Some of you will be aware that I have been working on a fair bit of stuff behind the scenes with Excerptz, particularly with analysing plugins and their effects on our server load. Yesterday I made a big decision, and that is to completely change the dynamic of Excerptz.
I was fond of the previous theme, but it had some fatal flaws. To summarise, these flaws were:
- A very light font set, with complaints from readers (yep, readers, not writers!)
- Lack of space from which to drive traffic internally, only one sidebar
- The need for an image with every post (I was having to insert these sometimes, and as the site grows the more I was having to do this)
- It didn’t look very professional (in fact, it looked like it was targeted at 12 year olds)
In addition, I have been considering the strategy a little and felt that the site was indirectly – or perhaps directly – being targeted at the wrong people. The site was geared towards the writers, a direction which has perhaps been proven unviable in recent times. Instead the site is going to be geared towards readers, and that means no more giant ads boasting about revenue sharing. The page structure will also be changed to reflect this, with writers having their own site section and the page navigation focussing on the reader. We are now an ‘open magazine’, although don’t let that stop you writing about whatever you want.
There are a couple of important things that you should know. The first is that I am still working out where best to place AdSense units. As a result your earnings and possibly impressions will be much lower than usual for a few days, and probably have been for the last couple of days too. I hope that these efforts will result in an increase in earnings in the medium term. In other words, don’t worry I intend to make as much money out of this as I can and that means making you money too.
Important: RE Images
I want to make this process as painless and effortless as possible for contributors, but there is one thing that you are going to need to take care of. The article column is now very slim and any image over around 400 to 450 pixels wide is now too big and will be overlapping other site aspects. So, you are going to need to check your articles to see if you need to reinsert your image. You shouldn’t need to re-upload them, instead you can delete them from your text editor and then reinsert them from the gallery (the little box next to ‘Upload/Insert’).
Featured Image Duplicates
This theme will present an image on the front page only if you choose to make one of your images a ‘featured image’, at the same time it is no longer required for you to upload an image. You should be aware however that if you feature and insert the same image it will be duplicated, showing once inside the text body and one above your primary header. For best results please only feature an image if you don’t intend to insert it into your text body. In this post, for example, you will see a picture of my pug above the header. That image has not been inserted into this post, it has only been chosen as a featured image.
Feedback Welcome (Wanted)
What do you think about the new layout? Do you like it? Is it an improvement on the old design, or were you quite fond of it? Personally I think that it will probably result in a lower bounce rate, and thus increased page views, whilst at the same time giving exposure to some articles which may otherwise have not done too well in the search engine rankings. In addition, I think that the site looks a little more professional and that can only help out the affiliate marketers and their conversion rates!
Let me know what you think!
Best,
Ryan
I’m getting viewing problems – the columns for ‘arts’ and ‘gadgets’ are truncating the text into very thin boxes – and some of the headings are overlapping on the other columns…
just send a screen shot fot you to look at! I’m using IE7 – have no choice as it’s standard firmwide – a lot of US corporations will still be using IE7 and will slowly bring in IE8 soon
Hi Simey, may I ask what browser you are using: And if possible, could you do me a screenshot? The site is loading fine for me in Chome, Firefox and IE?
You read my mind!
That’s what I just emailed you about Ryan … Good point though about many being slow to upgrade. As a web designer I check on at least 2 browsers behind the times as that is what most clients use!
This theme is brand new for 2011, guess that is why. But I think I know what the problem is nonetheless, this theme uses Superfish which is calling on a non-existent shadow.png file. I am uploading that now, to see if that makes any difference. And if it doesn’t, I will delete the call for that image altogether and see of that works.
Hi I checked this website in the following Browsers:
Chrome 11.0.696.68
Firefox 4.0
Opera 11.01
Safari 5.0.5
and
IE9.0
The latest versions of all the commonly used Browsers and the site rendered perfectly in all.
Regards,
Ivan Bayross
Brilliant, thanks for that Ivan. Good to hear that it looks OK in Opera, because the old theme didn’t get on too well with that browser. I guess I will just have to write off IE7 users for the timebeing, and hope that they all get their upgrades soon! To be honest I didn’t even realise that corporations had to pay for browser licenses, surely they can all download Firefox? It’s open source! lol.
My only question would be where are the Google ads at Ryan,besides the one inthe top far right will there be anymore?
Yes Ben there will. I’ve been messing with Google ads for a couple of days, and will still be tinkering for the next couple of days too. Ultimately, expect some rubbish AdSense results for a few days. Hopefully however I will be able to hit it just right and end up improving everybodies CTR. That one on the right will be staying, that is only definite so far. One down, five to go!
I can however see where this format with not many ads would keep the reader more focused on in text links,so perhaps better for affiliate links if there are no more ads, but not so good for those counting on Google for making money.
Lol, well I rely on the 20% of adsense to keep the site going, so there will defo be more ads! Think it will be three text+image units and just one link unit this time, rather than three+three. I’ll get the three big units in first and see how they convert. I will certainly be seeking to make the ads less obtrusive this time around though.
Great magazine design, Ryan.
After nailing the Google Ad placements, I hope you also make the excerptz.com header more prominent, with a simpler but more assertive font (but of course only if my observation is shared). Best regards.
