Pausing to Read: Site Design
Instapaper does point to a clear flaw in newspaper and magazine website design: The reading experience is rarely, if ever, the priority. For better or worse, it typically takes a backseat to organizing and promoting content and generating pageviews.
Instapaper does point to a clear flaw in newspaper and magazine website design: The reading experience is rarely, if ever, the priority. For better or worse, it typically takes a backseat to organizing and promoting content and generating pageviews.
Joanne of Tomorrow Museum pointed me to this article featuring the creator of Instapaper. If you haven’t heard of it yet, Instapaper allows you to bookmark an article/blog post to read later, but the version you read is stripped of any graphics and advertisements. You only see the actual content, distraction-free.
The design of other blogs has been on my mind recently. I had been reading everything via Google Reader, but after clicking through a longer article for Anil Dash‘s site, I was struck with how easy it was to actually read his post. I wasn’t bombarded with advertisements throughout the post or in the side-bar, no big header, just a clean-cut site focused on the content. After that, I had clicked through to a post from Kevin Rose, and again, I was treated to a site stripped of any distractions and completely focused on the content. Rose’s site (white text on black background) is the opposite of Anil Dash’s (black text on white background), but still completely readable.
There are plenty of examples of good design for websites out there, but those are the two that stuck out the most for me. After I read the article about Instapaper, I started to reflect on my own blog and also how I am reading content. Apart from cutting back on the amount I’m reading (more on this later, but that movement was inspired through the various digital sabbaticals occurring and hearing about the power of subtraction), I am taking in content in new ways. I am reading a lot more through the Kindle application on my mobile phone (a lot easier to hold a phone in one hand with a baby in the other compared to a book) in quick bursts of five-ten minutes at a time. It may make the process of reading slower, but I feel like I get through more pages reading like this than I would if I sit down to read something. The other way I have been taking in content is through audiobooks (I’ve been using Audible because of the quality of selection and the readers). I have been listening to books while walking or during commutes in the car.
I never thought of it until now, but both of these ways of taking in content happened when there was nothing else going on around me. As writers, we always focus on distraction-free writing, whether it is writing at night or using a program like OmmWriter, but we rarely stop to consider the reader and how to give them the best reading experience. Too many blogs are focused on advertisements and SEO that they forget why those blogs actually exist: to be read.
All of this made me look at my blog’s design in a new light. It never did feel truly right to me, but I wasn’t sure what was “off.” Instead of doing some minor tweaks, I decided to take a leap of faith and try something completely different. Thankfully, Squarespace, has a lot of different themes available that I can adjust easily without knowing CSS. I like the feel of it already, but I’m not sure if it is as stripped down as I would like. As an unknown blogger, I want people to discover the content I have written, but I am still undecided if people using the tags (on the right) or the Archive (on the left). I do not think I need both of them, but I will wait and see what works best.
This change in design is all in hopes that people find it easier to read this site and find other content that they may enjoy. Let me know what you think.
Oct 08, 2010 @ 00:36:38
Hi James,
You write really well and many of your articles out there which I have read reflect this focus, separate, minimal or you can say altogether, a holistic experience on how you see things. I noticed that the design of your site has change. With the recent launch of writing a newsletter, I have decided to change things around a bit as well. Thus, I use the Thesis theme framework. I actually don't know a thing about CSS, but if you give me cut and paste, that would do to start. Actually, it's the hooks that helps out. Basically to just jump start the idea.
But anyways I did noticed myself focusing on your content as you now have moved the page towards the center and darkened it to better highlight the text. I kind of get a Dark Room-ish feel and that was quite enlightening. Well, that's just me.
Alright, talk soon!
Thu
Oct 08, 2010 @ 07:38:44
Thanks for stopping by, Thu. I'm glad you enjoy my writing, and I do think this design suites the subject matter I write about better. I do want to bring the focus back to the main content, and I think this design does it a little better than the previous one.
I see Thesis everywhere. It almost makes me think I should put an affiliate link up here even though I don't use the theme myself. Is it fairly easy to customize?
Oct 08, 2010 @ 21:55:37
From several tutorials I've found online, I was able to manipulate things around, however, it's more or less dependent on you. If you like controlling the options in your site, design and page, they have a separate section inside your wordpress dashboard where you can do all that.
Supposedly, you get a cleaner theme without all the junk CSS programming as well which is also great for SEO purposes.
But familiarity with CSS can give you added advantage as you would think that you install the theme and that's it, however there's a bit of a learning curve if you're not really into tampering with the theme. They have this system call 'hooks' which through a plugin, you can insert plain HTML and manipulate further without messing up the code and that can be a challenge as one wrong code and you can't see your site!
Overall, you have to try to see. I bought into the hype at first because hey, it was the SEO advantage but now I'm glad because it has been pretty stable and does what I want.
Oct 10, 2010 @ 02:46:43
Hi James,
Your site is looking good. I really like this design as it puts more emphasis on you contents. Plus, it does suit your style of writing.
I see you use square space. I don't know how flexible this platform is. I use headway and have used thesis in the past. They are both cool framework but I still think headway is a little better than thesis….The main reason why I have fallen in love with headway is because of the ease of customization…and it also helps me create websites for my clients very quickly…
Later James..
Oct 10, 2010 @ 10:26:10
Thanks for stopping by, Adam.
Squarespace is a different hosting platform, not a theme like Thesis is. It offers about 50 different themes you can use, but each one is very customizable, allowing you to control how many columns, the widths, adding different widgets through the site, etc. For someone that knows what they're really doing, they offer a full map of the site with all the CSS attributes so you can change anything and everything to your liking. I stuck to one of the themes and made minor adjustments to it to make some things stand out more (like the titles of the post).
I really like how it looks and kind of want to visit the site every minute just to watch it load.
Oct 10, 2010 @ 23:43:31
Hi James,
This is a nice theme, focusing on content. It's always a challenge going over to a new theme, as I went through about 4 different themes in my first 2 months blogging before I settled on one I like. I think it's tough finding a theme that balances promoting your old or featured content, but is also minimalistic enough to be easily readable.
Oct 11, 2010 @ 00:39:27
I also think it's human nature to want to change the small things in life to keep life interesting – rearranging furniture, buying new wardrobes, or changing our blog themes around. I didn't mention this in the post, but the website 37signals.com (makers of Basecamp, Highrise, etc) try to change their site at least once a year. That's pretty much unheard of for a major website like they have.
I'm glad you like it, too, Richard.
Oct 12, 2010 @ 19:20:04
James,
I like the look of your site. If al sites were exactly the same they would get boring. So some diversity is a good thing. That being said a certain "standard" is also important so people do not get lost. Those things and what you said about Not having too many ad distractions are the things I think are important.
Really that is the only things that "bugs" me about a sites design, is being bombarded by tons of pop-ups and ads. A banner or ad here and there is fine and expected, but some people over do it.
The one remaining factor is something that isn't seen, but also important. Site load speed. Rarely is it bad enough that "visitors" notice, but it can have a definite negative effect on SEO if "google bots" notice
Oct 13, 2010 @ 08:16:49
I don't think I can adjust the speed of the site load through Squarespace, but do you have any resources that you use to test a site to see how fast it actually loads? I'm so used to opening links in a new, hidden, tab that I don't even notice the load times anymore.
I'm glad you like the new design though!