I redesigned the blog layout.
Duh.
I did it for lots of reasons. One is that I didn’t like the old design. I put it together myself based on someone else’s design, and the person who coded the style originally had lots of weird stuff in it, making it really hard to adjust. Second, I wasn’t happy with the layout; it was too scattered. Third, I had so many kludges in the WordPress code that I dreaded upgrades; it meant a lot of taking notes, rewriting, debugging. Now most of that sort of thing is located in the "theme", the style files. That’ll make upgrades much smoother (and I’ll note that this redesign was prompted in part due to pressure to upgrade to the latest WP release). Fourth, the big square Google ad is now gone, so the actual content of the post has physically moved up. Impact: more of the newest entry can be seen, so less scrolling for you.
One major difference, of course, is that the sidebars are now together on the right side. That should make it easier to read the content. A major change you might not actually notice is that the content section (where the blog entry sits) is now much wider; 570 pixels versus 485. That means images can be bigger, and on an astronomy blog that’s important.
Another change is that the left sidebar menu is gone, and the menu to the main site is now located as a button at the top of the page, below the logo. I’m not thrilled with that aspect, but I’m trying to figure out a better way. I’m happy to hear suggestions!
I may still fiddle with things, like the colors and such. I’m thinking of making the gray darker. We’ll see. I have some other changes coming, and I’ll mention those when the time comes. For now, though, if anything goes wrong, post a comment. If you like or don’t like something, post a comment. I may or may not do anything about it. 
July 22nd, 2007 at 2:49 pm
[...] Posted by dgavin This started this morning. Probably a glitch on the way to: New blog design [...]
July 22nd, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Thank you. This is much more readable, less cluttered and makes it easier to find topics.
July 22nd, 2007 at 2:56 pm
We no like, we fear change…
July 22nd, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I like the content and sidebar, but the header looks odd.
July 22nd, 2007 at 3:37 pm
The new design is a lot easier on the eyes, thanks. I hope you won’t make the gray too dark. The less contrasting colours, the more comfortable the read imo.
One thing though: as I’m usually getting to posts by clicking on their links in my rss reader, I never see more than one post at the same time. I used to get from one to the next post by clicking the “next” link, directly below the post, before the comments. That link didn’t seem to have survived the redesign. Can we have it back?
Thanks!
July 22nd, 2007 at 3:42 pm
The logo will hopefully be updated soon, and then the header will look better. I have ideas for the header that I don’t have time to implement right now…
July 22nd, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Like it like it like it! Loads faster. Easy to read. Keep it. (like you need my permission.
July 22nd, 2007 at 3:50 pm
I like it so far. Will the redesign help with problems associated with posting messages in the past few days?
July 22nd, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Uh, oO …
… I like this new design
.
July 22nd, 2007 at 3:55 pm
diedrick, I’m looking it that. It’s still in the code, but the links aren’t appearing! This is why I hate redesigns.
July 22nd, 2007 at 3:58 pm
The whole logo should be a link to the main page, in addition to the Home button below it. That’s becoming a defacto standard.
The search mechanism is a bit messed up in Firefox. I think you need line breaks before both radio buttons (The Web, Bad Astronomy).
Archive calendar is kind of big and chunky. Smaller font for the days, much smaller line spacing. Maybe center or right-justify each day in its field.
July 22nd, 2007 at 4:06 pm
My $0.02 — dramatic improvement! If you’re looking for further upgrades, though, I’d like to make a few suggestions:
1) Fluid width theme (makes the best use of screen real estate).
2) 3 columns, not 4 (pushes the ads down lower, but makes the content more readable).
3) I’ll second Bob Munck’s note on the search widget — it’s messed up in Safari, too.
July 22nd, 2007 at 4:13 pm
The only thing I don’t like is that it is now difficult to see where the “main site” as you call it is. Now you don’t have a main site. You have a blog, with *waves hand in a vague fashion* some other stuff attached to it if you feel like digging for around.
