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Outsourcing Comments: What Do You Think?

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I’m reading that Automattic, the company behind WordPress and WordPress.com, as well as Akismet and Gravatar, has acquired IntenseDebate. The deal isn’t all that surprising, given the fact that several services offering more or less the same functionality have popped up the last few years. The most notable is probably Disqus, and it is in this sphere that IntenseDebate operates.

For those of you not familiar with IntenseDebate, it is basically a hosted comment solution for your blog, replacing the built-in comment functionality. This means that some features that are not available in, say WordPress, can be added, and that commenters can have one identity for all sites using the service. Other selling points are threaded comments, and e-mail functionality.

I can understand why Automattic acquires IntenseDebate. It is a good complement to especially Gravatar, another hosted service that more or less is the de facto standard for user avatars on WordPress blogs, and several other sites as well. If Automattic rolls out IntenseDebate across WordPress.com, their hosted blog platform, and then adds native support in the next WordPress version, just like they did with Gravatar, they’ll quickly push IntenseDebate forward. I believe it is a sound business decision.

However, I doubt I’ll use any hosted commenting service myself. Avatars is one thing, but the comments are content, and I prefer to have content under my own control, if it is to be displayed as a part of my blog. The main reasons for this is:

  • What happens if the service gets canned? This could mean loss of comments, which would be very bad indeed. Sure, there are backup solutions, but still, it is a risk I’d rather be without.
  • Speed. This applies to all hosted services, applications, widgets, and whatnots I put on my blog: If they are loading slow, my site will suffer, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
  • Security and spam. Sure, the spam fighting plugins available isn’t perfect, but at least I have full control. What happens if someone hacks a commenting service, and what happens if a security exploit opens it up for spamming or worse? This is, again, outside of my control.

What do you think? Would you want to use a hosted comment solution like IntenseDebate or Disqus?

Design Critique: The John Chow Redesign

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John Chow released a new version of his site on September 10th, sporting a more controlled, almost corporate look compared top the previous version. The new John Chow dot Com is the third version, and was designed by Unique Blog Designs. In many ways, it is a better theme, but there are, of course, some things I’d like to comment on.

Just like when TechCrunch redesigned, John Chow’s readers have voiced a lot of comments, 227 of them as I’m writing this. Nothing gets the readership involved like a brand new design!

The Good

  • I like the fact that they got rid of the car in the header. Nice balance between logo and the 468×60 pixel ad as well.
  • The logos for ad and affiliate networks that John pushes aren’t obtrusive, thanks to being in grayscale until you hover them. This is nicely done, since they should be annoying just because of their placement under the main menu.
  • The RSS and subscription functionality in the top right column blends nicely.
  • Good spacing in the ad segment, under Blog Sponsor.
  • The Featured Video box works nicely together with the ad below, and the recent photos, and the about box. 
  • I like the navigation links below the entire site, even though it is a bit illogical to have them below the copyright type.

The Bad

  • The JC logo is bland and boring.
  • The site lacks color, it is basically just white, light grey, and a very tuned down blue, which makes it look corporate and stale.
  • The Recent Photos block is pretty nice, but it needs to be better aligned with the width of the column, now it is 20 pixels less wide than the other elements in the middle column on the front page. If the plugin used won’t solve it for you, then put it in a box or something.
  • The categories part of the footer is decent enough, but the rest of it is a bit messy. I’d also do the copyright text in a different color, font, or whatever, to cleanly part it from the content in the footer.
  • The about page isn’t optimized for the design at all, sporting too little content to fit with the right column, and a photo that is too small. Same goes for the contact page, really.

The What Now?

  • Contextual keyword ads in posts are one thing, but why are they in the featured articles slide?! Same goes for the listings of blog posts on the front page. Really, that’s too much.

Final Thoughts

I can’t say that I’m thrilled about the new John Chow design. My main issue with it is that it feels like a corporate website rather than something from “a Dot Com Mogul”. At the same time, there are some really good layout decisions here, and I especially like the way the header manages to not feel littered with ads.

