You might have already noticed that the Wordpress theme has been changed here at Ghacks to a more minimalistic theme. I think the new theme combines an excellent design with good readability. The theme will be tested in the coming days to see if problems of any kind are experienced while displaying the new Wordpress theme. This includes both factors that are experienced by the visitors of the website but also other factors like linking structure and monetization.
We would like to ask you to comment on the new theme and especially notify us if you encounter problems of any kind including page load errors, display errors and any other kind of error that is dampening your user experience. And we would of course like to listen to your opinion about the new theme.
Related posts:
New Ghacks Theme upGhacks Wordpress theme released
Back to the old Theme for now
Finally a new theme
Website Caching Enabled
Wordpress 2.5.1 released
Wordpress: Your attempt to edit this post has failed
Windows XP Zune Theme
My first impression was, AAAH is this really ghacks?
Then I looked around, and I actually like this clean look. Maybe a bit too clean (text logo), but it is more pleasant to look at imho, I like it ;)
So far I prefer it. It’s less cluttered & visually smooth & very readable.
Just a few things though that I’d thought I’d mention :
1 – Concerning the page navigation at the base “Page 1 of 1,096 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 » … Last » ” it would be nice to have the page numbers css set to active & visited in a clear manner;
2 – Off-site links – I prefer off-site links to open in a new tab or window, but as I realize some users may not like that, perhaps an icon that displays that it’s an off-site link ?
(like on my site with external links);
Other than that, I like this theme.
Too bland.
Add some color to the header and increase the font size of the navigation bar text.
I like it – it is much easier on the eyes.
However – you might want to increase the size of your logo and change its color – it is barely noticeable.
Also, the navigation bar is too small and too blended in with everything else.
I like it. Nice, clean, simple.
Looks nice, I like it. A few tweaks I guess…like here on this page the Author, Published, etc is kind of breaking the look. The ad immediately below the post title is pushed down because of if
I realy like, so far, the cleaner outlook main only dislike is that the links are not so good visible. Maybay a outhor more brighter color?
Looks nice except that now all I see are the commercials.
The content disappears among them.
Much better! People are always talking about ‘Less is More’ yet few in web design follow that concept. More should.
Much Better now :D
Your new theme is good and more readable. White themes are always preferable. But I think this theme requires some tweaks like :
1. Logo is not visible at all.
2. If you add some design or color effect to header then it would be better.
3. Font size of ‘Related Posts’ heading is small. It should be of larger size so that readers can easily notice it and it is mixed with ad too. There should be a little more space between ad and related posts.
4. Font size of comment authors is also small.
5. Adding gravatar images to comment bar will be a great idea.:)
I hope you will make changes according to these points.
Better, but little too simple.
Please more space (look at picture’s link http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/yIePNsW4E3ujdoT2bD9S4A?feat=directlink). Anything else looks nice and clear.
Wow, this is quite a big change for me and I have a few problems with it. Personally. I feel that it’s aligned too far to the left, so the webpage is a bit unbalanced and not very easy on the eyes. The simplicity is also too much that it is now on the bland and wordy side. I liked it better when the different posts are more distinct and well-defined, but that isn’t too much of a problem. The first point is a bigger issue for me.
Well I really did like the design of the last Ghacks and can’t complain about the new. I’m certainly one who thinks “less is more”
Looks ok to me
Looks good.. But very clean..
Also the sidebar needs a little tweaking..
Logo should be changed.. Overall not satisfied..
previous theme was better..
As of first use, I’m fine with the new theme, except for one item.
On my setup, the body text is flush with the left edge of the window. I find it unpleasant to read. My eyes like the white space of a left margin.
After your new theme has been in use for a while, make a call for more comments. I might have more to add later.
As a certified minimalist who usually prefers plain text on a plain background with no bullcrap, I should love this…but I don’t. The way it was before directed my eyes immediately to relevant content and kept them there. Now it just looks busy and I’m all over the place when I look at it.
Some kind of background shading for the link columns and margins might be a good idea.
HEY! Where did Comment RSS go? I depend on that function!
To add some critics to my first comment.
Although the Magatheme looks cleaner, this should be a starting point for something better.
The negative side of this theme is that the look and feel is so much broken with the old theme that new visitors who are prospective subscribers are probably getting confused, whether this really is the site they visited before.
The Ghacks brand is totally gone with this theme and without a logo with a strong image this theme might hurt your branding.
I think it is a good idea to incorporate some recognition points to the design so new visitors can see within a second that this is still Ghacks with a new design and not a totally other site. Maybe using your old header for a while is doing the job until you have a new logo which likely has the same font as before to hold on to the Ghacks brand as is still settled in the brain of your visitors.
I also miss contrast in this design. Everything is black/white except the ads.
