New Cobble Hill Blog Design

By on April 16, 2010 3:30 pm in Miscellany

We’ve launched a redesign of Cobble Hill Blog.  Check it out.   Would you like to see BHB get the same treatment? Comment away!

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  • Publius

    I like it.

    Whatever you can do to knock that POS Murdoch mouthpiece Brooklyn Paper out of the picture.

  • brooklynbee

    I can’t say I care for it, actually (sorry).
    It’s some free WordPress theme, right?

  • David G.

    In my completely amateur opinion, I think there is too much going on. I’m not a big fan of the slideshow. Too often I’ve clicked on the wrong article because it was skipped before I was able to mouse over.

    I dont like how you jump to the category sections. The categories should be filtered on to a separate page that you actually click to, rather then clumped to the bottom. Also, what’s with the drop down menus? Is that redundant?

    I would add a most viewed article list on the right side, in addition to the neighborhood chatter section.

    In this case, less is more.

  • State

    Honestly, I can’t say I care for it. It looks too much like a news site, not a community blog.

  • Troubled Reader

    Please do not change to that style of Web page, which is becoming very common nowadays. I agree with David G that there is too much going on. It is visually disturbing. I really like the clean, straightforward layout of BHB, with its great, neighborhood-specific posts and easily accessible comments. The very local focus of the site is exactly why I enjoy it so much.

  • T.K. Small

    It is a little bit busy, but I appreciate that there is less empty real estate on the screen. I prefer having more topic threads in one location, rather than having to scroll backwards many times. If the design is indeed a template, perhaps you could incorporate some of the suggestions to create sort of a hybrid.

  • Norman E-Mailer

    AAAAH! It’s way too busy, unless you’re going to change the name to Cobblie Hill News.

  • Teddie Boy Eddie

    I like it.

  • epc

    Definitely lengthen the time per slide on the slideshow.

    The homepage is a bit busy, but honestly not extraordinarily so.

    Nice balance of ad slots. I would pick either a banner add or the large masthead/flag. Having both pushes the live space quite a bit down the page.

    Uncertain what’s supposed to happen when I click on the Heights Cafe banner, I get a “Loading” message overlaid on the banner and the URL never loads.

    For the haters: pay much for this site lately?

  • AL

    Don’t like it. Too busy. Lost neighborhood feel.

  • moo

    toooooo busy!

  • AAR

    Not enthused, but could get used to it! Agree that it has a canned or commericial feel in contrast to BHB’s home-grown feeling. But if you “need” to do it for some reason not known to the readers/contributors, I’ll manage and will still read BHB daily. Love the idea of open topic on the weekend instead of just Wednesday.

  • Atlantically

    I have a usability question. If I wanted to just scroll through all items, chronologically (like we do not), is there a way to do so?

    I’m less interested in reading the neighborhood news in sections, and rather taking it all in.

  • Homer Fink

    @atlantically – noted.

  • http://www.melaniehopegreenberg.com melanie hope greenberg

    I like it. It opened a way to see more articles that normally get lost as they move down and off the page. The colors and the fonts work.

  • since47

    Change is great, but at first glance (and then second) the CHB looks messy, with too much going on, unlike the BHB, which is very straightforward. My opinion? Keep the BHB the way it is. And by the way, I’m one of those older people, so the CHB might simply be too much for me to handle…

  • nabeguy

    Interesting that you chose a newspaper-like layout in light of the fact that everyone says that the internet will be the death of print news. A triple column layout may work for the Times, but it reads busy on-screen. Two columns, wider margins, bigger pictures, yeah, that’s the ticket.

  • AEB

    Well, the emphasized–central–news scroll of the BHB seems better.

    Also, it’s vertical “chronology” gives one an immediate sense of what’s new and what’s less so.

    Those things said–I hate change. It always involves…change, which is almost always undesirable!

    Hope this helps, Homer.

  • jorale-man

    Cobble Hill blog seems really like a newspaper web site. Nothing wrong with that per se, but a different model. The vertical scroll is more “bloggy” – i.e. what you’ll find on Gawker, Gothamist, Brownstoner, Consumerist, etc. Maybe a compromise would be to keep the scroll but add some tabs at the top and some ancillary content (slideshows, etc.) on the sidebars. Hope that helps…

  • bornhere

    It’s different, looks sort of impersonal (less neighborhood blogish), and will likely take some time for its readers to adjust to it — and I’m not sure it’s an improvement. One thing I do like is that topics indicate only the number of comments, rather than list the posters who have responded, as is done here, which sometimes moves other interesting topics off the “first page.” What I find especially interesting, though, is that a topic (“Best Neighborhood” discussion) posted 4 days ago garnered only 2 comments there, yet generated oodles of opinions here! Don’t people in Cobble Hill know there’s a neighborhood blog?

  • cat

    It’s too busy for me. As someone else noted, it no longer looks like a blog, more like a news site.

  • CHer

    I miss the ability to just quickly go on there at various times in the day and see if anything new has been posted since I last logged on. When I just went on, the 3rd item of news was Happy Easter. Easter was 2 weeks ago, I’m done with Easter!

  • cascascas

    Noooooooooooooooooo – not mulitple columns!

  • Teddy

    When it comes to a community blog like BHB, less is more. Not that I don’t appreciate change (for the better), but I believe you should stick with the current format, at least for now. It seems to work for most of us.

  • Homer Fink

    @cher – we’ll be updating the site more frequently so don’t get hung up on that. Also there’s a “recent posts” tab on the right side that lists the latest 15 posts from all categories.

    @everybody – thanks for your feedback we’ll be tweaking and playing around with CHB everyday so check back often.

  • David on Middagh

    My favorite non-neighborhood portal is Arts and Letters Daily. Their multi-column format is simultaneously chronological and categorized. You can catch up easily if you’ve been away for a couple of weeks.

    http://www.aldaily.com/

  • The where

    Seems that’s also the case on chb . I love it!

  • David on Middagh

    @The where: Aside from the Most Recent Posts list, which is just fine for the last fifteen posts, there isn’t a simple way to navigate all posts of all categories without encountering a lot you’ve already seen before.

  • blech

    I’d stop reading. The simplicity is key here. I don’t care enough to scan through three columns to try to figure out what’s new.

  • The where

    Homer why don’t you put all new posts in the middje column and call it New Posts.
    That would make it great!

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