One other color to work against the stale look would do a lot to lift this design.

What do you think about the new John Chow dot Com redesign?

The Death of Internet Explorer 6: Still Prematurely Called

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There’s some noise about Internet Explorer 6 right now, originating from the fact that the browser turned 7 (!) on August 27th, 2008. That’s some lifespan, and something to mock if you’re running a site called IE Death March. The list of stuff that came out after IE6 is hilarious, older than the first iPod indeed, do you remember when that one came out?

IE6 is evil, developing for it is evil, and it sucks.

Most designers agree: IE6 is evil, developing for it is evil, and it sucks. I’d reckon most IE6 users would agree too, problem is, they’re stuck with it for some reason. It could be the fact that they don’t know how to upgrade, but more likely it is an OS issue.

And that’s why I think decision to pull support for IE6 is silly. Sure, you could follow Adii’s suit and charge extra if your client wants IE6 support, but to me it sounds like you should up your prices a bit in the first place.

Let me put it this way. If you’re not support IE6, then you’re telling Windows 2000 users to piss off, along with a considerable chunk of the surfers. IE6 isn’t a 5% share browser, like Safari, it’s got 25% of the market! That’s right, 1/4 of the people surfing the web are using Internet Explorer 6, a web browser more than 7 years old.

Safari’s got 5%, and Opera even less. I’m not hearing anyone bitching about not supporting these browsers. Sure, they might be easier to develop for, but does that really matter? Isn’t that just developers being lazy?

Stats from here, almost similar numbers here. I’m sure there are other ways to measure them, and some target audiences will render completely different ones.

IE6 isn’t a 5% share browser, like Safari, it’s got 25% of the market!

Do I think IE6 should be retired? Of course, it is a bad browser, for both user and developer. However, I make websites, and both me and my clients prefer if people can use them.

When Internet Explorer 6 is truly dead, I’ll stop supporting it. Until then, I’ll clench my teeth and make sure that the sites I do work for the 25% stuck with IE6. That’s my problem, not theirs. They have it hard enough at it is, being stuck with such a crappy browser in the first place.

More reading: Wisdump, Elliot Jay Stocks, Webmaster-Source

So what do you think? Should designers stop supporting IE6, and forget about the 25% statistics? Share your view in the comments.

Finding Harmony Between Categories and Tags on Blogs

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With the emerging of tags, and I’m not talking about Technorati tags here but tags as a part of your own blog, categories can become redundant. A lot of blogs out there has got a bunch of categories, and with the addition of tags, they suddenly have duplicates of everything. Or perhaps they have a lot of categories, because the categories have been used as tags, basically, which perhaps was a great idea back then, but today is totally unnecessary.

Finding a balance between categories and tags might not be as easy, nor as obvious, as one would like to think.

The Ideal Category/Tag Setup

In my opinion, categories and tags are two completely different things. Mind you, I’m tackling this issue as both a designer and a publisher. The ideal setup for your particular fancy or site might be something completely different, there’s the whole matter of what you need and want as well, of course.

I define categories and tags like this:

  • Categories are main sections of the site. If you’ve got an entertainment blog, “music” might be one category, and “movies” another, but no more niched than that.
  • Tags are descriptions of post content. This means that if you’ve got a post in that “music” category, it might be tagged “metal” because that’s the genre, and “Alice Cooper” because that’s the artist.

The benefits of this way to look at categories and tags, is that categories can be treated as true sections of your site. Most blogging platforms support category specific styling, so that music category can have a cool guitar at top, or use a special color, or whatever. The point is that you can style a specific category in a fitting way, making it more obvious that it is one of the (few) main sections of your blog.

It might take some time to apply a more sound use of categories on your blog, but defining your sections is a good thing.

Tags, on the other hand, are like a loose search query. The point isn’t to style everything tagged “Alice Cooper” in a specific way, since it might be posts from completely diverse areas (i.e. different categories), but rather to list everything relevant.

