a comment. But I think I can get used to that.

It's great work that you did !

Thanks everyone!

François, you can see the very latest comment on every page: it's in the footer. So, I guess, instead of seeing that there is a new comment as soon as you arrive on a chapter page, you won't know it until you read the whole chapter and reach the bottom.

But as I said, if a lot of people miss having the latest comments in the right sidebar, towards the top of the page (i.e. before they start reading the chapter) I will think about putting them back. It depends on how you guys use the site. I get an email when someone makes a comment, so I don't rely on the sidebar or the front page to know when there is a new comment. But perhaps you guys relied on that. I can understand not wanting to switch back and forth between the front page and the chapter pages all the time while you are reading. (Assuming the latest comment in the footer isn't enough for you.)

Van, if you are taking about http://www.lothere.com/chapter/ (the list of the the 10 latest chapters, with just a preview of each) then that is not upgraded yet.

The only pages that have changed with this new release are the actual full-view pages of chapters (e.g. http://www.lothere.com/chapter/1730) and the Edit Comment page -- for comments on chapters only.

If that still doesn't look different for you, you can try making a comment on a chapter. That should force your browser to reload the chapter page.

Oh, and about the preview pictures in the next/previous navigation... I used to get kind of frustrated when people would discuss the preview banner in the comments for the latest chapter, because I knew people would come along later and be reading the comments and be all "WTF? Why is everybody spontaneously squealing 'Eirik!' when he isn't even in this chapter?"

Then I had this idea, and now everyone gets to see at least a mini-view of the preview that everyone is squealing about. WIN!

Great job! I love the layout and the color scheme! Great!

The individual chapter pages weren't working for me either, but I just left a comment and that worked.

Hmmm... I like it. I like that you've added some colors on the cool end of the spectrum to the scheme. The mini previews are a great idea too

My one... uh, issue (and, given the state of any given one of my sites, this is going to sound rather hypocritical coming from me) is that while the design is busy at both the top and bottom of the page, you've just got the solid gray background in the middle (which might not be an issue if the chapter took up a wider area of the page, but then that would require redesigning the top and bottom and they already look good as they are).

Of course, I may only be noticing this because I've already read the chapter I'm looking at fairly recently and therefore am not as focused on that. With a new chapter, it might not bother me.

Of course, I imagine it would be difficult to program any designs there, as I'm guessing that the page stretch is dependent on the chapter length and it would be pointless to program for pixels that might not even be there, so this probably wasn't helpful at all. Sorry about that

I've considered putting a very subtle, tiling background image on the gray background -- something like one of these but with lower contrast still. However, as you've guessed, it would be tricky to combine with the current background image (the non-tiling golden flowers at the top of the page). I may do it using layered, semi-transparent background images, which are supported in the newest browsers, but only if I can do it in such a way that it doesn't look like shit on older browsers. I do intend to look into it. In a perfect Web-page-world I would like to have some slight texture to the gray background.

Either way, having a non-busy middle section is definitely intentional. It's a technique in information architecture -- designing for immersive reading like that.

The top of the page is rather busy, with a few different things vying for the user's attention while she's still in the "So, what am I going to do on this page?" mode.

Once she starts reading, you don't want anything flashy or distracting outside of the content itself. The goal is to keep her immersed in the content up until to the end.

When she comes up "out of the water" at the end of the chapter, she starts meeting with forks in the road again -- Go to the next chapter or read the comments? After reading the comments, go to the next chapter or write her own comment? And if she gets as far as the footer, that's where all really busy "other stuff" links are, now that she is in a "So, what am I going to do next?" mode. That's where paths can crawl off in all sorts of directions.

But you're very right -- the fact that you were just looking at the page and weren't really immersed in reading the chapter means that you perceived the page and its decoration differently. It's like picking up a novel and flipping through it and finding it boring because there aren't any pretty pictures, versus picking it up and reading it and getting so sucked into the story that you don't mind that you've spent 3 hours staring at nothing but page after page of black text on off-white paper.

When I try to see "more X quotes" (http://lothere.com/bio/person/quotes/id/1) I get redirected to a page saying I don't have the permission to perform the requested action. There are similar errors when I click a character's eye file, for instance. Is that intentional, or is it a bug?

Oh, and I have a suggestion. In the main page, right next to the "About the story" and "Where do I start?" tabs, why not add an extra tab that contains small summaries and pictures of the key characters? That way, if people start reading a storyline they can see who's the king before they go "Sigefrith who?"

And I was also thinking perhaps having an easily-accessible map of Lothere might be helpful, too. Sometimes I have trouble remembering where everybody is.

