We had a lot of good feedback, here and at Facebook, on our Makeover Monday experiment.
The site’s back to its familiar face, but we’re going to try to work out the logistics in the next week so that we can bring this back on an ongoing basis. It seems like people are into the idea, as long as we don’t change things too much.
Thanks again to everybody for the input and to graphic designer Roland Onodi for contributing the idea and being the ‘test pilot’.
We’re trying something new at Synthtopia this week – Makeover Monday.
Reader + graphic designer Roland Onodi contacted us via Facebook last week and said “I love your site, but….” and followed up with a new header image for the site and a couple of related graphics.
We asked readers for ideas and input on this and there seems to be consensus on the idea that it would be cool to allow readers to submit artwork for the site to be featured on Mondays. We still need to figure out the details of how to do this while maintaining quality and avoiding confusion, so weigh in on the original post with your ideas.
Onodi lives in Budapest, Hungary.
Over the years, we’ve had a couple of designers contact us to say “I love your site……but here’s a new masthead.”
We figure that’s the nice way of saying that the current masthead looks like it was state of the art for the 80′s.
The first proposed masthead, above, was created by reader Roland Onodi. The second, below, was created by reader Brook Boley.
These give us three ideas:
What do you think? Should we explore one of these options? Or is the masthead irrelevant to you – you come here for the synth news?
Is ‘the mob’ censoring discussion in the comments at Synthtopia?
Reader Someone Dudeus (we suspect that might be a nom de guerre) contacted us to complain about ‘mob rule’ censoring comments on our site:
You run a forum where the mob can censor ideas.
I agree – if comments in the forum is obnoxious or otherwise containing no content but innuendos and personal attacks and foul language – you remove the post.
But to have people “like” them and remove “disliked” posts is something completely different.
Not letting the guy thinking outside the box having a fair chance.
Other smuck sites can do that but U should not.
Here’s a little background on how comments are handled at Synthtopia:
This system isn’t perfect, but it’s as good as any we’ve seen, and it allows for posts to regularly get dozens and even hundreds of comments, while keeping the discussion relatively free of spam and other garbage.
If you’ve got feedback or suggestions on the way we handle commenting, please let us know. Thanks!
We’ve updated the site to address a problem that was affecting some users when they tried to comment.
While it’s not that uncommon for Synthtopia posts to get dozens (and sometimes even hundreds) of comments, commenting on the site wasn’t working for some readers. This was frustrating for the affected readers and unacceptable to us.
We’ve spent some time testing the site with a variety of operating systems and web browsers to address this. We tested it successfully with recent versions of all these browser & operating system/device combinations:
If you still have any problem, let us know via our feedback form, which is at the top of every page of the site, and tell us what browser and operating system you’re using.
Thanks!
A couple of users have sent feedback that the site layout looks funky in Windows IE 9 and that commenting isn’t working correctly in at least some versions of Firefox on the Mac.
I’ll try to get this addressed as soon as possible. I’ll need to duplicate the issue and try to get it resolved.
If you’re a CSS/browser guru and have tips on addressing these issues, let me know via the Feedback form. Of course, if you’re a CSS/browser guru and you use Firefox on the Mac, that might sort of be a Catch-22…….
Thanks for the feedback – please keep it coming!