Applying This

The Blog Herald had a gadzillion tags before its redesign. Since it uses WordPress, I used the included script to convert categories to tags, and then sorted the content in more relevant categories, like news and features, and so on. It might take some time to apply a more sound use of categories on your blog, but defining your sections is a good thing.

If you’re using a blog platform as a CMS (something I’ve touched before), using categories as main sections of your site makes even more sense. After all, you’ve got your menu right there, in the categories, and you’ll be using the blog platform as it is meant to be used, the only difference is that you’ll style the various categories a bit more elaborately than you might have for a traditional blog.

What are your thoughts on how to use categories and tags on a blog? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Design Critique: The TechCrunch Redesign

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Michael Arrington’s web 2.0 startup news blog TechCrunch isn’t just a huge success, making Arrington the poster boy of the tech blogosphere, it is also a very prominent leader in the blogosphere. When TechCrunch changes something, other bloggers look at it, and sometimes copies it. It was like that with the 125×125 pixel button ads, the de facto industry standard in the blogosphere right now, which I daresay got big because of Arrington’s design change in 2006 (from this version, I might add, to the previous one, screenshotted in this post).

And now they sport a new design, which in turn have sparked a lot of commentaries in the blogosphere, as well as 300+ opinions voiced in their Yep, We Redesigned post. Everyone’s got an opinion, it seems, as always when it comes to something as personal as design.

In other words, I won’t shut up either.

Screenshot of the new TechCrunch design
Screenshot of the new TechCrunch design

The Good

  • I like the whitespace, the easy colors, and the choice of fonts.
  • Front page using excerpts tightens the design a lot, toning down the need to scroll, and brings a better overview. I don’t care if the main reason is to get more pageviews, this adds to readability in TechCrunch’s case.
  • Top story on front page works, although I would’ve wanted some more schwung to it perhaps.
  • I like the middle column in the front page, only present for as long as needed. It works surprisingly well and almost gives the stories left of it a sort of a sub-top-story feel to it. Almost…
  • Previous/next post links on single posts are always good.

The Bad

  • The far right ad column is cluttered. Also, ads aren’t ideally aligned/placed, however, this isn’t something that is easily resolved, and ads are always the great EVIL of a design, so I won’t say more about it.
  • The site looks pale on high resolutions with maximized browser windows. Granted, that’s hard to do anything about if you want a clean and sober look.
  • The footer is simple, which is good, but I would like something more there. Especially on short posts with few comments, where the right ad column is a lot longer.
  • The subscribe element on the top of the right column is confusing. I expected some sort of tabbed box, instead I got links. I also miss the RSS icon (available in the footer), since it is something I think should be pushed.
  • A network menu is good, but it is not obvious that it is a network menu, it could just as well be a TechCrunch menu.

The What Now?

  • Why do you have previous/next post links on top of single posts? Sure, they might come in handy with short posts, but I find them unnecessary.
  • A blog like TechCrunch could really use a little more elaborate archives page. This one is just lazy.
  • No dates on the front page. While this is something I normally think is OK, the news orientation of TechCrunch makes me think it should be there.

Final Thoughts

Among the criticism of the new design is the fact that it isn’t “TechCrunch green” enough. The previous one certainly was. Personally, I think it does alright on that area, with a simple green bar in the absolute top of the browser window, green links and green hovering on headlines, and so on. It works, sure, it could’ve been picked up a bit more had they wanted to, but I don’t think there is any actual need for it, really.

Also, while clean, sober, and whitespaced, the design is a bit boring. I should like it, and I do, but it is a bit too corporate for my taste. That is a fine line to thread, and I think the real issue there is the use of images. Just doing logos, and always having them on the same spot, certainly doesn’t help with de-corporatifying the design. Then again, it is a business focused blog, so it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, trying to be something you’re not isn’t something for the faint of heart, so why go out and about trying to look like a magazine, when you’re a news blog about startups?

My verdict: A step up, clean, sober, suitable, I like it overall. Good.

What do you think of the new TechCrunch design?

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