When people come to your site looking for the moon hoax info, I can guarantee you that they won’t do more than take a quick cursory glance around, and then leave if they don’t see a very apparently linky (cause that’s what I do when I go to a new site that I find in search results. There is so much garbage out there (much of it blogs and adsites) that I don’t waste my time thoroughly checking every link to see if there might be something important on a site that I’m not familiar with).
It just feels to me like you sacrificed your debunking so that you could give your blog more space. I like your blog, but the debunking is far more important.
July 22nd, 2007 at 4:15 pm
My attempt to post was met with errors,,,
GAry 7
July 22nd, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Much better …
July 22nd, 2007 at 4:32 pm
It feels a bit cramped with all the text on the LHS and two sidebars on the RHS.
No pleasing everyone I guess, and I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
July 22nd, 2007 at 4:35 pm
diedrick, fixed it. The code is odd; the “Prev/next” navigation buttons won’t show up! So I codded it by hand. Easy enough, and now they are at the tops of the indivisual posts.
Bob, I haven’t had a chance to link the logo to the main page yet. I’ll get around to it.
Lorne Ipsum, um, there *are* 3 columns. Converting to fluid width is very hard, and in fact I want fixed width. The columns are rigidly defined to be the width they are for various reasons, mostly space for ads and other content.
gopher, yup. I agree, and I’m looking or some kind of fix to link to the main site better. I’ll note that in general most people looking for specific info (like the Moon Hoax) follow a link directly to that page.
July 22nd, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Cool cool:).
And converting to a fluid width is very easy. What’s hard (as everyone knows:P) is making it work well in IE5, IE6, IE7, FF1.5, FF2, Safari, and Opera. Heh. Even just FF2 and IE7 give me nightmares. FF just doesn’t handle code *quite* correctly, and IE7 is just horrible. I noticed that my site got a hit from IE3.0 the other day, and one from Netscape Navigator. grrrrrrrrr. There are too many browsers, and hardly any of them follow the rules:(.
How are you suppose to design a site when none of the most used browers actually do what they are suppose to do?
July 22nd, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Major improvement. I disliked the old layout enough that I wouldn’t have come here for just good content, it had to be great content (and that it is). Thank you.
July 22nd, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Nice, thought I had the wrong address for a couple of seconds =)
July 22nd, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Looks good, BA. Nice work.
July 22nd, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Looks good there, BA!
July 22nd, 2007 at 7:32 pm
It might just be me, but it seems too white. I personally would like to see some variation and color.
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:06 pm
An excellent step forward – very well done!
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:15 pm
I’ll second the request for the main column width to be fluid (though I recognize it could be a bit of a pain to code without breaking some browsers… aren’t there examples and templates out there that you can copy, though? Maybe at A List Apart or something?). I don’t usually have my browsing window maximized, and it seems that even a window just a teensy bit narrower than 1024 pixels means that the right column gets cut off (and an icky horizontal scroll bar appears): your picture looks better when it’s not cut in half! Also, having the page width greater than the browser width makes any centered features look strangely skewed.
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:22 pm
The blank side panels are a rather ugly gray. Not a big deal but maybe white would be better?
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:25 pm
When I post a comment, I get a bunch of error messages, but the comment goes through anyway. If it happens again, I’ll copy the messages and post them as another comment.
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:25 pm
The wider “meat” area was point blank the first thing I noticed. It’s very nice, but perhaps it’s just me that has a pet peeve about formats that chew through nearly all horizontal real estate with droves of semi-pointless sidebars. 540 out of around 1024 still is a far cry from all of it, but the ads/promos have to live somewhere visible for them to pay the piper I assume, so it’s hard to have a beef with that.
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:26 pm
The wider “meat” area was point blank the first thing I noticed. It’s very nice, but perhaps it’s just me that has a pet peeve about formats that chew through nearly all vertical real estate with droves of semi-pointless sidebars. 540 out of around 1024 still is a far cry from all of it, but the ads/promos have to live somewhere visible for them to pay the piper I assume, so it’s hard to have a beef with that.
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Here are the messages. I’m using Opera 9.22 under Windows XP.