For example http://www.skelliewag.org/ also had a very minimalistic design with lots of white and a bit grey and recently she also redesigned her website, but now with blue in it. This new design is still very clean, but looks a lot better and the look and feel of the site is improved considerably.
So although minimalism works, doing it too much doesn’t add any good to your branding.
Moreover, when you want minimalism it is not about minimalism as a good rule, but the reason why minimalism works so well. By overdoing it, you miss the point imho.
So I still like it, but as starting point, not as end product. and because the title is “testing…” you probably think that way too.
This is just way too much simple!
Add some colors so that we can differentiate between links and text..
I really don’t like the font, it hurts my eyes.
add a little grey to make the elements of the page more distinctable and it will be great. love the effort and willing to try new things
From the second i opened the page i liked it. Easy, clean, and even with the lack of colour and clutter, it looks much much more of a professional and authentic webpage.
Nicely done Martin and co.
I can’t resist to add another comment ;)
There is also a navigation error which was actually also in the previous design.
the global menu and utility menu are both in one place.
From an information architecture point of view it’s better to split them up.
So I suggest to put the links:
Email | Contact | Advertise
on the top right spot in the header as utility menu.
An example is http://www.noupe.com but a lot of other sites are also doing this well.
Maybe you can also put a big rss button and possibly other social network buttons just above your global nav and under the utility menu on the right side of the header. E.g. like done on this site http://colorburned.com to give another example.
By splitting up the menu you’ve also more room in you global nav and then it doesn’t hurt making the font in the navbar a little bigger.
Now I really need to stop commenting haha ;)
Heh, I didn’t even notice the new header before. It looks like a domain squatter logo.
Martin, your logo and header ad’s total width add up to 975px and on 1024×768 there is a (very few pixels) horizontal scroll bar
RG think I fixed it. Can you confirm?
Run into 404 two times trying to post a comment. But now all seems ok.
Yes, horizontal scroll bar is gone now, thanx
It’s still too “bright white.”
Could you maybe tone down the background color a bit. It’s mostly ok on a flat screen, but on a CRT it starts to drill your eyes out after a few minutes.
IMHO it’s also a little too bland. Add a little more drama and contrast to the pallet. It’s too McCarthy-era pastel. This one reminds me of a house from a 50’s sitcom.
Please add some colors. It’s way to bright like this. Thanks and keep up the good work!
Awesome. I like it. Simple, clean and fast. Nice work.
i would agree with almost everything being said:
it’s a nice clean minimalist theme, which is easy to read.
but.. without the memorable ghacks banner/logo, it feels a little generic and unrecognizable.
now like most things, after a while the new logo will set in and we will get used to it, but some continuity is useful in making everyone recognize the place and feel confortable. in other words, nothing wrong with a new logo and banner — but do consider that you don’t want to be changing the core symbols of the site too many times or it will lose its recognizability.
This theme is sweet! I like sites that go slim. :)
I wouls say it looks very clean, though maybe too clean.
The old design had 3 columns though it looked because of the black background like two columns. This should be really a 2 column design, since the “Links” take up very small space and could be easily placed just above the “categories” below the “Popular Articles”.
Or alternatively like a few people have said, break it up with some colour (and shades of grey are colours ~grin~).. A nice 10% grey bar down the side would allow the extra 2 columns (or 1 if its a 2col design) to be fully distinguished from the real text. The eye is then drawn to the Cleaner spaces (the white background). Also the Headings on each post might be better served being a diff colour like old design. Even if its a Dark dark navy blue.
Something else tou might like to try is having only “Home, T-Shirts, Free Magazines, Contact, Advertise, RSS” in the main menu bar. Then have the categories as.. umm.. Areas either under the main bar (in a diff colour) or if keeping the 3 column look.. Maybe as Bold Areas of Interest up top of 3rd column with “Links” under it.. This will allow you to enlarge the font size slightly and not be as busy in the menubar.
Just my 1.25 cents (2 cents aint what it used to be anymore ~g~).
No matter what, the Content is what makes GHacks great.. and that has not changed.. Keep writing fantastic pieces!
ah, another change.
This one’s much better as it stays clear & minimalistic but has character.
I like the logo above & perhaps what really makes me tick is the use of orange which I find is one of the most pleasing ‘complimentary colour’ for a web-design scheme (when I say ‘complimentary colour”, it’s based on a 9 colour schematic I made for web-design – 6 shades of the same colour + 2 complimentary colours & 1 alternative)
Only problem I find is that the 3 orange links on the top menu would look better using the same orange as the logo & all the fonts on the top menu could be a tad larger.
