Mar 01
Veerle’s blog now 2.0
2006 at 12.09 am posted by Veerle
Let me first begin by taking a deep ::sigh::, the last few days have been hectic to say the least. But hey, if it is for the greater good then bring it on ;) So I’m proud to announce the launch of Veerle’s blog 2.0, now Expression Engine powered. The amount of time was too short to make everything perfect and spotless clean, so bear with me for the time being while I’ll tweak some things that aren’t 100% yet.
Think of everything
It is impossible to think of every situation that can happen, because believe me when I say that a lot of background processes are going on that you have to take in account. Expression Engine has been a good colleague during this development stage and didn't make it extra difficult so that this launch could be compromised. A damn fine achievement if you know that I only started the back-end on Saturday and that it's only the second site that I've implemented with EE. Simon Collison has been a great help in getting me started because I wanted to make sure I build things correctly. Don't worry, I will talk about the development and challenges in detail here later.
Still on the TO-DO list
I still have some cool ideas that I want to implement but didn't find the time for such as a "live preview" when commenting, a smaller layout for 800x600 users, Ajax-ification of my archive pages that are based on the wonderful DOMtab by Chris Heilmann, a high contrast layout and a few other tidbits. The tiny bits that don't validate will be fixed so don't tell me about that, I know that there are some tiny glitches. One validation error in the comments is out of my hands because EE strips out the necessary P elements inside "blockquote", but that's about the only thing I think isn't fixable and it only happens when you use "blockquote". I can live with that, but if you are an EE expert and can figure a way around it, do tell ;) I'll keep you posted on stuff that I add and tell me if you find something odd. Opera users with 8.5 please update to version 9 because my header issue is fixed there, so I don't bother fixing things that are solved in a later version. There is a bit bad news too because all members from January 30th on are lost because I couldn't migrate those anymore without a great risk of losing other stuff. So I apologize about that and I'm sorry for the inconvenience. Hopefully you like the new features on my blog and the new ideas to feature and promote more illustrator talent, my first love after all. Oh and "one more thing"... I'm especially proud of my ticketing idea in the comments ;)
Update: My other RSS feeds are now also available:
269served
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Veerle, a true marvel
Congratulations!
2
Congrads Veerle!
First one ;)
3
Het ziet er weer mooi uit, goede kleuren!
4
Great job Veerle! Looks great :-)
5
You are a true talent, this is an amazing display of vision. After being a “lurker” as you put it for sometime, I had to register and say congratulations!!!
6
Hey, congratulations for your new design! As with all redesigns, I’ll need some time to “acclimate” but I’m sure it will be quick!! I already like your “blog 2.0”!
7
(I prefer the old one ;) )
No, seriously, this is a truly great piece of work. Your attention to detail is amazing and you have raised the bar again.
Fantastic stuff!
8
Hey Veerle!
I was looking forward to see the new release. My expectations were all met, it’s really nice!
Greetings
9
Stylish. Very well done. Amazing readability despite the contrast and the dark background (these tend ‘to swallow up’ the font quite often I feel).
I absolutely adore the tear-off calendar and the tickets thingy.
Still one typo in the label of the links tab: it says ‘intersting’ instead of ‘interesting’. You wanted comments, right? And I’m an editor, so I ‘can’t not notice’ these.
Two thumbs up, though, lovely site. Let’s get to the blogging then shall we?!
10
Veerle, I thought your blog will be redesigned on May 1st reboot. ;)
11
I must admit: I truly love the new design. Most probably the sleekest blog layout to be found in Belgium today (and maybe even abroad). Very ‘2006’ as well :)
12
wow, this is absolutely breathtaking!
Fantastic job Veerle!
13
I absolutely love it! Well done Veerle.
14
Gorgeous! Absolutely gorgeous.
15
I liked the foto of you better than the drawing ... but otherwise it looks good.
16
Gosh this looks awesome!
17
Gorgeousness.
18
Nice, clean work with one small problem for me. I think, that the main menu is little bit inexpressive.
But...its gorgeous.
19
Looks great! Well don!
20
Very, very, very nice Veerle.
Great work. Seriously good.
