Mar 01
Veerle’s blog now 2.0
2006 at 12.09 am posted by Veerle Pieters
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
1
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
<applause> 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.
64
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!!!!
67
Wauw, Veerle, you did an excellent job ! I just love the design. Keep it up !
68
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
75
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.
77
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.
80
Wow!! Fantastic job.
81
The new design is just beautiful! Well done!
82
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!!!!
137
This is awesome! Good job!
138
Just some quick confusion about the skip link.
First of all: Have a cookie for keeping it visible (I will bring a cookie for @media, promised. I just bought it and will keep it for you till then).
But: Why oh Why is the skip link _after_ the main navigation? Right now you need to tab 6 times to reach the skip link that skips four links :) One of the two links is also a bit redundant, as you could put the RSS feed icon as a background in the RSS feed link - or is this some new convention I missed out on?
139
I’m really impressed. It’s unbelievable, whats possible with photoshop and web standards.
best regards
140
A big thumbs up!
141
Ah, beautiful design, Veerle! I simply love every aspect of this site visually and markup wise.
On the IRI-design you could have done better, though. It’s not bad, but it’s not too good, either.
But all in all a great comeback! :)
142
Wow! What a magnificent work in such a short period of time!
It is always such a treat coming here to read and look!
143
What can I say? Compared to the previous design this is really a big step forward. Great job!
I especially like the liveliness of this redesign, and its colour scheme as well.
144
Congratulations… what a beautiful design.
Nik
145
Beautifull layout ! And what a great Blog.
Ongelooflijk wat een bron van inspiratie deze blog is. Ik vraag me af waar je de tijd en de inspiratie blijft halen om dit allemaal vol te houden.
Proficiat Veerle !
Yvan.
146
Impressive… and beautiful!
147
Really nice design, and its cool you can quickly make a dynamic site with expression engine ... but during periods like this you see the disadvantages of an out of the box solution like EE. It doesnt scale. You have little or no control over caching. I wonder how many live db-queries happen during an average page view on this site. DB-queries and parsing in interpretated languages as php take up a lot of resources.
I like the design, but EE doesnt convice me at all.
148
Absolutely gorgeous. Great work Veerle!
149
Amazing job, /jealous! :D .. this makes me wanna do a redesign too :/
150
Absolutely brilliant work. Seriously impressed with the use of light typography making everything a joy to look at.
151
Just noticed, on your main nav in FF 1.5 (XP SP2) you get those extended outlines due to this rule:
ul#nav li {
text-indent: -9999px
}
in the CSS. Try adding overflow:hidden to the same element which should (hopefully) make the outline only show a rectangle around the link. (Aplogies if anyone else has already told you this, didn’t have time to scan 150 + comments!)
152
Thanks for adding to link-rot, I am just so pleased any blinked, furled, del.icio.us’d, diggd, dotted, wanged or farked links are not gone.
Plus my bookmark to your link list of colour calculators.
Now if only they would all break their urls, we can all be happy! Then the web will finally fall apart.
153
@All: Well you all totally overwhelmed me, I still can’t believe it all and it left me stunned and amazed.
@Lea: I wouldn’t trow in the towel yet, your design is nice too, especially with such a brave usage of color, you made it work nicely. And another EE site, can’t have enough of those ;)
@P-ter: I will tell the secret in a later article. I promise :)
@Andy Beeching: I choose the system because I could code everything fast and because Expression Engine doesn’t litter my code with invalid mark-up. The contest wasn’t really a reason because I was already convinced much earlier. Look in my archive and you’ll notice that :-)
About the dotted line: this border serves an accessibility purpose. It is meant to highlight which link has focus when you use keyboard navigation. I’ll leave it alone sorry.
@Chris Heilmann: You got a deal about the cookie, just watch that due date closely :) About the skip content, you’re right that was an oversight on my part and I already adjusted it. The RSS icon is also clickable because most people tend to click on a icon too.
@Henrik Lied: The URI-design part is out of my hands I’m afraid, my host won’t let me use mod.rewrite to change that, at least not yet.
@Bowa: I guess you saw my offline message. First of all I wouldn’t blame EE too quickly because it can be my host too, since at the moment I am not on a dedicated server. It is easy to blame EE if you are into an other programming language. Better an out of the box solution that isn’t in your face and let’s you do great things, then a perfect scalable solution that spits out code mess. That is my humble opinion :) Flickr is PHP too so I wouldn’t write it off, they have millions of users.