Ryan – it might be worth analizing what browser your readers are using – for my company alone there are several hundred thousand users on IE7 world wide – so that’s an audience that will not come back! I am a writer on here so at least I can publish….
Ryan – just did a little research – IE7 still has a 10% share of usage world wide; chrome has 13%. IE8 has 30%, Firefox 30% – these figures are pre-IE9 thuogh….
I wouldn’t say the previous theme was targeted at 12-year-olds, but the new one is very professional-looking indeed. You have found a great place for the image. The article body is very narrow, so it’ll be interesting to see where the ads go.
The only issue with Opera is that fields are often non-editable. For instance, I had to switch to Chrome to type this comment.
@ SimeyC: Many themes simply don’t respect IE prior to version 8. That’s the way it is. It’s a message.
Glad that you like it Haunty. I don’t think I would change this theme for IE7, if it were IE9 then I would have to seriously reconsider! I do apologise for any inconvenience that browsing problems cause those with IE7, but there are also a lot of benefits of having a brand new 2011 theme, will be a long time until I change it. Looks like the corporations will still be on IE9 in 2018! lol.
Great changes, gotta love the pug ;)
I look forward to working with the new feel and design.
A appreciate all you focus and hard work.
Thanks, Katie
Wow, I really like it! Much easier to read and it’s very organized. I give my thumbs up! Although I can hardly see this font as I type this… very pale.
Yes, reader friendliness was one of my main reasons. At one point I will dig around in the stylesheet to see if I can make this comment box text darker, it is the same with the ‘topics’ and ‘archives’ drop downs. Sure I won’t have a problem doing so, but going to concentrate on getting the adsense ads back in tonight!
this is a great idea, and looks great to me so far… so I’ll keep on letting you know how things go, but I like this alot.
One question … are the changes you are making affecting the number of hits … mine have increased really significantly and wondered if anything you were doing might be causing that or is it just good news :-)
Ritsos, I suspect that we are seeing more internal traffic movement yes, although I haven’t really anal;ysed that yet. In addition it is worth noting that at the weekend there were periods when the site had no ads whilst I was playing with ad spots on the old theme, so your impressions would have been artificially low this weekend anyway. One thing that I did forget to note in this article is that the last them wasn’t perfect for seo, it used ‘h2′ tags in place of h1 tags, so I expect that in the longer term this theme will perform a little better in the SERPS.
guess no reason we can’t add h2 tags in the html editor too .. that might help maybe ?
actually, while I;m here … can we add for eg amazon carousel widgets by adding the code in the html section or is that not allowed ?
ta
Indeed, it is beneficial to use h2 and h3 tags for subtitles, I was referring to the primary article title. For some reason the old theme was using the h2 tag for those, and thus search engines might have been confused with subtitles in the same tag. I don’t have a problem with you using the Amazon Carousel, but that will count as one of your outgoing links. No problem with html widgets as long as people don’t go over the top on the same page. I have some nice amazon capsules forthcoming too, think I will do everybody a deal on the external link quota, they can use their external links for Amazon (100% impressions) but also use the capsules in addition (and those capsules will be rev share).
Look out it’s problem finding Simon – I’m at home on IE8 and now one of the columns is not right next to the other, but is staggered right below and to the right of the other column – just checked with my desktop same thing happens on IE8 and firefox – both computers are widescreen monitors
Simey, that isn’t a problem, that is me working in the stylesheet. The post column (far left) has just been made bigger to accommodate 468 wide ad units in the posts. Work in progress!
LOL Last night I thought I was going CRAZY too – you were changing the theme on me every few seconds!!!
2 quick comments as have to dash .. more feedback later
Think first block of ads in text would be better on the right .. it’s a bit weird for readers to have to start the text half way across the page from an aesthetic viewpoint. Doesn’t look as bad when the ad is an image mind.
Search facility seems wonky and not working properly (ie 7 again)
Anyway . looking good and sure much tweaking still going on … more later
Just added a widget to my recent ‘widget’ article and it’s no showing up – are there limitations to the coding I can use? The carousel and other Amazon widgets use Flash…
Of course I’m using IE7 at work so the Flash may be disabled – although I do see it when editing…
Same for me Simey .. I’ve emailed Ryan .. maybe I should have put it here !! Currently hanging off new posts as I want to amend my old ones first and widgets are one of the things I want at the bottom of them.
ps .. it doesn’t show in Chrome either so not an ie7 issue
Also my amazon affiliate links have gone from my articles and now post to a link that leads to http://excerptz.com/2011/hay-fever-or-allergic-rhinitis/0px%20!important;%22%20/%3E … so I’m going to have to go back through them all anyway which is kinda annoying …. Think I’m going to hold off doing anything here for a few days until it’s a bit more settled.
ah ignore the amazon affiliate link thing … looks ok in the others so i may have screwed something up on that particular one – ta
I don’t think this theme is going to convert very well. I am considering another switch.
mmmm well that was probably my best day ever on adsense so I’d have liked time to see if it worked or not .. was definitely a nicer design .. this one looks a bit wishy washy to me I’m afraid … sad to see the lat one go without giving it a fair chance :(
looks better now ;-)