Regex ID: 18281 () appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
Regex ID: 18369 () appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
Regex ID: 18261 () appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
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July 22nd, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Does the same thing happen with Firefox?
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:32 pm
> Does the same thing happen with Firefox?
Yup.
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Just a nitpick… Can you reduce the number of Ad/meter sites you use for your website? I use a javascript blocker called NoScript (for Firefox) and there are 8 dot-com’s attached to this blog, not counting badastronomy.com itself. I can understand one or two, but too many attached sites sets my spam and spyware detectors off.
Its no big deal, since I can enable or disable each Java, Flash or other script one time and forget about it, but its not as clean as most sites (even forums and other blogs) that I frequent.
Again, this is just a nitpick. Other than that, I like the new layout so far, and look forward to the newer header. Perhaps some 3-D buttons to replace the flat gray buttons at the top would give it the modern look.
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:42 pm
P.S. I get the same (or very similar) errors when I submit my comments as Keith Thompson does. I’m also using Firefox. If I hit Back and Reload, my post shows up.
B-)
July 22nd, 2007 at 9:10 pm
I think people have made a lot of good suggestions.
I think the color “336699″ would be good for the background. Give it a try!
July 22nd, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Content on the left is nice.
But having _two_ columns on the right is a bit much.
Shouldn’t you be writing rather than fiddling with website layouts?
That new book ain’t going to write itself.
:^)
July 22nd, 2007 at 9:55 pm
I third the request for a flowing width. I’ve only got widescreen monitors now; I don’t mind the two sidebars, but I do mind the wasted grey space on the screen with the main content squished into what seems a tiny width by comparison.
July 22nd, 2007 at 10:42 pm
*applause*
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:09 am
I’m getting the same error messages as Keith Thompson, using Firefox 2.
The same happened on the last major upgrade but the errors went away after a few weeks.
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:11 am
Overall, I like it! Cleaner, and loads much faster. Appears to have more direct content rather than being overpowered by slush.
I had mentioned this before, but having the comments numbered (a la Pharyngula, which sounds like a latin song) would be great – not sure if that’s what those #s before the sigs will eventually end up as.
In the search box, the check boxes by “the web” and “this site” don’t line up at 1024 screen width – one wraps. A line break perhaps?
I’m using Firefox and see the script errors as well when I comment, yet the comment goes through anyway. Looks like extraneous lines calling nonexistent scripts to me, but I’ve only muddled with PHP.
And yes, perhaps a tad more color.
But again, a positive change!
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:31 am
Phil – I like your new layout a lot better. I have a wide monitor and like sites that use it.
I still don’t understand why the content section is hard-coded to any width. If you’re using a table you can set the table to 100% width (the whole screen) and hard-code the right-most column to be whatever width you want the sidebar to be.
Then the other columns will spring to fill the rest of the monitor. That’s how I set up my site. I assumed a minimum monitor width of 800 pixels (if your monitor is less than that too bad), but every page on the site springs to whatever width so if you have a setting of 1600 pixels wide the site will use it.
Anyway, I’ve never done a blog so I don’t know what the particular problems are but it would be cool if they didn’t have a hard-coded width.
July 23rd, 2007 at 3:01 am
How about killing the automatic new window when clicking links in the entry? If I want to open a new window, I’ll tell my browser to do that. If I click directly, I want the current tab of the current window to go where I told it to.
I also agree that using absolute pixel sizes for the main content area is stupid. A web page should always scale to the width of the browser window. Here’s a snippet of what I see if I maximize said window on this page:
Well, presumably. I don’t know if anything will show up above, because I can’t preview a comment before leaving it. That’s another feature sorely needed.
July 23rd, 2007 at 3:13 am
One of the links has vanished.
It was the one to that site debunking a fraudulent psychic, whose name I forget. She had said an abducted child was dead, only for him to turn up alive a few years later.
Can anyone remember that one?
I remember her lawyers tried to kill the site.
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:13 am
Please bear in mind that not everyone has 20/20 vision.
I too find all the whiteness dazzling. I usually use dark blue text on pale background or brown on cream. It’s much easier on the eye.
