But, it doesn’t act like a blog!

You may notice some changes happening here at Technosailor. On the surface, the changes look simply like a design change. Most of the time in the past, when I have come out with new design changes they are generally live in a period of a day or two. But this is more than a design change and it has taken me two weeks to get to this point. It is a completely new blog concept and is likely the most challenging thing I’ve ever set about to do.

About two weeks ago, I began an email conversation with several people who I hand chose as experts in the area of 1) blog design, 2) blog usability and 3) blog marketing. I asked them for feedback on the concepts I had in my my mind. This is the email I sent in its entirety:

I picked you four to send this email to because of all the people I know, you have the most conceptual grasp on blog architecture and effectiveness.

By now, you are all probably aware that Technosailor is about to undergo some massive changes in architecture. I wrote about one such aspect today in case you missed it.

So the theory is to have multiple views. Initially, the thought was to have the standard view, a conversation view (which I wrote about) and a reddit like view for readers to vote stuff up or down and the most popular stuff would float to the top. However, as radical as the reddit-like view sounds, I’m beginning to question the wisdom.

For one, I have a ton of content already (2.5 years worth) and no one is going to go start rating older stuff now. Theoretically, it would be a “from now on” thing but that makes results very biased. Plus I just don’t know how many people will “get it” in terms of the concept. If I had a Lifehacker type blog, perhaps. I don’t so I’m beginning to question the sanity of building such a system.

Other ideas for a third view is to have a “Popular” view that is based on number of comments but that is inevitably going to pull alot of really sort of irrelevant content up. Another idea was to do as Pearson has suggested somewhere (can’t remember which entry he commented on and where) which is more like a “Best of” view, but that would require going through 2.5 years of content and finding what I think is the best content. That could be a tedious process as well. Both of these other two options aren’t nearly as sexy as a reddit-like view either.

So I’m looking for advice or ideas on a third view that is 1) effective for advertising, 2) effective for exploration, and 3) creates a “wow” in the blogosphere. While the ideas I’m searching for might be intertwined with the actual design, I’m really grasping for more conceptual ideas in terms of architecture.

So, that said… any of you have any advice?

The conversation that ensued highlighted some key philisophical differences between the parties involved but ultimately resulted in some really good feedback.

Brian Clark from Copyblogger made these comments:

Any good blogger, publisher or producer is no doubt listening carefully to the crowd. But the true value of that listener is in what he or she does with the fruits of the observation, not in regurgitating it. If the blogger is not smarter than the crowd on a particular topic, or doesn’t have a fresh perspective, why bother?

So, any Digg or Reddit feature should be just that… a feature. And a tiered rating system would seem to deliver more valuable feedback than a simple “bump it up the page” system. It’s not whether someone likes it or hates it. It’s the shades of grey in between that provide insight.

The real value in information architecture is the placement of what Aaron, or Darren, or Jeremy, or Chris thinks is important. In other words, the most valuable content real estate on a blog should be less automated, not more, because it takes a real live editor to make those decisions based on what he observes and further deduces.

Brian goes on to suggest really highlighting “Best of” stuff as the predominant feature of the new blog experience. Jeremy, however, disagreed:

While I love these thoughts, I’m a bit curious how these get applied in an actual blog setting.

Not that I don’t love the thoughts. It’s no big secret that we’re about to launch v2 of our publishing platform at b5, and that we’re [b5media] already looking for great ideas for v3 (since, really, v2 is what v1 was supposed to have been but never lived up to).

Chris Pearson decided to weigh in on the side of “the more effective sidebar, the better”:

Personally, I have found huge value on my own site in the modules that lie in the right sidebar. I update the links over there on a semi regular basis, and they have done an excellent job of raising (and maintaining) my overall level of page views and site “stickiness.”

Despite their initial success, I believe that these modules could still be arranged (or rearranged) in such a way as to bolster page views and drive traffic to different parts of my site. Think of it along the same lines as CPM and Google ad placement – some areas are just more effective than others, plain and simple.

Structure

With the opinion of three crucial guys in my pocket, I set about to brainstorming on how I actually wanted to accomplish this new blog experience. I decided that I wanted to keep a conventional blog view where most recent posts are listed from the top down. Most blogs are like this and to take this view away could possibly disorient readers.

Secondly, I wanted to have a “Best of” view. I decided to nix the concept of Reddit voting in favor of this view. This wil be a subselection of what I view as my best content. through the years. As other entries are written that reflect that feeling on my part, I will continue to add articles for this view. It serves mostly as a high-level view of my writing and a good jumping off place for new readers or search engine readers who would like a snapshot of my content.

Finally, there is the most radical shift away from conventional blog architecture and the bit that took the most time and heartache to create. It is the Conversation mode where democracy is the name ofe game. As readers comment on content, no matter how old, it will rise to the top. The most recent contribution to conversation will be listed first. I think readers will like this mode as sometimes older content gets attention but no one knows that because it is off the front page. This view changes that.

I also decided to make the views cookie based so that readers can return to the site at a later time and have the same view as they left with. Props to Andy Skelton and #wordpress IRC user leftjustified for key bits of help along the way that played into the final product.

Design

The design was the second phase of this overhaul. My stats claim that only 2% of readers use 800×600 resolution. Most accessibility experts think that every site should be viewable at minimum at 800×600 and up until this design, I have followed those guidelines. However, designing for 800×600 is very limiting. I decided instead to support 1024×768 minimum for this overhaul. In fact, I also decided I wanted to move away from fixed-width layouts and to embrace fluid layouts (they adjust with the screen size). I also wanted minimalism to be the key.

I abhor design work but I began working out some concept pieces. Most of them I scrapped after a day or so before I settled on this design. It returns to the roots of “nautical” imagery that I’ve always used in the past up until the last design. I roughed up the concept that includes three columns, a prominent bit of real estate for ads in the upper right corenr, and a functional banner that allows users to switch between the blogs views.

I handed the design over to uber-designer Jonic Linley who dressed the design up, decided to pimp my feed in the banner and worked his CSS magic to make the site leap off the page.

What you see in front of you is the product of lots of hard work, thought and really key contributions from key people. I’m really proud of this concept and I hope that it will spark further discussion in the blogosphere about blog architecture. Overall, we’re in a rut. If my design causes people to think about blog architecture and think outside of the proverbial box, then my job is done.

As a sidenote, all the functionality of the views is in a plugin. I may release it later on for a fee, or possibly free under GPL. I don’t know. Depends on the demand. Let me know.

Please let me know if you run into bugs. It’s been tested on IE6, IE7, Firefox 1.5, Firefox 2.0, Mozilla 1.7, Opera 9, Safari 2.03 and Firefox/Mac.

Update: Bugs already. :) Couldn’t have guessed. Archives are currently broken. Fixing that. Comments template was missing. Fixed that. And my “views” makes alters the order of entries in my admin. Grrrrr. Okay, well that doesn’t affect anyone but me but it means I have to go work out more on that front.

Tagged as: architecture, blogs