Scott Hanselman

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Blog Redesign 2007

March 27, '07 Comments [18] Posted in Musings
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Yep, this blog looks old. It's time for a redesign. I kind of miss the 2003 look and feel, but my current site

I didn't want to ask publicly but Jeff Atwood insisted that I should, so here is my quiet call for help. If you're a Web 2.0 designer and you can sex up my blog to be all Web 2.1 like Alex's or Phil's, then holler at me and if it works out, I'll link to you with a "Designed by YOUR NAME HERE" on every page."

Things that are important to me:

  • Work in IE7 and FireFox
  • Have a Printer-specific CSS so stuff prints easily
  • You have to use the CSS classes that DasBlog creates
  • Little touches like making my comments look different than everyone else's
  • Nice touches like XFN, little graphics next to external hrefs, etc...
  • Pleasant, with room for some of the advertisements without making the site look like Las Vegas (it's heading in that direction)

Thanks...now back to your regular scheduled programming.

UPDATE: To be clear, in the weeks leading up to this post I've interviewed six paid designers. This post isn't an attempt to be mingy or miserly - I'm happy to pay if the designer would prefer. I just thought that many designers are looking for work and that some search engine optimization (SEO) in the form of 4500 links to their design site might be more valuable.

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About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. I am a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Comments [18]
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 4:38:42 AM UTC
Scott, the other thing your site needs is an easy way to peruse your history. Your cloud tag is okay, but really doesn't go back far enough.
Michael K. Campbell
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 4:49:18 AM UTC
Scott, when redesigning and asking for a printer-specific CSS - PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make sure this ALSO works for the European A4 size paper (210 x 297 mm) which is sligthly less wide than the US letter size.

I'm amazed by how many even very professional web sites still insist on printing to a fixed width - usually the US Letter format - which means all the lines get cut off on the right by a few millimeters.....

Thanks for thinking about us international users, too!
Marc Scheuner
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 5:11:09 AM UTC
Man, do I wish I had the time to finish up the HanselManga theme! Looking forward to seeing what it looks like!
Jon Galloway
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 5:13:37 AM UTC
OSWD?

If Jeff Atwood told you to jump off a bridge would you?
Scott
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 6:30:14 AM UTC
If Jeff Atwood and his angry mob of Diggers threw you off a bridge, would you fall?
Jon Galloway
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 9:11:09 AM UTC
Sure thing man.. I'm interested.. Let me see what can I dig out for you. :-)
Chirag
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 2:53:10 PM UTC
Hi Scott,
i'm using DasBlog too since 2003 and recently updated my design. But DasBlog is a dirty ASP.NET 1.1 beast, which makes it nearly impossible to get an up-to-date Web2.0 XHTML/CSS valid page...
Rightstuff looks very promising, and i'm interested which design you get
deedee
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 4:33:26 PM UTC
What's the time frame on this, Scott? i.e. when would you like to have this completed?
Justice~!
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 4:55:01 PM UTC
I'm a long time silent reader of your blog Scott, but I am afraid I am going to have to call you out on this one. It's totally lame to offer a web designer payment by just having their name on your website. Unless I am missing something, you are not planning on paying this person for their time. There seems to be a prevalent meme that web design work should just be done for free and 'credentials' or 'portfolio building' are good enough forms of payment. This is absurd. This is coming from a C# programmer, not a web designer, BTW. (I hate web design, which is why its so surprising to me people are willing to do that work unpaid: it sucks!)
Greg
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 5:03:35 PM UTC
Greg, I did give that some thought. My last design - remembering that this is a one-page site, so there's only one template to change - cost $300. If the design is awesome, and the designer wants to be paid, that's great. I'm not being cheap here. The site has a Google Page Rank of 7, and if there's an up-and-coming designer who wants to get their name out there, it's a good and low-effort form of free advertising.

To be clear, in the weeks leading up to this post I've interviewed six paid designers. This post isn't an attempt to be mingy or miserly - I'm happy to pay if the designer would prefer. I just thought that many designers are looking for work and that some search engine optimization (SEO) in the form of 4500 links to their design site might be more valuable.
Scott Hanselman
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 5:04:07 PM UTC
Michael Campbell - did you see the Archives and Calendar links at the top of the page?
Scott Hanselman
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 6:09:22 PM UTC
Hi Scott,

We used to work together at STEP ages ago... :)

Have you considered just using an open source CMS like Drupal or even a blog framework like Wordpress, and customizing one of the existing templates to your liking?

I'm using Drupal for about a dozen sites right now (can send links if you'd like), and have been pretty impressed.
Rick Palmer
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 6:27:22 PM UTC

I don't find it immoral to find designers willing to do work for free in return for name recognition. What's the difference between creating a free design for a well known site or for free template repository site like oswd.org or openwebdesign.org if the designer is willing to do it for free? If you can't find such a designer then you can step up and offer payment.


Scott: why is this website still using .NET 1.1? Does this mean dasBlog doesn't use any of the new features in .NET 2.0?
Abdu
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 6:31:41 PM UTC
One more thing Scott, you can also take this opportunity to solicit volunteer work to create more themes and skins for dasBlog itself. The more themes it offers, the more attractive it becomes to potential users. Look at DNN.

(Note: I don't know if dasBlog supports themes & skins)
Abdu
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 6:40:01 PM UTC
Hi Scott,

Looking forward to your new design. Have you considered putting a request on rentacoder.com?

Cheers,
Vaibhav
Vaibhav
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 7:03:31 PM UTC
I'm sorry but I don't have the time to help you right now. (ahem, cough, cough)
John A. Davis
Thursday, March 29, 2007 2:11:20 AM UTC
Scott, Whats the time frame on this???
Chirag
Thursday, March 29, 2007 7:02:52 PM UTC
Scott,
I don't care what your blog looks like. If it was in Courier New I would still make it the first thing I read at lunch time here at work. All I do here at work is make information from data and vice versa all day long. So maybe I'm biased and I am using you but you return a lot of information in a small space and that suits my constraints just fine. I am really anti-peacock feathers in blogs and websites and on computers.

I don't have any peacock feather skills but I would RUN, not walk, to get a couple links on your website. That is money in the bank for a small startup with no million dollar backers. So anyone that is saying you are trying to get something for free (a re-design), has no need for "inbound links" (read: SEO) nor understanding of how popular you blog is.
John A. Davis
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.