@Chris: Some links are broken due to the switch from an other system. But all articles are still there. Use search to find them :-)
154
Some further points:
Disapoined on the fixed width layout (1024). and the dark background color which makes sometimes for difficult reading. The fixed width enforces full screen viewing which is not ideal for some. A fixed width (1024 or 800) is alright as a starting point but the page inner elements should be allowed to float and re-size as required. Just a thought.
155
@veerle ... not shove it off because flickr is on php ? even the slowest code will work ok if you put it on super duper hardware in clusters of dozens of servers.
but like i said, if they designed it in php with a lot of caching implemented and with compiled code stored in Zend optimizers it might work out ok, we still have some php sites at work too, but i do see a whole lot of performance difference between different sites and technologies ... without those spitting out as you call it “a code mess”.
156
Awesome! I can’t believe the amount of detail that you put into this and really, the icing on the cake is the excellent illustration work.
I’ve been keeping a close on on EE and wonder if it might fit my needs. I’d love to add a section for my own illustration work and hear it’s a pretty robust CMS.
How was the learning curve? Or, I should say, about how long did it take you to learn it, inside and out?
Again, looks superb! :)
157
Looks great, Veerle. In numerous ways.
158
Cool Design… Veerle Rocks!
159
WOW! Truly an original design. Great job!
160
Waaaaauw! Cool new design Veerle. From now on I will check this website a few times a day :) Keep up the good work!
161
I was greatly anticipated the new look, and you delivered!
It’s interesting how feminine the site feels despite a darker background. The bright colors really contrast well and give your site pop.
I also like seeing the areas that tell us a little more about you, ie recent purchased music, books, etc. One suggestion, maybe adding an area to these to suggest a book, or a song…might discover some new stuff.
Nice redesign.
162
Wow! One of the few (I hate to use cliches, but here goes) “Web 2.0” designs that actually stands out from the rest of the cookie-cutter designs. One of the few websites with a black background that actually looks good. Great colour scheme.
Meanwhile, my own site implements the “Web 0.12b” look. LOL!
-he who stacks pork
163
This a unique design. Just stumbled over your site on Stylegala (as many others did as I see) and I’m really fascinated by your design. It’s a pleasure to discover your site and I will surely come back again to look at your wonderful artwork from time to time. For now I just have to sit and admire your design. You really made my evening! :)
164
Holy shit, this is hot. Veerle, you’ve raised the bar for all of us… this is going to be REALLY hard to top.
165
Very nice work Veerle. It’s great to see how you have used EE to create such a beautiful site. It looks like you have been putting EE to good use; especially if it is only the second time you have used it.
We’re putting the finishing touches to a EE-based site at the moment and from what I have seen here we still have a lot of work to do.
Keep up the good work.
166
Super cool stuff. Leaps and bounds beyond the previous design IMHO. Who’d have thought EE could be moulded into something this easy on the eye. I love the little accents and flourishes everywhere. Peerless attention to detail Veerle. Well done.
167
veerle - in my opinion you have improved the design over yesterday…it was too busy…too much. much cleaner now. tweak a litle more… if u wish ;-)
ciao bella!
168
Astonishing and inspiring. Quite superb for a blog that isn’t completely finished. I’m in awe.
Awaiting your flull blown Blog 2.0
169
Godess - what else can one say to you? I am reading you for quite a time. Yeah, one of those lurker guys - and late for de-lurking day. Well.
I absolutely adore your new design. Makes me want to delete my own site. Now. Really. As someone said before - you’ve raised the bar. By millions of miles. I mean it. I’m leaving. Trying to improve my skills. See you in 10 years…
170
All looks fine, except for the forms imo ... take this commenting form for example: the form in the “your comment” box could be better; but on the other hand one can type XHTML into it.
However, the contact form also has “Courier” set as font ... and one can’t type any XHTML into that textarea ... maybe you could also set it to “Verdana”?
And oh ... the background in #ADC7C6 might look good too (or #293C39 as bg, and #ADC7C6 as color) ... cos’ there’s not white anywhere else on your site ;-)
Anywho, enough loitering this comments list with minor details about form elements ...
$bramus->backToLurkingMode();
Bramus!
171
@Veerle So? If you add the feed icon as a background and position and add a padding to the link you can make both clickable and use one link.
I quickly put a proof of concept together, and spiced it up with an animated rollover state.
172
Wow. I never would have pegged you as a black-background kind of girl… but it works. Congrats!
173
Congrats on an astonishing design!
174
WOW WOW WOW!!!
i love it.