21
Veerle, my sincere congratulations for this beauty in webdesign. I see I have lots and lots to learn. Very nice.
22
Wahhhh Sweet!
23
Oh wow! This is looking super! Looks really good! Big thumbs up!
24
<a> VERY nice.... </applause>
I’d consider giving the main content a bit more breathing space on the right, though… Maybe this would make the main menu stand out a bit better as well… (cfr. Enti’s remark ).
Just a thought....
But as they say: “vrie wijs!”
25
Very nice. At first I thought that the ticket roll was toilet paper ; )
I like the way the whole site design feels really integrated and together, well done.
26
WOW!
27
Congratulations for the beautiful redesign. Like to see another personal version of your site.
28
Amazing design. Refreshing layout. Congrats!
29
Wow, unbelieveable that you beat me to it, releasing a new blog through EE. But what a pleasure it is to see a good EE blog :-).
I will need some adjustment as to getting used to the new page layout, the new look and the new features. The new site certainly feels familiar when using (due too EE) but the full featured blog homepage feels a bit crowded (which might result in feeling lost where to look for something).
I was wondering if the ‘previously’ and the ‘whats cooking section’ serve up the same kind of content (previous posts), if so, I wonder what the purpose is of splitting them up in to what looks like 2 different sections.
The search bar (integrated through color attachent with the articles) and the whole comment section feels really good and is, to my taste, spaciously designed.
I would have made the link colors a bit more brighter, especially in the previous posts sections (they tent to look a bit pale there). But other color use is nice and bright although I wonder where the blue of the header can be found elsewhere on the site. You would expect the header to feature a shade of green since it seems to be the dominant color throughout the new look.
Congratulations on producing this new blog, great work, you can be proud of the work you’ve done!
30
Congratulations Veerle !
Great job. You are the best.
I see tons of work here :)
31
Wow, beautiful redesign. Just a small thing: Personally I find white writing on dark background hard to read. But still, lovely all the way through.
32
Wow...you’ve just officially blown me away!
It’s absolutely wonderful!
33
Absolutely gorgeous!
34
Wow Veerle, it looks absolutely gorgeous! Truly fantastic, but I must say that I’m still kind of sitting here going “Whoa.. information overload”
That might not be a bad thing, though.
35
Hi Veerle,
Just wanted to say .. WOW!
Nice redesign. Superb use of colors. I like it a lot.
Keep up the good work.
I check your site every day and every day it keeps getting better. Nice job!
36
Great Redesign Veerle, it looks amazing and is a pleasure to peruse, you must be very proud, it will be a great credit to you (and your ego! :) ).
Simply Fantastic.
37
Supoib! My compliments! :)
38
you’re new design is stunning! But I have to say it is a bit crowded. I took me some time to discover the main menu, the search box or other ‘important’ page elements. Also I would expect some things to be clickable (such as the header image or post titles) while they’re not.
But then again, when form looks as good as this, I guess it can have just a tiny bit of priority over function. Well done!
39
great look!
and it is indeed very 2.0 :)
40
Great job, Veerle! It looks so much better than the previous version! My favorite blog…
41
Some duplicate content here.. probably you have some of the same stuff in the summary and body fields.
Think of everything and Still on the TO-DO list are duplicated earlier in the entry. (Only on the comments page.)
Other than that minor glitch, looks great!
42
Wow great work; i love it…
Only a suggestion
43
WOW.
It’s just so stylish and sleek and fantastic looking. Amazing!
44
Congratz! But I do find it a bit busy, and I’m a little bit disoriented.
45
This absolutely rocks. Well done on a fantastic redesign/realign....
46
Love the design, apart from the red text....I always find red on black hard to read, so I strain to view it. Seems to be just me though, so good job!
47
I prefer black over white scheme to read. But I like this blog. Great job!
48
Congratulations, Veerle! A truly amazing layout. I am impressed by the consistency of the design and all the nice little details.
49
Awww… your blog is amazing… it looks beautiful… congratulations!!!
50
congratulations Veerle, the new design looks great and is nothing like what I would have expected.
51
Awesome, Awesome, Awesome
52
Hi
With all the positive comments about the re-design, I’m wondering if I’m missing something. Maybe after a few days I’ll see it.