Oh my goodness! Have you EVER been able to see "more X quotes"? It looks like I never enabled that for non-administrators yet. I will fix that when I get home this evening.

I am right with you for the "small summaries". I plan on doing a one-page "Lothere crash course" which would feature mini-bios and mini-descriptions of important plot points. The sort of thing that would allow people to start reading at the latest chapters without being totally lost.

But you make me think... perhaps I should have some sort separate "crash course" that would help people who want to read storylines, rather than jumping into the present-day. I mean, I don't want to spoil any storylines by giving too much info away about what happens, but as you say, it's probably worth giving out info such as who the King is and how the people came to Lothere.

I will think about the best way to organize this. Maybe:

• A "Founding families plus 2 paragraph description of how they came to Lothere" page as a cheat sheet for people starting at the beginning, and who haven't memorized the characters yet. (The people who can't keep Alred and Sigefrith apart in the beginning. )
• A "Major characters" page for storyline-readers who don't want the story given away but want to know who the King is and why all these Scots with big noses are running around the valley.
• And a "The story to date" page with a quick summary of important plot points like "Alred used to be married to Matilda, the love of his life, but she had an affair with Leofric and died giving birth to his baby... Then he married Hetty" kind of information, for people who want to dive right in and not feel too lost.

I also definitely need to get some maps up there. I constantly refer to maps myself, so I am sure you guys could use that sort of reference. I at least need to do Lothere, Galloway/Scotland, and the Isle of Man. I keep talking about different towns and houses and forts, and journeys between them, but it's all so vague.

The problem there is my drawing skills. I want pretty maps! But I will think of something.

I've been holding off on a lot of these ideas because I wanted to get the new layout released. Partly because the layout was a lot of work in itself, which I wanted to finish before staring a new big project, but also because the new layout will free me up to have different page formats besides "center section with a skinny left sidebar and slightly fatter right sidebar." I think I will be able to lay out this kind of information in a way that's easy to skim and understand, but first I needed to break out of the really strict page layout I had created previously.

Thanks for the ideas!!

I never tried til now.

I just searched my username and "door" (marutusu, door) to see if I could find that door you'd pointed out to me a while back and I came across a comment by a certain Door Sex. It's in grey, so I'm assuming you deleted it, but should I see it in the search function?

Back to the suggestions, something I thought you might find useful in the future is a scope option. Fandom sites such as this one use it. The user marks how far along she is on the story, and so the site doesn't show any spoilers for the books she hasn't read yet. Users could set it on their preferences, the same way they turn comments and characters on and off. I'm not sure whether that's not too complicated or elaborate, though...

No, you should not be seeing Door Sex in the comment search. I will look into that too. *makes note* It's not deleted (yet), it's just marked as spam -- that's why it's gray.

I have thought about something like the "Scope" idea but I had never heard it called that or seen it implemented before. You can see I am inexperienced in the ways of fandoms. Myself I was only thinking in terms of the bio pages. I don't know whether people stay out of the bio pages for fear of spoilers?

Programming such a thing wouldn't be too hard -- the biggest thing holding me back there was the thought that I should then have different pictures for characters depending on their "current" age. I would have to program some extra functionality to make that work, if I decided to do it. Or I could just hide bio pictures if you're not in the "present", I suppose...

I've also thought about making a way for people to mark their place in the story, if they're doing the first-time-through read, so that they could jump straight from the home page to wherever they left off. Something more like a bookmark for a real book, in addition to the Web-browser-like "bookmark this chapter" feature that we have already. In a book you're reading, you usually only mark one place at a time.

If I did something like this it would be easy to hide certain details from a reader depending on where they are in the story. I could just hide any information that hasn't happened as of the date of the most recent chapter they read. I do this already -- it's just that the "most recent chapter" is literally the most recently-written chapter. That's how I hide future death dates from you guys.

So, the "more X quotes" page should be accessible now. And there will be no more Door Sex or other spam comments for you guys.

Also, I just added the "Preview Banner" link back for the chapter page, but now it is in the right sidebar just above the publish date.

And I just barely started implementing some kind of trigger warning system, which you can see in top left if you visit "Egelric travels to twilight’s end".

This is my first stab and I may revise it totally. I am not at all sure how I am going to do this. "Categorizing" unpleasant material by type of unpleasantness is neither easy nor wise, I think. I want to add some colored icons or something of that nature to hint at the "subject matter" without giving any details away at all. But at the same time you can only divide and categorize so finely. And I fear the act of doing so can actually be insensitive in a way. Because if I don't consider your trigger to be worthy of a warning, does that devalue it?

