New Website
If you’re reading this then the new website it working! All the old content is here (even going back to Linux Lifestyle days), but in a snazzy new layout. There’ll be loads happening on here on the coming months and years, so be sure to check back to hear all the latest from Linux Voice.
If you notice any problems, take a screenshot and e-mail it to ben@linuxvoice.com, and we’ll do our best to fix it.
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About The Author
Ben Everard
Ben Everard is the co-author of Learning Python with the Raspberry Pi and hacks hardware projects held together with a big dollop of Linux and Free Software glue. He's @ben_everard on Twitter.
19 Comments
The layout doesn’t seem to make any sense, why is the newest news on the left and an old one massive in the middle? Can you also get areyouahuman captcha as recaptcha is HORRIBLE.
I understand the need for adverts, but some of the adverts animation is very distracting and some of them are questionable of whether they are providing legitimate software. Although it was an advert for Mac OS that i shouldnt be using and I will make sure I take this Mac laptop to the scrap metal shop straight after I finish typing this message.
The subscriber section has a username and password login – unfortunately I don’t have any such thing – just checked my email to be sure. Is this something that will be rolled out in the coming days or should I have these details already?
We’ll be e-mailing out login details for the subscriber’s area in about a week’s time.
Ah ignore me, I just saw the thing on the front page which explains this, doh!
Also I agree with Bob – recaptcha is horrible.
Hi! The official on sale date (when the mag hits the UK newsstands) is the 27th of February. To keep everything in sync, that’s when we’ll email digital subscribers as well. Thanks for being patient!
It looks nice 🙂 A little rough around the edges in places (the alignment seems a little ‘off’ on certain elements), but good all the same!
Love the first issue BTW!
Thanks! Yes, we still want to tweak things as time goes on and when we get issue 2 finished.
If only everyone could agree to just use Firefox on Linux instead of all these other browsers and operating systems, it’d be so much easier to get it all looking perfect 🙂
There are plenty of improvements planned for the future.
It looks really good Ben, well done!
The big red “Subscribe now!” button on the first page has a broken link (https instead of http). The buttons on the other pages seem to work fine.
Thanks — fixed. We’re working hard on issue 2 at the moment, so we’ll be ironing out any glitches in the site over the coming weeks!
I Like the website atually, and the evolution will certainly be interesting to watch. I wonder if you thought about using this experience and writing up some your learnings in web site design. If I may humbly suggest also that the LV team have your gravatars set up…so that we can put a face to your posts 😉 I am getting mine now…so watch out for my ugly mug!
Just a minor possible bug? I think in the lower left “content” box, you have two entries for “main img” and “side img” which I think shouldn’t reside there.
Of course they pop to the images, as you’d expect, But I /think/ maybe you’ve added them incorrectly to appear as items under your CMS (what are you using, BTW?)
I /think the intent is to have them appear as side and main images, rather than as options in the sidebar menu.
Other than that I think it looks ok, 3 column layout fairly straight forward, personally I prefer a site to have most of it’s information one or two screens worth, rather than having to scroll through almost endless downwards pages as more content/comments are added. That’s perfectly acceptible in a comment-able page, but for a front/home page setup, the layout ought to really be mostly linkable text, a few news/announcement items, and pretty clickable lists off to one side (ads notwithstanding – I recognise the need for them).
If you’re using Drupal or Joomla, I think you set up a seperate “layout style” for the front pages, and optimally tweak it , and use a comment style (ie the current style) for individual items.
I realise this may actually require a fair bit of re-work, and of course time is limited, but I honestly think it will be worth it, and in fact should make maintaining it far easier in the long run).
If I can be of help, please let me know. Oh yeah, and I am afraid I agree with bob about the captures, but I don’t know of any better system so it’s kind of neccesary evil. I usually have to try a few times to get it right.
Thanks Mihaly, all useful feedback. We’re mega busy with issue 2 right now, but when that’s gone to the printers in a few weeks, we’ll do some fine-tuning on the website. Oh, and re: your question about newsagents in Sydney: I’ve asked our distributor for specific shops. When the mag goes officially on sale (on the 27th), hopefully we’ll be able to put up a full list of newsagents. Cheers!
Nice work on the layout. Just a couple of points: there’s a general lack of whitespace in the layout which leads to it looking kind of “boxy” and cramped. I think if you set some kind of consistent value for padding/margins it will look a lot nicer.
Also the nesting per-comment red borders are very visually jarring, I think you could just remove them and be better off. 🙂
Thanks for the feedback David. I’ve made the comment boxes a nicer shade of grey for now 🙂 Once we have issue 2 finished, we’ll spend more time fine-tuning the new site.
Sorry guys but those ads are one huge fail. This website is your shop window to attract new subscribers. Yet the first impression is more like a pr0n site than the website of a technical magazine with its flashing ads and puffs for dodgy payday loan companies. A few discreet IT related ads would be fine but these don’t do justice to your professionalism or to your excellent magazine.
Put this another way. I’ve been using this laptop daily for several weeks since doing a fresh openSuse install. Your site was the one which prompted me to install an ad blocker.
Regards, Pete
Sorry if they annoyed you Peter. We’re looking in to ways to make them more specific for the magazine audience, like tying them in with adverts in the mag itself. We’re testing lots of things at the moment as we get established, and if the adverts here become a pain, we’ll consider removing them.