53
Oh my god.
This is fantastic.
54
Wow!!
This is remarkable. Hats off, Veerle, hats off.
55
I saw this site for the first time today, but I looked the site up at Archive.org and I liked the new version much better. Beautiful work. As a first-time reader I had no trouble finding my way around, so I don’t think the frontpage is to compressed.
Just one question: the comment form says that the Email address is required but will never be displayed. Why then, is the name of the comment a mailto: if you don’t provide a website url?
56
Great job Veerle, really like the new design.
57
I don’t usually comment too much but your new site is phenomenal. I love all the little touches. Really, really great work.
58
Oh boy I can barely follow you guys ;) Thanks for all your feedback, this is really meaningful to me. Glad that people like the update. Like with all new things it takes some getting used to, especially if the change is so drastic.
About the ‘overcrowded’ impression, well my initial version had less contrast (in text), which made a bit less crowded impression, but I need to make sure the contrast of the text is approved by W3C (the color of the background was too close to the color of the text). What I did now in the past hour is creating a bit more breathing space between the items on the right and the main content. I’m also planning on implementing an 800x600 version which will feel less crowdy since the content on the right will be moved to another location (down).
@Enti, MichealD, it’s done and it’s better. I have altered the right margin of the articles too (the text area). Thanks for mentioning this.
@Arjan, you’re right about the post titles. They’re clickable now. I was planning on doing that, but totally lost track of my “todo’s”. I have adjusted this in my archive (summary) too. There is a home button and my header is a background image, so that’s why it isn’t linked.
@Sue, thanks for catching that one ;)
@Victor, I thought (well I’m sure) this border serves some accessibility purpose. It is meant to highlight which link has focus when you use keyboard navigation. I’ll leave it alone sorry.
@Simen, well that was one of the little tidbits that I needed to do and you’ll be happy to know that is also fixed now ;)
59
Looking really good Veerle. Really good.
60
Hi Veerle,
I absolutely love your re-design, it’s brilliant and [ wink ] very web 2.0… whatever that really means but hey, you got round corners and all
:-)
So hurray for Veerle 2.0, it looks great and the navigation is a lot more intuitive, your main page has the right amount of information and is nicely organized. It’s easy to take in with just one look. Congratulations.
Oh, and I love the colors, they are uplifting.
Cheers.
61
Wow, Veerle, just wow. It’s rare that I absolutly love a blog design, but this time I do… Well done!
62
Just wanted to Congratulations, Been here for sometime now but I finally had to comment on your fantastic work. Keep it up. All I can say is that it looks damn sweet!
63
Great Work Veerle.
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I prefer the old version just for readability: dark background with clear text is just to hard to read. I do not like it. But hey, it does not really matter, since it is properly coded: I just disable the style sheet(s) in Opera with just a click of a button.
65
Wonderful job. lOve it.
66
sweet as and the monkeys nuts!!!!
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Wauw, Veerle, you did an excellent job ! I just love the design. Keep it up !
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Nice job Veerle! I like this design quite a bit
69
Nice new style, Veerle, I like the main page - lot’s to browse and take my interest and really nice use of colour and nice big buttons/icons ... I like!
Steve
70
Absolutely amazing and worth the wait. I love the color scheme and, oh my goodness the font use!
Keep it up!
The commenting area is great too.
71
Stunning. Jaw-dropping. Lovely. Bravo!
72
A perfect ten!
73
Holy crap, this kicks ass!
74
Wow. Amazingly perfect design. Very cool.
=D
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Well done Veerle, I like it and it looks hot ;)
76
Beautiful site. One of the best looking blogs I’ve seen in a while.
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wow! i will needto follow yourr example and migrate my other site to EE toute suite
78
*throws in the towel* All right. I quit. You win! Damn you, Veerle! This is an amazingly SEXY layout. The amount of detailing is great. The little zig zaggies underneath comment numbers, the colours—my god, the colours—the icons, the… *starts alternating between sobbing in jealousy and swooning*
79
Fantastic new look and absolutely stunning use of CSS. I don’t know how you do it, but you really outdid yourself with this new design.
Honestly, this is my favorite blog design ever. And I mean ever.