175
@ Veerle: The CSS I stated doesn’t get rid of the outline in Firefox, just trims it to fit round the link so that it doesn’t show it shooting off miles to the left where the indented text is. So you still get the benefit of :focus, just without the over-large rectangles. But naturally the decision is yours!
Glad you got the hosting sorted out, looking forward to diving into EE later! (your blog has convinced me it’s up there with Textpattern). :-)
176
Wonderful work!
Congratulations!
177
Veerle, congratulations on the new layout, it is great. I’m not very keen of the new colors though. The blues, grays and grayed green are great, but the autumn red on top of them (links) really hurts my eyes. I’d go for overall darker background colors, it misses some contrast ;-)
Big hug, keep up the amazing work.
178
Wow. I’m totally blown back by this design.
179
Wow. Bravo.
180
regarding your to-do list: “a smaller layout for 800x600 users”
yay! thank you thank you thank you
181
Very well done!
Congratulations!
182
Wow! This is excellent! Thank you very much for this burst of creativity. I love the colors!
183
What a lovely new layout! Congratulations on the beautiful redesign. :)
184
Looks absolutely fab, Veerle! Keep up the good work and keep rockin’!
185
Your eyes will probably have glossed over these comments by now, but I want to have my say!
WOW!
186
w00t! You have to participate in the ExpressionEngine contest ! http://www.pmachine.com/shootout/
187
Congratulations on this outstanding layout! I especially like the use of icons, the navigation buttons and of course the ticket thingy :)
Keep up the good work, Veerle!
By the way, there is a way to fix the dotted line going all the way to the left at the navigation buttons (in FF1.5+), while still keeping a line around the buttons only when focusing on the links.
188
Fèlicitations/proficiat ;)
189
uhu…I love the font you used in headers.
Can you tell the font’s name?
190
I’m jealous…really jealous!
191
wow! great design Veerle ;)
192
WOW! Truly wonderful.
193
Wow, great site! I really loved the old one, but this is amazing. Some lack of contrast tough…but nice colours and arrangements ;)
194
Very impressive redesign. Your relaunch started my interest in EE.
195
Nice, very nice!
196
RESPECT!
197
this design is awesome.
good luck for the contest… and props for the contest itself, if it gave you the impulse to roll this out :)
198
Damn Veerle, this is really a kick *ss design! Keep up the good work!
199
Hey this is my 1 best blog ever. Just want to say this :)
200
Nice redesign; I love all the little shadow effects, and the “color bar” above the header. The calendar on each post is also a nice touch.
I have to get used to the red links on grey background though :)
Overall a nice “break” from your average “Web 2.0” weblog, it’s almost art-deco! :D
201
very nice, clean design, well done!
202
Probably the greatest personalized blog i’ve visited. It makes me want to make a blog for myself, only I wouldn’t know what to post about. You can count me in your daily visitors list.
Keep it up.
203
O yeah, and if I may add one more thing: I personally like “boxed in text” (with a clear right-edge) to have a “text-align: justify”, so that text and edge align nicely. Have you considered this (probably) and if not: are you going to? ;)
Untill then: hail Opera’s site-specific user stylesheets!
204
Wow! I came in via Stylegala today, but normally hit your site via RSS, so I’m not sure how much has changed on the homepage!
It’s such a bold change in design, but I’m in total awe! Well done Veerle, now just sit back and let the accolades roll in!
205
Where i could see the previous style for this site ? Is there a screen or something ?
206
Coxis: Veerle’s Blog as of April 1st, 2005.
207
Absolutely gorgeous. I love this design. The bottom section reminds me a little of Matt Brett’s site, but not in a copycat sort of way. Either way great job on the refresh. This site is one of those rare cases where the design and content are on par with one another.
208
Thanx Leo Kennis, now the new version ROX !
209
Excellent redesign Veerle, keep it up!
210
The re-design looks great!
I especially like the header, it’s absolutely stunning.
Great job!
211
Congrats Veerle!
Best redesign I have seen this year!
212
Amazing redesign, Veerle :)
213
Beautiful use of color. I dig the darker background; feels easier on the computer-worn eyes…
“Don’t worry, I will talk about the development and challenges in detail here later.”
Looking forward to it. I’d love to hear how it was transitioning from one CMS (which was…?) to EE.
214
213 comments later, I stumble upon your highly linked redesign and realize why so many people are excited. This looks EXCELLENT! Great job!
215
WOW!
Apart from that I’m speechless :-)
216
Absolutely gorgeous. I’m floored.
217
I’m speechless.
AMAZING!