Also, having two sidebars on one side looks very cluttered. Why not put the interesting bit, i.e. today’s blog, in the centre with sidebars at each side?
Alternatively, if you have to have both sidebars on one side, why not put them on the left? The eye is trained to move from left to right, i.e. the eye – well mine anyway – is drawn away from what you’re writing and on to the sidebars. It’s a little distracting.
Just my 2p. and yes, it is your blog.
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:52 am
Very, very nice. Personally, at the moment anyway, I REALLY like the “Next” link at the bottom going backwards. When it was “Previous” before, it always felt like reading a newspaper backwards. You will probably change that back to what it was, but – but I like the way it works now.
You know – News Paper. That stuff they used to sell made from paper that you had to… oh ….. nevermind.
I agree about the colors (or maybe, lack of?)
Very nice work. The concern and interest shows.
JC
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:49 am
Sue Mitchell, no, I like the content on the left, and sidebars on the right. Reading is from left to right, so put the content in the prime spot (first to see), and put the distractions (ads, links to elsewhere, etc) out of the way on the right.
Sticks, you’re thinking of StopSylviaBrowne.com.
JustAl, if you check those number signs, you will find they do have each comment numbered. Float the mouse over the # and check the status bar at the bottom of your browser. Or copy and paste.
Thanny, I’ve always been a fan of direct click opening in same window, and taking action to open in new window/tab. But some people want external links to automatically open elsewhere so the internal page doesn’t go away.
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:51 am
make the main logo clickable again! please!
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:59 am
There are nav buttons on the bottom? They don’t show up under FF 2.0.0.5 on Linux. I’ve been meaning to ask for them!
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:17 am
Phil:
Looks good. Picky as I am from a web designer’s perspective, I would center the header and make your logo a hot link to your home page — if the theme you chose permits you to do that and still have valid W3C code and all that. Too much white space to the right of your header.
If it doesn’t work, I’d find something to put in that white space on the right.
Thanks for making science accessible!
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:28 am
I like the less-cluttered look of it, but I hate the way the actual blog is now aligned to the left. Blogs look vastly better when the main content is centered.
Give your entire page a fixed width, move the Archives or Search The Blog columns to the left, and let the whole thing be centered. I think this would look much better.
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:29 am
Phil:
Sorry for the repost — if my previous comment appears at all. I hit “Submit” and received a host of PHP errors on a white screen here. FYI.
What I was suggesting was, from a web designer’s perspective, I would fill in the white space on the right of your header, or, better yet, center your header entirely at the top of the page. Also, you need to make the header image a hot link to your home page. You should be able to do that and still have proper, W3C compliant and accessible code.
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:35 am
Definitely an improvement. One other improvement which is possible and for which I have wished for a long time would be a preview button for comments. In the absence of a preview capability, I am not willing to experiment with formatting options. (Right now I don’t see any markup possibilities though.)
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:46 am
I really like the change. I noticed the wider content area instantly, and only then started seeing the other stuff. I was going to complain about the grey sidebars, and how they waste space when you’re viewing at low resolution, but to my great joy and amazement, they aren’t hard-coded space. At low resolutions, they disappear completely, leaving nothing but content. Very nice. (Yes, I know there’ve always been sidebars.)
The firewall here blocks pretty much everything ad-related, so I may be just not seeing some things, but: the second column has nothing but the calendar and “categories” boxes, which is a waste of a column. At least the right-hand column as a bunch of different stuff. Personally, I would either get rid of the middle column and extend the content column, or try to balance all the stuff in the middle and right columns. That way the middle column is much more useful, and it also keeps me from scrolling down as far to see everything. Note: on the main page I also see six links under “Advertising by Adfuel”, so the middle column is slightly more “useful”, but could still use a lot more content to be balanced.
Also, right under the logo and menu, there’s a lot of whitespace there. It looks like it might be space for an ad, but if not, I think you could make that a bit narrower–that’s quite a bit of no-content area. Also, it would be nice if you could have an expandable area so I can view the main menu without leaving this page, but I’m guessing that’s very tricky when you have people using so many different browsers.
