Welcome to the new, improved We Hunted the Mammoth!
We’ve moved from WordPress.com and replaced the old WordPress theme with a streamlined custom theme. And we’ve been able to implement a number of long-requested features that will make navigation easier and commenting more pleasant. In related news, the Blockquote Monster has resigned to spend more time with his family.
Moving a blog with 2471 posts and 573,557 comments (yes, really) to a new server is a messy job. We were offline for longer than we expected while we tried to get all the old content up. And we’re still sorting through issues with plugins and widgets and so on. If you notice some weirdness going on please let me know in the comments below. Or send me an email.
And let me know what you think of the new features.
HUGE HUGE HUGE thanks to Tracy Bradley, who handled the redesign and the big messy move and dealt with all the technical glitches that came up. For free. Without her help the new site would look crappy and not work and my head would have exploded from frustration about a dozen times. Hire her for stuff!
Are the headers on comments meant to be huge?
I kinda dig the Robot Cat, although I think his sign should read “feed me puny human”.
Into moderation with me!
It looks rather good! I’d already gotten used to the old design (despite only reading the site for a few weeks), but I’m sure my eyes will adjust with some time. Great new design.
I’m really liking the new site, from what I’ve seen of it so far. No more blockquote mammoth!
Its such a shame I’ll never know the honour of being tricked by the Blockquote Mammoth…
I like that avatar pics are larger now. Especially since so many people have cute kitties as their avatars.
Have commented infrequently under my twitter handle “tricyclist” Going to try a block quote now
How about that.
How are people adding profile pics? Is there a way to create a commenters account?
nparker, you can still enjoy the pleasure of the blockquote mammoth! Just type in the html yourself and make sure you make a mistake somewhere.
I like the new design. It’s sleek and looks very clean.
I noticed this with the old site too. The new version is working much better. It loads faster and doesn’t seem to slow anything else down.
I’m also using this comment to get myself out of moderation.
David, I thought I’d escaped! Then again, its not like I’d summon it on purpose or anything…
A number of embedded images, GIFs, and videos weren’t working for me when the new site first launched, but they’re up now. I prefer a smaller font than the one this design uses, since it means more words per screen and less time scrolling, but fortunately I can fix that from my end.
The site is looking good. Running a lot smoother too.
Good job, David and Tracy! The site looks great on my laptop in both landscape and portrait. Also, it’s super legible – I shrunk the size a good bit to get lots of text on the screen and I can still read it without my glasses, unlike over half of other sites.
It’s not working on my phone (Android 5 using the android browser). I get the error “there were too many redirects”. In Chrome on the same phone, I’m seeing the old site, with the latest post being the Open Thread for San Bernadino. I refreshed, same thing.
On my Kindle Fire (first generation), the site looks just like Chrome on my phone, i.e. the old site.
ETA: Oooh, yes, 5 minutes to edit, sweet. Oh, and you’re not seeing my Thinky Kitty avatar because I’m logging in with a new email address. (It’s me, not you.)
Yay, maintenance is done.
Hope it doesn’t take me too long to get used to the redesign.
Looks great!
Just posting for testing purposes.
eta: Interesting, it picked up my avatar. How’d it do that?
We Hunted the (Blockquote) Mammoth.
And then roasted it over an open flame. ‘Twas delicious.
I wish the number of comments notice was at the bottom of the post like it was on the old site. I like to know approximately how long I’m going to be sucked into the comment threads before I start reading them, and it looks like the only place this number is given is at the top of the post.
Nested reply test!
Also, it’s doing something wonky on my iPad. Looks like it’s loaded and then kinda resizes for a bit before settling in. From a technical standpoint I’m guessing (and this is just a guess) that the width is being set by percentages calculated on the fly and there’s some box model weirdness going on with margins/padding/borders. I realize that makes no sense unless you do web design, but your designer should be able to work out what I mean!
And idk if it’s a result of the source link and the same thing that happened before the move, but embedded images in comments don’t seem to always be working, and the DOM element for the comment text is set to overflow: hidden and it’s weird, not sure how I’d handle that one though (z-index maybe?)
And I agree on the “random post” widget being asking for necro trouble. Otherwise… big avatars I can actually see! Little buttons for blockquotes! And I hear we can edit now? Nifty!
Edit!! It works!
And my reply to dhag, written after PI’s reply, went after PI’s reply, so that works. Might get weird if we start getting:
Comment
– reply
—- reply to reply
—— reply to reply to reply
—- reply to reply
– reply
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I like the new layout! I was concerned yesterday when the update went on…and on…and then the message you got trying to visit the site became one terse line…
I thought you were being DDOS’d. Glad I was wrong.
POM, I’ll look into that. One comment navigation thing I think you’ll like is that once the comments go to more than one page, there’s a little comment pagination thing at the top and bottom of comments.
serrana, it sounds like what’s going on with your phone is a DNS updating thing. Sometimes it takes a while; for me, the new site started working on my laptop before it did on my tablet, for example. It should start redirecting to the new version of the site on your phone any time now.
On the issues with images, I’m not sure what’s going on but I think the new host is still processing them somehow? I think we’ve got some sort of graphics accellerator/compressor/somethingorother that’s supposed to make the loading and display of graphics more efficient, but maybe it has to process them all first? (This is why I’m working with Tracy; I don’t understand this shit.)
Also, everyone is going into moderation now; the spam software isn’t working right yet.
It took a while for me to get the website to work but, hey!
But, I agree with @Paradoxical Intention. It would be nice to have more colors to distinguish space and headers. Otherwise it’s super nice.
EDIT: And I can edit posts nice. Hopefully trolls won’t abuse this.
You need a Gravatar account for profile pics. Or WordPress, I think.
Oh, there is a lot that I like about the new design. It’s sleek and readable, and I like that the comments policy is right there in your face when you go to start a comment.
Really, the location of the number of comments is my only gripe, and that is a really insignificant gripe.
@David Futrelle
That’s good! I had to use adblock because the ads were too much for my computer. Hopefully that won’t be necessary now.