For instance, if I have a category of "X against women" but not "X against men" does that not make it seem like violence against men is somehow less damaging or triggering? (I added an "against a man" category precisely for Egelric's case.)

And is it worthwhile to factor out "sexual" so that I can have "assault" and "assault of a sexual nature"?

This is hard, and not a little creepy.

But! Here is the useful part. If you click on the trigger warning icon, it shows you a one- or two-sentence "Note" giving a very general idea of the triggery subject matter, and if you don't want to read the chapter, you also have the option to view the whole spoiler. That is, a neutral description of what happens in the chapter so that you can be up to speed without having to read anything too emotionally evocative.

I do hope that just reading a neutral summary like "Leofwine gropes and kisses Ana and attempts to prevent her from leaving, but she escapes and Eadwyn takes her to Nothelm" is not triggering in itself.

Oh, and also, if you are logged in, you can use the link in the footer to edit your user preferences and turn off the warning icons entirely. If you're up for that kind of surprise, I am sure "Twilight's End" would have been more shocking and affecting if I hadn't warned you first that Bad Stuff was coming.

This is long enough to be a blog post in itself, but darnit I want to get some chapter-writing in today, so I will just put it as a comment.

And dance away like a bunny!

Already told in the forum the website looks awesome! Esp. Now that I see it on my computer.

While reading through the comments I kind of do miss the latest comments thingie and the new in verso. Because I also love comming to verso for random things like tours through houses, sex changes, extra info, news and the other nice randomness.

(The people who can't keep Alred and Sigefrith apart in the beginning. )

"But they had the same hair style..." :I

And pretty random thing, but there are quotes this and this on "Alred Sebright Quotes"(no, I didn't go there right away), and I'm not sure what they have in common with Alred?

Hmm...I'm finding it a wee too busy in terms of colors in the color scheme and graphics. Especially with the added header thumbnails in the navigation, it's a bit much. It's just a little jarring.

It's almost like there's two color schemes vying for my attention: the gold and neutrals, and the black and teal. Cyan field background, nearly orange search button...like I said, it's a bit much.

I might be slightly biased, this is probably at least the fourth site design of yours that I've seen, and I liked the previous one the best out of all of them, stylistically. So I'm sure part of me is just like, "But what was wrong with the pretty design I liked? I don't like change."

It might just be me, but it also seems like I'm getting less text on screen now. I'm not sure if the story frame is narrower, or the font size is larger, or there's an increase in the line spacing, but I only fit about three and a half lines of text onscreen with a picture now. (And the lines themselves aren't that long.) The font size and spacing here on the blog are probably the ideal size to go with pictures your size. The entry frame is also wider here than on the main page.

I don't know if the story text is set up ideally for reading. I could change the text zoom, but it would make all the other areas with small text illegible. And it still seems like the line spacing is proportionately wider than usual, even after shrinking the text.

I think the assortment of colors, along with the amount of scrolling, and the less text onscreen with the pictures they accompany, would make it less pleasant to sit down and read through multiple chapters. It's not going to change my habits either way, but I've only got to read one or two chapters at any given time, anyway, since I'm caught up.

First time I saw the new design on the main page I was a bit taken aback, to be honest. It does look great, but I'm just such a creature of habit...

I thought it would take me some time to get over the change, but surprisingly I'm already getting used to the new design.

I especially like the new chapter pages and that you made the text of the chapters larger. In the old version it was just a little difficult to read.

ermine, I just had so many quotes for Alred that my fingers got into the habit of setting quote person IDs to 9 (which is Alred's ID) even when it wasn't Alred. I fixed those two. Thanks for pointing them out.

Quinctia, thanks for your comment! I agree with some of the things you say, in fact.

For me, where the color scheme breaks down is with the addition of the brown in the background of the post itself. I tried a ton of different colors and never found one I liked, so I just pulled in basically the same color background as I had before... in a theme that was definitely based around gold and brown. That is the tipping point for me, where there's one color too many. I don't think that brown goes with the other colors.

And I'm actually not sure about the use of black in this scheme at all. The footer background is a very dark brown, not black. I think it's more harmonious with the gray background of the page; and I like the slight warmth it provides. But the black was "easier" for things like borders, so maybe I got lazy there.

I'm going to see about possibly switching the black stuff to the almost-black-but-still-warm brown color. And I definitely need to look at the chapter background.

I'm going to stick with both gold and cyan for link colors. (I was using gold and robin's egg blue before, so I find the cyan is actually less of a stretch.) I was pleasantly surprised at how useful it was to have a cool color for "minor links" like the "Hide Storylines" link and that sort of thing. But by the time I figured out that cyan was good for less-urgently-clickable stuff, I had scattered gold and cyan somewhat arbitrarily all over the design. That's something I may revisit.