I’ve added your site to my web design inspiration photo set on flickr, so you’re in good company.
Keep up the great work.
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Wow!! Fantastic job.
81
The new design is just beautiful! Well done!
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Well you totally blew me away with your design. It is truly awesome. With that said I will have to take another look at the EE engine for doing blogging.
Chris
83
Absolutely stunning redesign! I’ve always been partial to darker schemes for websites and this site is no different. Good work as always
84
Colors, layout, everything looks great. Congrats on the CSS Beauty recognition!
James
85
Looks great!
86
Greatest redesign I have seen this year. Good job! :-)
87
Absolutely fantastic! Love it. I think your really flying the flag for EE with this. It just goes to show what can be produced with it. Brilliant.
88
I love it. It looks great. Very inspirational as I have been looking into using EE as well. You are very talented!
89
wow! bloody awesome:)
90
I may be alone in this...yes it’s beautiful and I like change.
However, this redesign is more about the design and less about the content…
I find it hard to read the articles and the navigation and sidebars are a bit lost.
91
Veerle the colors ! Veerle the colors ! I friggin’ love them !
92
Stunning design Veerle. Just beautiful.
93
Wow, is all I can say.
Your pixel precision when designing is amaizing. No wonder you get to have such a kool office and nice toys…
Talent and hard work pays bills.
94
Great work and a lot of fine details i see.NICE Veerle!
95
Great looking blog, a full 180 from version 1. Sad to hear that the members area has disappeared along with the comments. But seeing the new design, I think I can live with that.
96
I love it. Absolutely love it.
97
Ciao!
Wow! bellissima grafica…
complimenti.
Sei sempre un punto di riferimento per me.
Continua
98
Another minor thing.. your archives don’t say what year. Usually not that big of a deal, but no real suggestion on what do do.
(Except maybe a different top color for the day tag.)
99
Hi!
this is truly amazing! congratulations
see you @media2006!
bye from italy!
100
Hello.
I don’t know if I left any comments before, but I just can’t say nothing now.
You the best Veerle…
101
This looks great! I really like how you’ve handled the comments section.
102
Incredible design! And I did notice the little dropshadows under some texts. Since I’m replier 100, can you shed some light on that technique? :)
103
Veerle, after 98 comments like these I will not repeat what many before have said. I am impressed as well, but I would like to give some critique nonetheless.
Even though the dark background is beautifull to see, I find it much harder to read on. Certainly because you have such good and often lengthy articles, that’s too bad. (maybe some reverse contrast stylesheet?)
(and maybe it’s only my tired eyes after looking at my screen for more then 13 hours...)
104
Ohh… Sweetness.. it’s clean an awesomeness! One thing when you implement the site for 800x600, can you make sure you can swich without having to resize the window? I think I am too used to the small reading-width - my eyes are lazy X-D.
But the overall picture of the site is wonderful! Awesome work Verlee! =D
105
This is by far the cleanest and most refreshing site I’ve seen since the stopdesign.com redesign, great illustrations layout and color selection throughout.
Congratulations on a job well done.
I will return often. :)
106
so brilliant i have a hard time determining where to start on the compliments. the attention to detail is astounding. the illustrations, color, usability, layout, typgraphy - superb across the board.
107
Hey Veerle,
Always work with stunning quality and eye for detail.
There are no words for this one!
Cheers
108
This girl can code and design!… LoL
Seriously, Veerle, you have great skills and I am so glad to sue your website as a reference when I want to highlight the interest of avoiding “tag soup” when we create a website.
I have been a addicted reader of this blog, this definitely be the same with this new version (and you are on cssbeauty!!!! great job!)
109
I love the new site; however, the titles for your personal comments (white on light blue) are hard to see—too little contrast. I would even go so far as to say the whole colour scheme of the personal comments clashes too much… you could make it stand out, more subtly…
Just my thought, I couldn’t do it half as well.
110
This girls can code and design!… LoL
Seriously, Veerle, you have great skills and I am so glad to sue your website as a reference when I want to highlight the interest of avoiding “tag soup” when we create a website.
I have been a addicted reader of this blog, this definitely be the same with this new version (and you are on cssbeauty!!!! great job!)