Your link to “Valid XHTML” says “Result: Failed validation, 43 errors”. Usually, people posts links to tests they passed. :p I actually clicked that because I thought it was a link to what markup tags I could use in my comment. Which brings me to another point: you should have a link to a page detailing what HTML is valid, or perhaps even how to use HTML for the not-yet-nerds out there. On a similar note, a preview button would be wonderful.
Finally, your little smiley needs to be clickable!
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:57 am
One other note: the line spacing in the comments is significantly greater in the comment area that the main article area. If anything, it’s usually the other way around. It’s not a huge deal, but it makes the page physically longer, so there’s more scrolling, plus it’s harder for me to read. (There are 17 pixels between lines in the comments, and only 15 in the main article. Doesn’t seem like much difference, but I much prefer the article spacing.)
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:17 am
There are butt-loads of ‘Sunshine’ widgets everywhere on your blog page. I don’t have a problem with this, as I am a huge ‘Sunshine’ proponent, except that this might affect my ability to access this blog from work, as the firewall might block it because of them. Will those widgets be replaced by other ads and widgets, or will those little bits go vacant?
Otherwise, I like new design, particularly the larger print, as I am now officially an old fart and can’t see anything very well anymore.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:50 am
A few comments:
Major changes will take me quite some time. Like, after the book is done.
I will look into making the widths fluid, but no promises. I prefer the two sidebars on the right, and the widths for them have to stay fixed to support the contents.
I may fiddle with colors. I think all the white is too plain as well, but changing background colors can make it difficult for some people to read.
Comment numbers: yeah, that needs to be added. I will also change the code a bit to make every other comment’s background color a bit darker. Right now they are too close. I don’t know why the errors are popping up, and that kind of thing is a monumental bear to chase down. I’ll look into it this week. I’ve noticed the spam filter is being more aggressive, too, which is bad: too many false positives. I’ll investigate.
The ads are here to stay, though I may fiddle with them a bit. I have some stuff brewing about that, and I’ll have more info later. I’m not trying to be secretive; it’s just a work in progress and I’m not sure how it’ll turn out.
I’m not happy with the font; it’s a little fuzzy to me. I’ll fiddle with that too.
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:04 pm
For Sticks:
Not 100% sure the link you are talking about, but it was probably Sylvia Browne. Lots of info on her at
http://www.stopsylviabrowne.com/home
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Test comment.
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Test comment noch einmal.
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Needs more plaid. And ponies. You can’t go wrong with ponies.
Oh, and you need to be more like the mainstream media, so your next post should be a 90 page treatise on how David Beckham clips his toenails.
Anyone else sick of hearing about that guy?
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Yes, Sticks and Carrie, I removed some things and added others. I’ve had the Sylvia Brown link up for months, so it was time to move on.
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:31 pm
So can we have the link to StopSylviaBrowne.com restored please
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Phil I CANNOT READ your BLOG. For that matter I can barely tell what I’m typing, the text is so small. Nothing I do makes a difference! If this is progress, I say stick with the old fonts and sizes!
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Well, the blog text being off to the left is kind of awkward. It would probably work better, if it were in the middle.
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Not having visited for a day or so it totally threw me initially, thinking I was at the wrong site
However, now I am getting used to it I have no real problem with it and in fact I think I prefer it. The only request I would make would be to enlarge the Previous/Main/Next links at the top and the Title banner just doesn’t look right somehow. Someone suggested moving the sidebars to the left and I would totally disagree with that. For this way, with the size of browser window I prefer I can see all of your post plus the comments and enough of the leftmost sidebar to get an idea what it is at least. Moving the sidebars would mean either widening my browser window, which I really don’t want to do for a number of reason, or I would have to scroll, which I also don’t want to do unless it is to access your site links. Overall, an improvement on the original.
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:43 pm
I am also getting the errors listed below when submitting a post. Additionally, when I then used the back button to see if my post was entered it wasn’t. I then entered it again to get the Wordpress ‘you are trying to enter a duplicate post’ error. I then used the back button and my post was still not here and only revealed itself when I did a hard refresh, i.e. CTL F5, I am using IE7 BTW.