218
bea-utiful design.cool! and
best redesign site I have seen.
219
You definetely have talent, this is a beautiful design, this ranks with the best CSS designs out there… maybe the best I’ve seen in months. Although all new sites have that effect one me, so I’ll have to see on repeat visits :).
Colour combinations really work… makes it very easy to read.
220
Couldn’t face reading all the comments, so I am sure to repeat many! Truly good. Very impressed with all the detail and typography. I wish I could get my site looking so sweet. See you at @media.
221
I just have to write again, just have to.
I’ve been struggling with Expression Engine for the past month, not because it would be hard to use, but mainly cause I’m not sure which way would be the “right” way to build a XHTML/CSS design with EE. I hope you’ll shed some light to that in the near future.
Once again, a kick ass re-design, there’s no doubt that Veerle 2.0 is one of the most influental designs so far in 2006.
222
All I have to say is, I have totally just been re-inspired to work on so many projects. Truley lovely.
The major plus for me is that it still feels so Veerle-y :)
*On a slightly different note, I’ve since forgotten my password for my login on this site, do you know how I would go about recovering it? I understand if you are busy and don’t read all the comments. I will contact you soon when your less busy.*
And congrats again.
223
I’m guessing that “amazing” isn’t sufficient a word to describe the vibrant feelings I’m getting from your site.
I love your choice of colours. Your site’s beautiful!
224
Baby, you have much style!
225
Congratulations on creating an awesome design Veerle. Exactly what I had expected of you :-)
226
This is truly an amazing layout. You’ve really outdone yourself here.
Note: I just double posted on your drawing of “the girl and her dog” because of a bug in the preview button? It seems that instead of previewing you just post the comment directly.
227
Awesome new design. looks sexy
228
This is my second comment, just to see my gravatar on your fab site.
229
Hello Veerle,
I was looking forward to the redesign of your blog, but this is even better than expected and it all fits together as well.
You’ve outdone yourself both in the layout and the structure of this site.
Great work!
230
Nice blog, realy, however sad that some of the minor color tones don’t come out on my laptop screen as they do on my CRT. Nevertheless it’s still a great design especialy for a blog!
231
WOW! Looks beautifull! It is very kind to viewers eyes, yet it is colorfull. Although your previous blog was easier to navigate, I still love this. Good job!
Cheers
232
Over 230 comments later, I feel like I’m a tad late… but really, WOW. Great job. It’s a -huge- change, and I’m really getting fond of the increasing amount of layouts that continue in blocks vertically.
233
You’re a goddess of webdesign. *Bows*
234
My hat off to you…
this is truly a masterpiece!
235
Wow…just wow.
This is amazing.
236
Your mouseover effects does not work on IE7.
237
Holy moly this is a nice site! :o
238
Wandered over here for the first time from mezzoblue ... WOW, what an impressive design. I’ve been staring for for hours at all the nifty little details everywhere, and I’ve found inspiration for so many of my own design dilemmas.
Amazing site! Will be keeping a close eye on it in the future :)
239
This is very nice. I just love shades of grey. Any bright colour will go well with it. Very nice and simple.
240
WOW OMG WOW, this looks fantastic, how did you do it? too may comments to read, please please help me with my Blog i need the help bad, whee to start???????????????
241
I missed De-Lurking day but now I really had to write down my felicitations!
This redesign is sooo gorgeous!! So many attention to the little details, very nice colour scheme, and fine readable typography! Everything is just so clean and information is very cleaver ordered… You beat every other website design in Belgium, really!
An amazing masterpiece with a lot of style!! Congratulations!
(p.s.: Maybe you could restyle the search page a bit? With some ajax goodness for example…)
242
Your layout is plain gorgeous! I’d marry you any day even though I’m gay.
243
Great attention to detail and a tasteful use of colors. A solid statement that definitely raises the bar for the web design community.
244
Outstanding work. Congrats Veerle, your design is a real inspiration.
245
Back to what <a >Niels said last Friday</a>, http://www.pmachine.com/shootout/ definitely.
Good luck!
246
I`ve been a discreet visitor to your site veerle, your tips had helped me a great deal :)
The changeover is brilliant.. love the color scheme. although i still prefer your previous way of categorising the topics. which was tucked along in the left pane, which always gave me the freedom to select a specific category.
I hope you`d consider this option in your tweak list. overall the site is awesome. really inspiring :)
247
Hey Veerle,
This is *very* beautiful, but (yes, there is a but) I’m afraid links, on the whole, are a bit too long.