111
expectations were high, and you succeeded in surpassing them!
112
Congratulations, the colors are great and I just love your drawings! :D
113
Nice, new and fresh!
114
veerle - i just want to add that you should be a shoe-in for one of the ee redesign prizes!
And I will be extreemly interested reading about the migration process from pM to EE! You have carried out the process in a very short time.. thsi gives me hope!
ciao..
115
Wow! That’s some change, girl.
I think it’s awesome.
The design sports one of the sweetest comment section designs and the buttonry, type and colors are both trendy and user friendly.
116
Very nice redesign, you have the eye for design I do so lack.
Cool to see my domtab being put to a good use, too, on the same day I updated it to support some more stuff :-)
117
mission accomplished!! Although I do get one negative feeling with your new design: why can’t I make designs like this :( (but hey, that’s my problem)
p.s. upon typing this it said 116 served sofar but I only see 100 comments.
118
So hot right now ...
119
Wow, what a day, just back from a Death Cab for Cutie concert and I find this gem in my RSS reader. Magnificent redesign, absolutely love the colour palette (reminds me of graphite for some reason), and must say the white on dark is very refreshing and easy on the eyes. Makes reading the entries super quick and smooth.
I’m just wondering what made you chose EE over say, Wordpress and Textpattern? Was it simply their design contest (which surely you must win!) or was it functionality/feature set offered? Would love your insight as I’m researching potential platforms at the moment.
Once again, a stunning effort, definitely in my personal top five websites for content and asthetics!
120
Chiming in here to just say that your new design is amazing. Great job with it, and I love the style of your comments.
121
My father would like me to let you know that he loves the new look and can’t see a single thing he dislikes. he loves the illustrations as well
122
Awesome!
Congratulations.
123
Greate!
It is the highest in the site seen recently!It was impressed.
124
It took a long enough time to get it done and now it’s taking a longer time for me to marvel at the aesthetic and serene brilliance and life you’ve brought back into your website.
Simply said.."Well done!” :)
Cheers.
125
Simply beautiful, Veerle. =)
Congratulations!
126
ah, see..
i did hit your blog in the previous day,
and got a user and password dialog box
i thought you’re going to make your blog available only for some people :D
great redesign, veerle! :)
i like it very much.
127
An amazing reincarnation. A day ago, I tried to visit your blog and I couldn’t access it, then today, this. Gee, I didn’t even know where I was! But I love the colors, even the dark green background presents a nice contrast to the content, and the way you reorganized all of your topics into files, the picture icons, artwork,ETC. Very nice. It is all very graphic in nature.
128
Wow - An amazing reincarnation! Yesterday, I was trying to visit your blog and couldn’t even find log on. Today, this. It really looks good. I love the contrast of the dark green background, and the way you reorganized all of the topics into folders, and the use of the picture icons. It has a very graphic designy type of look, much different from the text look of your other blog. Very nice!
129
A big ‘YES!’ - lovely work, really like it :o)
130
yes, wow! yesterday, I tried to visit, and couldn’t login at all. Today, this! An amazing reincarnation. I like the dark green background - it provides high contrast to the text and other graphics and images. Also, very graphic designy in feeling, less text oriented, like the old blog! I love the folder icons for your topics, too. They stand out very nicely, as does the cool font.
131
Wow - what a loverly redesign! It seems to follow the same ideas that I’ve been thinking about as I look to redevelop my blog - that of pulling in and seeding web 2.0 stuff (flickr, technorati, del.icio.us...) plus accessibility goodness - essentially update for today’s ‘2.0’ web. I will be looking to your new site for much inspiration!
132
Congragulations you on the redesign, its awesome, as Malarkey said you have raised the bar.
Great work, articles and art. I haven’t read all the articles but whatever I did they are truly amazing, very helpful, thank you for taking the time to share them. Inspirational and educational too.
133
Utterly speechless…
Beautifulness if the word does exist.
Immaculate conception.
134
I’m speechless....*gasp*. awesome and neat!
135
Wow, I’m impressed. One of the best looking weblogs out there :)
136
Pretty Cool!!
Chapeau!!!!
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