Regex ID: 18261 () appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
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July 23rd, 2007 at 8:33 pm
the change is refreshing – esp. the sidebars on the right. very nicely done, improved readability.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Phil:
A fixed-width design is very nice. Be careful with a fluid layout. It may be nice for a while, but people with smaller resolutions will lose your side divs and your advertising.
But you already know that.
One of my blogs has that problem sometimes: TurningLeft.net. I love the layout and design, but should probably fix the width. The side divs jump to the bottom on older browsers.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:14 pm
One thing I’d suggest: Please don’t set your font size in “px”. Use “em” instead, which is a relative font size.
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:48 pm
I like the new layout exept for the fact that the “digg” symbol that shows how many people have dugg the article seems to be missing. I think seeing that visible symbol/link was a good thing, because otherwise it might just slip people’s minds to digg an entry they like…. now there’s only the tiny text at the bottom of each entry.
I predict that you’ll see a reduction in the average number of diggs you get – not because of any expected lowering of quality, but because the link doesn’t really stand out.
July 24th, 2007 at 4:10 am
Phil, I think you need to have a webmaster account, that we can E-mail
about technical matters about the web-site.
I have encountered the same error as was first reported by Keith Thompson did on July 22nd. I use FireFox1.5.
Cheers, Regner
July 24th, 2007 at 7:45 am
Phil
On my Internet explorer 6.0.2900 at 1280×1024 column 3 is displayed on the left below columns 1 and 2. As if the total width of the three columns was wider than the displayable width. Anyone else get this?
July 24th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Throwing in my two cents…
I don’t really like the new font style or size. Maybe I’m being a snob, but something about the old font made me feel like I was reading a professional forum. Now, with a big, bouncy, rounded font, it feels like just another blog. The content hasn’t changed, the tone hasn’t changed, but the way it resonates with me has changed.
One other reason I don’t like the font size: I used to be able to absorb a lot of information from a single screen. Now I have to scroll down to read any one post. So maybe what I’m feeling is a perceived diminishment in content quality as a result of a literal reduction in information density. I dunno. Maybe I’ll get used to it.
July 24th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Wait… now I see the “digg” symbol with the number of diggs back up again.
If that was becaus of something you did, then good job Phil.
July 24th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
You’ve had time to redesign the layout? Yup, you’re definitely writing
July 24th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Lots of interesting comments.
I enlarged the Prev/Next font.
TomEpps complained about the text being too small. That is not on my end! It’s something your browser is doing. What computer and browser are you using?
The regex comment problem happens every single time I upgrade, and I cannot fix it! It goes away on its own, and it’s very irritating.
The Digg button has not changed in any way.
As far as I can tell, I am using the same font as before. In fact, I cut and pasted the font names into the new style sheet!
Some people like the content in the middle, some on the left. I can’t please everyone, so i will do what I like.
July 24th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
I changed my mind and made the font a hair bigger. I’d love to change the font style, too, but that’ll take some fiddlin’.
July 25th, 2007 at 8:59 am
… but now that I look at it, the font does look different than it did before! I literally cut and pasted the font-family line to the news style sheet, so I don’t know why the font changed. Does anyone have suggestions?
July 25th, 2007 at 9:00 am
I have the same problem as Michael H; the third column is displayed directly underneath column 1 and 2.
July 25th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
IE 6.0.2900 I also have the third column dropping to the bottom of the first column.
This happened often with the old board, too.
Also, the line “I am an astronomer…” does not wrap, but runs off the right side of the page.
July 25th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Phil, I would do a screen capture of your site as I am seeing it so you could see what the oversized fonts look like, along with a screen capture of some other site (mine, maybe) that is showing up properly, but I have a feeling your e-mail filter may reject it as spam. Could you post framegrabs of what the site should look like? Maybe then you can figure out who is seeing it the way it should be, and who isn’t, and what operating systems and browsers they’re using.
I am using Windows XP SP2 and IE 6.0.2900.2096.
