Blogs An update on the redesign

I like the redesign. Kept enough of the BT spirit to be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, and that's a good, thing.

If you do decide to do any mobile version, please make it opt-in, as my N900 handless full websites really well and enforced mobile-specific pages really annoy me.

 

I'd love to see a more mobile-friendly site but please don't go making an app! I'd rather have a bookmark on my phone browser rather than installing another content viewer.

 

What, really? I've never seen any on there before.

 

Overall I like it, although it did get confusing when the Amiga news article was taken from the news section and could only be found in the featured bit at the top. Once I get used to that though it shouldn't be a problem.

Also I view the site on my N97 a lot and the width is perfect in landscape - the 3rd column is cut off but I don't check those much.

 

Hehe, that's a solution for the third column

 

Yep, got a "MyDirtyWhatever.com" advert... at work.
I like bewbs and stuff as much as anyone here but maybe my boss wouldn't be too impressed to see me porn-browsing at work.

 

The moment you posted screenshots with adblock running immediately ruined your credibility with me.

 

Not to mention the Torrent client running, as well as Usenet and BitTorrent site bookmarks. I'm willing to bet that those copies of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop CS4 and Office weren't paid-for.

 

Oh, and just to address those people moaning about the tag cloud and the thinness of this article - this is a blog and so conforms to the thinner blog layout. Try moving around the site and you'll find that reviews etc. use a wider column format.

 

I like the New Design Keep up the good work

Been coming to this site since you started up you not disappointed me yet...

 

And what, may I ask, is wrong with adblock? A bigger credibility crisis resulted from his choice of image hosting, IMO.

 

Bit-tech, and most websites like it, do not get money from clicks, but from how often the ads they serve are viewed. If you block the ads, you're actually hurting the site and in theory, if enough people block the ads, it could lead to people losing their jobs [because we can no longer afford to pay them] or even closing the site completely.

Every page viewed actually costs us a not insignificant amount of money to serve before factoring in salaries for the staff creating the content, the cost of running a test lab, the cost of housing each member of the team (furniture, PC, IT infrastructure, telephone system, etc). You'd be surprised how much it costs to run a website like bit-tech on a monthly basis.

Taking those costs into account, we need to run advertising and our readers need to see that advertising. Alternatively, we could charge for the content, but we'd rather keep it free - paywalls go against the openness of the internet. It doesn't matter if you don't click on the ads (if you see something that interests you, please do click on it, but we are certainly not asking you to click on every ad that you see on your screen), because we're paid per view (well, per 1,000 views).

There's a great article over on Ars Technica about how adblocking is "devastating" the sites you love - it's recommended reading for anyone who blocks ads on every site they visit and thinks what they're doing is harmless: http://arstechnica.com/business/new...king-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars

We have always tried to keep advertising relevant and the team does its best to make sure that intrusive or resource-heavy ads never make it onto the site. It's not perfect, but the more vocal you are about certain ads that don't meet the site's typically high standards, the quicker we can actually action them.

If I could run a website ad-free, I would, but it's simply not possible if you want to build a business and actually draw a salary (journalists aren't particularly well paid, for what it's worth). Bit-tech has and will continue to invest in content as the site grows - that's one thing that hasn't changed since the Dennis acquisition. Dennis believes in great content and continues to invest in it.

With regards to his choice of image hosting, he's probably never seen the invasive and horrible ads that are on that rather poor excuse for an image hosting service and doesn't know any better. If bit-tech's advertising was like that, we'd have a hard time saying "please support the site by not blocking our ads" with a straight face. The fact is that our ads are not intrusive and, certainly where this new design was concerned, we worked hard to not only reduce the number of ad slots, but to also make sure they're not slap bang in the middle of the content (the big square ad is no longer in the middle of articles, right below the drop down menu, for example).

 

I agree 100% with Tim there.
And I still remember the [pretty heated, at least partially] debate about IntelliTXT adverts on BT in which it became pretty clear what BT is all about: Keepin' it real with their community.

For reference:

Original blog post
2nd blog post after they'd been taken down again

That's why BT is great: They DO listen to requests for change!

 

Not sure whether it's been mentioned but, a mobile version, like what was stated at the bottom of the blog would be great. Just don't make it iPhone exclusive, should be Andriod or WM exclusive Obviously this would be a rather large workload for someone, and the chances of this actually happening probably aren't the highest. But still, an app for this site would be awesome!!

 

TBH I dont notice most ads on the net now. Just one of those facts of life plus bit-techs do seem unique compared to other sites.

I never knew that tim, from now on i'm gonna click on everything, life is so much more interesting when you push anything and everything! =D

 

Thanks for that Tim. That answers a number of questions I've been pondering recently.

+1

 

I've already asked at other sites, but could you put a front page sticky or, let new memners know, the IP ranges for the Ads on your site, so we can either add them to the allowed sites, or add then to Peerguardian etc....

That way I would be happy to allow the ads to show, and allow the tracker to let them know i've seen it....


About the site : As with all things, change is a pain, but hey, we'll get used to it.....

 

I don't even block ads on the site I work for, nor did I when I was a subscriber.

 

Should we all start hitting the refresh button a 1000 times each visit, if that helps? ( I dont run adblockers either ).

Interesting point about colour choices made earlier, and did you know that according to research ( dont ask me for a link, cant find it ) white text on a black background produces less eye strain than black on white? Try it for yourselves. This is because the eye adjusts to make the most of the visable white light on the screen, making it harder to see the small black text; with a black screen the eyes can relax and focus on the white text much more easily. Something to think about if you can implement colour & background colour choices for the main site along with the forums..

 

Another point/question, is the forum colour scheme going to be looked at? To match the rest of the sites 'darker' colours? When I first came to B-T after the re-design I loved the look, then I clicked on the forum... Colours didn't match too well.

Just a thought.