Accessibility-wise, this may be a problem. For example the ‘Approved’ section on your home page features very long link texts. This is problematic when reading your site in a screen reader.
A solution if you want to have big clickable zones is to go the JS route, see for instance what Vivabit did on the atmedia “Subscribe now” block.
Nonetheless your redesign is wonderful… yup it is.
248
PRACHTIG !
Natural talent !
<3 !
249
Very nice design. You really have an eye for details!
The only thing that is “bothering” me, is the fonts in the input fields and textarea :)
250
Wow - you have one of the most amazing blogs I have ever seen! I can see you spent endless nights working on getting everything 100%. It’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into every little detail.
Great Work,
Julian
251
very nice Veerle. I love your heading font. I think alone is reason to attend your presentation at @media. No presure :)
252
Superb design. But that’s now been recognised now in the Pmachine competition - I would have put money on this site winning and some of the others were very good. Well done Verle. I look forward to your account of how you went about building this on EE.
253
Looks so nice the new design… But what a shame that it isnt optimized for Opera-browser :/
254
Ziet er heel cool uit! Doet me wel erg denken aan http://www.mattbrett.com/ :p
255
Best looking website I’ve seen to this date.
Brilliant work.
sunny days,
.jon
256
First time I saw your new design it was like hitting my face “Uh ah bang!” - but now that I’ve seen it more often I agree that this is a great piece of work!! Congratulations from Salzburg, Austria.
257
Great looking design. Keep up the good work! I like the color scheme.
258
Amazing design.
259
The new design is awesome looking! Keep up the good work.
260
I come here for the content (which I find excellent), not for the design.
Personally, I dislike bright type on dark background.
261
Hi Veerle,
Just wanted to echo all the good comments on your site and out there on the internet in general. A thoroughly excellent gathering of tutorial based materials indeed and the design is also fantastic.
I was just wondering one thing though taking a very quick look at your source code for the site. I noticed a link somewhere to this image - and was just wondering what it is used for?
Is it somehow used for the navigation buttons so that they become light and dark and if so how?
Sorry for the probably stupid question but was using the new Web Developer toolbar for Firefox from - http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper which I saw a link to on this site and was using it and it showed that image to me.
Thanks for such a fantastic website and brilliant writings.
Best wishes,
Mark
262
This is the image I use for my ‘tabbed’ navigation. I use a technique called the Navigation Matrix. I use width and height to set each area of the tabbed buttons and background positioning to create the hover effects. For example:
li#about a {
width:69px;
height:27px;
}
li#about a:link, li#about a:visited {
background-position:-66px 0px;
}
li#about a:hover, li#about a:focus {
background-position:-66px -27px;
}
The advantage of this technique is that there is only 1 image loaded. So there are no “empty” moments or “gaps” once you rollover an image (which can happen if you use separate ones).
263
Hi Veerle,
Thank you for the exceptionally swift reply! WOW!
Will take a look at the link you posted about the Navigation Matrix technique, sounds interesting.
Thanks again,
Best wishes,
Mark
264
Wow, Veerle you did a very nice job creating this marvelous site. Did you do all of this in your spare time? Do you have a lot of time or are you just a fast coder. I’m really stunned by this design. It has the neath design combined with the user accessibility (clear typography) and it is unique. I like it
I also put a lot of work in my website in my spare time but I never come up with such nice ideas. I’m a belgian and I have a website devoted to Apple (news). Perhaps you can can give me some small hints to improve my website.
I hope my english suffice so the others understand what i am saying. BTW, why is it, you make your blog in english? I thought you were flemish. Dutch is a beautiful language too ;).
good night and good luck.
Oblectator
265
Oblectator said:
I don’t have much spare time, but any spare time I have is put into this site. I started the design part of this blog in December. The conversion to static templates was done the last week of February (it took me a couple days) and the implementation of the blog system (Expression Engine, from pMachine) was done in 2 days, no nightly hours ;)
I think your English is just prefect :) I just want to reach as many people as I can with my blog. I like the multi-cultural and international interaction. We all learn so much more if people from other countries can share their opinions and experiences. And of course Dutch is beautiful language, no doubt about that… too bad no more people besides our neighbors and, to a certain extent, some South Africans speak it :S
266
Congrats!
very nice colours & easy on the eyes to read!!
;))
267
Very nice design. I can’t wait to steal it… just kidding.
268
Veerle, this is wonderful. Truly a work of art.. Im sure that if they could they would hang it in the Louvre.
269
oops… I believe in this state of the aaaaaaaaaaaart blog.
Commenting is not available on this article.