Try this:
.wrapper {
background:#FFFFFF none repeat scroll 0 0;
margin:0 auto;
padding:0 px; /*(Or just removing padding for getting the navbar right)*/
width:988px;
}
.main {
float:left;
overflow:hidden;
padding:0 0 0 10px; /*The padding from wrapper is now used here*/
width:567px;
}
I don’t know whether to call all that white glaring or bland. How about irritating? The text spacing makes it less easy to read. In fact, it makes me want to skip it altogether. If I were able to vote I’d vote to have the text back the way it was and a little color with the headers – something soft if you like – but something that isn’t WHITE.
I like distinctive layouts because I always know where I am without having to look to the top of the page. This morning I felt sort of – lost in (white) space : )
Odd how these things affect us, isn’t it? I used to spend hour and hours at Download.com. But since the change to their site, I seldom spend more than a minute or two. I like the colors but they also changed the text spacing, took some of the things that made it worth going there for.
I’d really like to see something more homey tomorrow – or the next time I drop in.
You can do better than this..I don’t like it!!!
Nice and clean. However, a bit more contrast wouldn’t hurt imho. The background and text blend into each other a bit too much for ppl with worse eyesight. Otherwise pretty decent.
Oh, one more thing Martin. I’ve noticed hyper-links are a bit hard to locate. Emphasizing em with the bold tag doesn’t seem to be visible enough for me to find links without really trying. Perhaps change in color of links would be profound for many.
:-)
Preferred the old look, maybe it was just the colour scheme.
Martin
Like the theme. Definitely an improvement in terms of readability.
the old one is going to missed surely, but i like this one too…
a next button is needed at the bottom of the page and the size of the page numbers can be increased… =)
I like it! :-)
I prefered the appearance of the older theme to the curent one, but prefer the newer theme because it is more functional.
When the older theme was being displayed, ghacks.net could only be viewed in Internet Explorer 6 with SP1 (maybe others) with an mshtml.dll file from late 2006 or newer (I do not remember specifically what was the minimum file version). Windows XP with Service Pack 1 users would not normally have an mshtml.dll file capable of correctly rendering ghacks.net in the past. I speculate that older mshtml.dll files could not correctly handle all types of text advertisements.
I forgot to mention:
With the current theme, text advertisements are displayed and Internet Explorer does not crash with an older mshtml.dll file.
To give you an idea of where I’m coming from, I believe the purpose of page design is to make page viewing as comfortable as possible for the readers. The reasoning is that the less the design of the page intrudes on the reader, the more the reader will be open to absorb the author’s content. Because of visual obstacles or distractions, poor design would interfere with a reader’s focus.
And what I understand is that page design includes three factors: location of the objects of the page; color (background, text, white space); and typography (typesize, typeface).
So, when I first see a page, I just let it wash over me. Then I use the design factors to analyze why I had a good experience or a poor one (or something in between).
Your original new page design was all right fo me upon first viewing, but your latest revision (Ver1.1?) is far more powerful. Kudos. And thanks, too, for both the others’ comments and your openness to welcome them.
In Ver1.1, I like:
The black text on the white background in the body of the articles. That combination offers the greatest readability for people like me with limited eyesight.
In the Comments, the alternating white and light blue backgrounds for consecutive messages. It’s easier to see where one message ends and the next begins. And the light blue background you’ve chosen is excellent in keeping the contrast between foreground and background. Good accessibility here.
In the Comments, the separation of the content from the header into two separate cells. When the body wrapped underneath the header, it was harder for me to read. Now with all the left margins of the bodies in the same row, my eyes go smoothly through the text.
The left margin of the page. It was really bothersome to me when there was no margin. Very jarring. Thanks for the change.
In the Responses section, the separation of personal responses from trackbacks. Since the trackbacks are of no interest to me, this grouping serves me well. And those who want to view trackbacks can easily find them.
The width of your columns. The two left columns break at 800 px, perfect for an 800×600 resolution. Although 1024×768 is, I believe, the most common res, I need to use 800×600. Pages that extend content more than 800, v.g., 815-820 px are a pain to read because of all the horizontal scrolling back and forth to see each line. You’ve neatly avoided that problem.
Anyhow, those are some of the things I like about your new format. I’d like to offer you some suggestions for tweaks, but I’ll have to do that later. I’ll send you another message.
BillB thanks for the comment on that. I actually did use many of the comments made by visitors about the new theme to improve it further. Well, next to some changes that I thought would be a great fit. I’m really looking forward to reading your ideas on how to tweak the theme further. I’m always open for suggestions. Thanks again!
Hi,
maybe not totally theme related, but Iike the new one.
Do you guys have an option to get the text in printable form?
I like to either real print some articles or create .pdf files for reading on my phone and for this I
alway copy the article to omit extra columns.
Would be a nice plus for me.
Keep up the good work.
Cheers,
Thomas