I am also not seeing any “third column”, or even a second. Everything is in a single broad column. Here is a visual description of what I am seeing, from top to bottom:
- BAD ASTRONOMY header
- Gray boxes for Home, Intro, About, Contact, Media/PR Kit, Main Site
- Gray boxes for Menu and Forum overlapping the bottoms of Home and Intro
- Something cut off, looks like an ad
- Two dashes and a right-pointing arrow (Is this supposed to be REM-ing something out?)
- A picture ad for Hertz and Mariott, also cut in half (only top half, or maybe less, appears)
- Prev/Next Posts (named), with date box to the right
- Post title
- Diggs box
- Posted at 2:45 pm in About this blog
- Post, with an ad squeezed into the upper right corner
- Ads by Google at bottom of post
- Responses
- Trackback URI / Comments RSS
- Leave a Reply
- Archives
- Calendar
- Categories (with drop box)
- View button
- Live Earth picture ad
- Search the BABlog (with text box, pick boxes, and button)
- The BABlogger
- Picture
- I am an astronomer, writer, and skeptic. I likes reality the way it is, and I aims to keep (All on one line, cuts off after word “keep”)
- Feed Me, Seymour
- RSS Feed for BABlog
- Seven buttons in a vertical column, with “Add to Google” to the right of “Technorati” and “Site Meter” to the right of “Moon Costumes”
- Read BABlog via Email!
- Enter your email address
- Box with “Submit” button
- Powered by Feedblitz
- Anti-Antiscience (with list of links below)
- Blogroll (with list of links below)
- Podcasts (with list of links below)
- Meta (with list of links below)
- Copyright line
July 25th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
And I’m also getting that confounded error message whenever I post a comment:
Regex ID: 18281 () appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
Regex ID: 18369 () appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
Regex ID: 23317 (jacob_25) appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
Regex ID: 18261 () appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
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Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/badastro/domains/badastronomy.com/public_html/bablog/wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_util_class.php:208) in /home/badastro/domains/badastronomy.com/public_html/bablog/wp-comments-post.php on line 68
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/badastro/domains/badastronomy.com/public_html/bablog/wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_util_class.php:208) in /home/badastro/domains/badastronomy.com/public_html/bablog/wp-comments-post.php on line 69
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/badastro/domains/badastronomy.com/public_html/bablog/wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_util_class.php:208) in /home/badastro/domains/badastronomy.com/public_html/bablog/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 331
July 25th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
This is the problem I’m having with the blog at the moment; the third column is displaced to the bottom of the page under the other two columns:
[URL=http://img440.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bablogqc5.jpg][IMG]http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/156/bablogqc5.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
I’m running IE 6 in Windows XP Second Edition.
July 25th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Ian, that looks like what I’m seeing.
July 26th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
I like it. The calendar/archive block seems to be in a sidebar pretty much by itself, but it’s generally less than 1/2 post tall (or should I say most posts are at least 2 calendars tall). Anyways, the net result is that there is a lot of white space on the right side for most of the page.
This is true of the full sidebar too, but to a much lower extent. I suppose if the side bar were a different color or something, the empty space would seem more logical once the content of the sidebar is scrolled off the top of the screen.
This is really hard, but it would be cool if the posts (or comments) sort-of extended to fill the available space once they were past the toolbars. Hmm… I may have to look to see if I can do that on my blog. I’m sure I could make it work on one of the 143 odd browsers.
July 26th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
And although my post seems to have worked I got a bunch of errors instead of coming back to the page…. similar errors to Harold’s post above. FF2.0.0.5, WXP.
July 28th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Just in case theres still some point posting this so late :
Please, please, please lets have some ability to edit or at least preview our messages before & after we post here …
August 9th, 2007 at 3:32 am
i hate those “read more …” sections: it takes an awful lot of time to load them.
otoh, i can imagine some people find them useful … so a proper implementation would still load the entire post and hide the “more part” via css – the “more button” would show it via javascript dom manipulation. there are plenty of sites that do it like that – dunno whether wordpress can be configured that way …
February 8th, 2009 at 2:58 am
We are made to persist. That’s how we find out who we are.
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