Another thing: I also find the right sidebar hard to read with the background image it has, but I was lazy again there. I am still tweaking, for sure. I wanted to release this so we could start reading with it, and really get a feel for what is harder to read now.

But I am also going to add the old color scheme back as an option. I have to tweak the sizes of a few of the images, since the page is now slightly wider than it was before. It won't be exactly the same look since the layout has changed a little, but it will be the same color scheme, for those who liked it better. That will be available in your user preferences soon.

As for the text. Hrmm! The thing is, most people never change the default text size on their browser, but most Web designers find the default size horrendously large, so it's standard practice to set the default text size on your Web site to something like 75%. I always did so too, but I felt like it was cheating. I wanted to "come clean" and let the user's browser setting determine the size of the main body text, and scale up and down from there for things like titles and minor links.

The inevitable result is that some people will find it too big now, and other people will be glad because they found it too small before. You can never make everyone happy. I suppose it would be possible to make font size be yet another user preference though.

Another thing that may be throwing you is the new font: the old layout used a sans-serif font, and the new one uses a serif font. Serif fonts are well-known to be more readable, but on computer monitors (as opposed to paper) they start get blurry at a smaller sizes, whereupon a sans-serif font may be preferable. It's another reason why I was wanting to bump the font size up a bit.

I too still find the text disconcertingly large at times, at least in the comments. I may make the comments a little smaller. I am more comfortable with the font size in the chapter itself being larger. But I have a big monitor.

I wish you could see how the site looks on my 24-inch iMac: the fonts I chose (Baskerville, Hoefler Text) are beautiful, but if you don't have a Mac you probably fall back to Constantia (you need Windows Vista for that, I believe) or even Georgia, which aren't as nice.

Yesterday I read a few chapters for the first time in the new layout, and I was amazed at how I could sit back in my chair and everything was still crystal-clear and perfectly readable. But I am lucky to have such a computer, I guess. I can often see two full pictures on the screen at a time when I'm reading a chapter. Meanwhile a lot of you are reading on Windows -- probably on laptops with small screens, too -- and some of you are even on your teeny iPods. Designing something that looks good for people using unpredictable combinations of devices, operating systems, and browsers is a task involving many trade-offs and compromises.

I am also NOT a Web designer, which I am all too aware of, since I work with professional graphic designers, and I bow down to their talent and expertise. In my job I just take care of the back-end programming, and other people make the Web pages look pretty AND readable. My design techniques consist of smooshing things around on the page until they arbitrarily start looking pretty to me. I really appreciate your comments, because otherwise I have no guidelines other than my own taste.

Ann, I made the massive change to the home page because of the "WTF is this site?" demographic. If you weren't coming here because you knew it was a Sims story, it was really hard to tell what was the purpose of the site, and how to use it. We take it for granted because we read these kinds of things, but for people who don't (coworkers, friends and family members, random Internet visitors) I thought the old home page was like a sheer cliff of WTF. I'm glad you're getting used to it, though.

Huh, I didn't think of that. I guess you're right. It's definitely clearer now.

One thing about the backgrounds: I think the bluish background behind your comments doesn't fit well with the rest of the color scheme. Maybe that's just me, but it bothers me somehow. I think a lighter shade of the brown you used for the regular comments might be better. But then again, maybe not. ^^

Its hard to believe sometimes how far this website has gone. I remember Lothere was on the what was it the Unforgetting blog? But Lothere has come such a long way since 2006. Jenny your doing such a great job.

I agree Devin. Well, I haven't been around as long, but even so, the layout has been steadily improving.

I have no complaints about anything as of yet. Granted, I liked the old layout as well, but now that I've been introduced to this one I can't imagine going back to that one.

I think the colors are very nice and they don't hurt my eyes or anything of that nature. I love the accessibility and the organization you have going on. The tabs are a definite winner. The chapter scroll thing is a great implement especially if you remember certain chapters by the pictures and not necessarily the title. I think that the readability has been slightly diminished. It takes much more scrolling to get through the chapters and read what is on your screen. It does look a bit bigger. Other than that, I think you have a great thing going for you.

Kudos for you!

I, for one, love the new layout...although I'm still getting used to it!

I have noticed that the search function in the People link for Verso is missing. Something that was missed in the changes ... or is it a permanent thing?

Edit: Never mind, I see it.

To see the search menu you have to click the "People" link in the menu bar that runs across the middle of the screen. The "People" link at the top leads to that sort-of-worthless introductory page.

I'll be working on reorganizing some of that stuff at some point. So much to do.....