We’re working behind the scenes to bring you a new, improved We Hunted the Mammoth — at least as far as the design of the site goes. As I think I mentioned earlier, I’m not doing anything radical. The aim is to streamline and declutter the site and to make it easier to navigate and use.
Here’s what to expect:
- Less-cluttered sidebar
- Less-cluttered main bar
- Cleaner, clearer design overall
- Better navigation between pages of comments
- Buttons so you can blockquote, etc without HTML in comments. No more need to fear the blockquote monster!
Someone also suggested it would be better to do “nofollow” links for MRA sites rather than using donotlink, so I’ll be doing that.
I will now be able to use WordPress plugins, so I can add other features/options as well. I don’t want to add them willy nilly, but if they can add some useful functionality without cluttering stuff up I’m open to suggestions.
Any other features/plugins you want added? Upvotes and downvotes for comments perhaps? Polls in the sidebar?
Any stuff that gets in the way that you want moved or removed?
Any issue that you have with the design or functionality of the blog now that you think could be improved?
Let me know what you think, from your feelings about font size to possible WordPress plugins to look at.
Oh, and again: this redesign is costing me some $$, so if you’re a fan of the site and haven’t already donated, please consider donating through the PayPal button below. Thanks!
Please consider keeping the total memory load down, I already find a bit of lag on my old iPad. So not too many flash ads or similar objects please.
Would the buttons work on a phone? I often visit using a phone browser.
Presumably a coding function would be great, if only to show people how to code for the blockquote, italic, bold, links, etc. Also, numbered lists and bullet points would be great, because the current ul/ol stuff is a pain in the ass to work with and I still haven’t really gotten it right when I try doing it in HTML.
The auto-embedding is cool, but it also lags loading time and eats up data. I guess you can say this is a complaint from mobile users. 😛
Come to think of it, this page regularly lags out on my Kindle Fire, too. So “faster on mobile” would definitely be a plus for me.
Needs more skulls
Echoing what people have said about it being phone-friendly.
Also:
– Threaded comments, ability to follow individual posters, something like that; basically anything except the “all conversations are crammed into a single continuity” thing.
– Sarah’s idea of a who’s who is a great one.
– An archive of noteworthy comments might be good. For example there’s a post which explains how to prevent Youtube recommending videos by hateful scumbags to you. Things like that would be a great resource.
– More cat pictures. David, sometimes whole days go by that I don’t see pictures of people’s kitties. This should change.
Also hi, PolicyOfMadness! I hadn’t seen you for a while and was missing you.
Is more kitties an option? If so, more kitties, please.
Did someone say “more kitties?”
http://orig03.deviantart.net/9456/f/2015/235/c/d/we_can_do_it__by_gckatz-d96vvjx.png
Paradoxical Intention:
How about: if you donate, you get an edit button and no ads?
I agree that allowing editing is problematic. If people feel that they really need it, a compromise would be to allow you to flag your comment: basically, to attach something which says “the commenter has second thoughts about this, so see their followup later in the thread”.
OTOH, the further you get from vanilla WordPress, the more possibilities you introduce for security problems.
Dunno how feasible this is, but it would be fantastic if there’s a way to see the most recent comments on mobile. It would be a lot easier to see where the active discussions are happening.
@Moggie
Or if you’re here after so long with a certain number of posts, you get an edit button. It’s unlikely a troll would stick around long enough AND get the certain number of posts necessary to edit them.
Looks like there’s a plugin that allows edits for a limited amount of time, which seems like the simplest solution.
One suggestion i’d have is relaunching the web store with new tee shirt designs. I had a look at the store recently, and it mostly seemed to be “manboobz” era stuff so I didn’t get one. If there were updated T shirts i’d happily buy one 🙂
Kind of a smaller issue compared to most of the things you deal with on this site but just a thought.
@Kootiepatra:
If you click “display full version of page” on a mobile, you can see the most recent comments.
..my 2 cents worth. Go for a responsive design. Your site needs to work on mobile platforms.
A “preview comment” button would let people fix markup if they get it wrong first time, overcoming the blockquote monster. However, a button to reply-with-quote would usually be superior as it can include a link back to the original comment for context.
Either of those would be cool, but a non-JavaScript fallback, that lets users type into a plain form, is still recommended.
Personally, I’d like to see complete alt-text when the articles contains screenshots of text (from eg. deleted tweets), because I sometimes read with images disabled. But that’s a content requirement rather than a design/plugins consideration, and given the popularity of kittens and reaction gifs, might not be high on most readers’ lists.
I hate threaded comments – haaate – so if they are added, could it please be an option we can turn on and off (like how the mobile site lets you flick over to the full site)? ^^;
Speaking of which, if any of you who access the blog via phone have issues with or comments about the design now, and/or suggestions on what to fix, let me know. (I access the blog on laptop and android tablet, but not on a phone.) I will definitely be talking to the web dev about making the site work for mobile.
I use it on a phone, but always via the “view full site” option. I am allergic to mobile-specific interfaces.
I’ve only had two problems with the mobile interface: The aforementioned lack of a “Recent comments” section, and the ads. Oh God, the ads. I’m talking full-screen popups, autoplaying sound, autodownloading malware (I have downloads disabled, but it still shows me a warning), redirects to Imaginary Russia… The works.
… And yeah, I know that’s a problem with the ad servers, not you, but Google blocked AdBlock (irony) on Android and I needed to whine somewhere. =P
@EJ – Oh yes, I am familiar with that, but it also means the text goes super tiny on my phone, and the site runs much more poorly. So a “Recent Comments” in the mobile version itself would be super helpful for me.
Could the comments be numbered?
Seconding Newt. Preview function is totes awesome, and is (imo) better than edit.
A little html5 mammoth that occasionally walks across the screen for us to hunt.
@David oh please yes see about fixes for commenting on mobile. Half the time I try to comment, it’s so sluggish that I give up. Each letter takes about 5-10 seconds of pressing it on the screen, waiting to see if it will even show up, then either hitting it again because it didn’t or repeating the process for the next letter. Of course, I do have a three-year-old budget tablet, so…grain of salt, I guess.
It is kind of funny when I get frustrated and try to type normally, and the words become gibberish by the end of the sentence, though. It’s like the Kindle is trying to catch up, but it can’t, so it just throws out random combinations of letters and hopes it was close. “You meant to say ‘these manosphere idiots are bndnxi dif voospsne’, right? …right? Why are you crying.”