Electronics Weekly Electronics Design & Components Tech News
A lot of effort has gone into the rebuild, from the Metropolis Web Team, and we’re really proud of the result. Here’s a quick run-through of the major new features that will help you get to grips with our redesigned site.
In a very brief executive summary, the new site will offer:
- Easier access to our broad range of content through a much-improved, content-led menu
- A more attractive, image-led front page
- Greater surfacing of related content on articles through a prominent ‘recommended articles’ box
- Vastly improved loading times
- Vastly improved responsiveness on tablets and mobiles
- Improved search functionality allowing searching by keyword, date and article type
- An improved Events calendar
- Better readability with clearer typography and signposting
- Clear separation of content items in the main navigation bar from functional items in a separate top menu
- Better integration with the jobs site through a drop-down jobs menu in the main navigation and a much better display of current jobs
- Enhanced advertising positions including in-article MPUs for mobile users and sidekick ads
For a bit more depth, take a quick introductory tour »
Thanks for the feedback Keith – we will take that on board.
About “About the blog” – that’s an interesting one. The ‘general bumf’ was under the main blog graphic before, on every page. This way it has been moved to the side of the posts, but maybe it shouldn’t be there at at all… or at the foot. I thought to the right was the natural home. Adjacent for context, but not stopping reading.
The thinking is it gives context to what the blog is and what it’s about and who the author is. I do feel this has to be somewhere. A lot of people find our pages out of context – via Google, say – and it is important they realise the blog page is a more personal post by a particular author, rather than a straighter news story from Electronics Weekly, say…
What do other people think?
AW
Alun,
I recognise there have been improvements of the speed of loading and all the comment stuff has been fixed, however my main issue is that the blogs have a) ‘recommended articles’ – don’t want to know about these, they just take up screen space; b) ‘About the blog’ – again more screen space. I understand that adverts are important to your business but if I can’t read the blog then I won’t visit the site as often, so you’ll lose out…
Please reconsider the layout. It’s not nice now.
Keith
Thank you for the feedback John. Some good points. We ask for feedback so have to take it on the chin if it’s not complimentary.
Taking them in turn….
* Mannerism index page – thank you, good point. I just double checked on the old site and the index listed 20 posts a page, and it is now 10 (that was the usual amount on the old site but we must have extended Mannerisms as an exception – so we should do it again). I’ll do my best to get the list of postings extended back to 20.
* We have added a count of comments to the index page – you don;t need to go into the post to see. It’s just to the right of the date of the post: 14th October 2015 5 Comments (note – “Leave a comment” represents zero comments”)
* About the recommended article – ouch, but good point. That’s mea culpa as the editor not checking the tag sufficiently. I’ve corrected it.
* ‘you are commenting too fast’ Again, good point – and apologies for this. This has been flagged and hopefully we will be able to squash it before too long.
AW
Thanks John R your comments are noted. Obiously the intention is to make the site more attractive to readers not less, so hopefully the IT people can sort this out.
I certainly agree about Mannerisms: The list of postings has been split into multiple, short, pages, I used to be able to scroll down the list to see what’s there, but now I have to go though several pages to see the same thing; it’s not nearly a convenient or quick, even if the page load times have been slightly reduced.
Plus: There use to be a count of the number of comments at the top of each posting, which I liked. Now I have to scroll right to the bottom of each page to find out if anyone’s commented on it.
Also:
The first of the ‘Recommended Articles’ on this page “Last chance to win oscilloscope …” links to a competition that closed in July!
The listed ‘improvements’ don’t seem to give me anything useful – I always access the site from a desktop PC. The improved search might be useful, but I normally tend to do a general search fro things using Google (or DuckDuckGo) to find articles from a range of sites on the topic I’m interested in.
And the first time I tried to post this comment I got ‘you are commenting too fast’
It’s appaling. Go back to the old look on Mannerisms please and I’ll just give the rest of the site a miss
Sorry you don’t like the new look, Mike. Is it really appalling? What do other people think?