R3-Launch

24 Feb

Today I’m both re-designing my site and re-joining a community that I’ve been absent from for awhile. It’s nice to be back, internet.

Release 3 of RobGoodlatte.com is about focus. Ditch the right column, the useless metadata, and the esoteric ways to browse my archive. Focus on content and (hopefully) discussion — no need to clutter the experience with widgets, feeds, and noise.

The new design carries forward and improves upon a few successful elements of the previous design. Focusing on fewer core elements makes this version of the site feel much more intentional to me.

Photo by Darwin Bell under Creative Commons

28 brilliant comments written by trolls

  1. Ahmed Chergaoui

    Lovely design. I really like this new version :)

  2. Ahmed Chergaoui

    And oh, just realized it’s still under test… but this popped out in my rss feeds ;)

  3. Rob Goodlatte

    Hahah, thanks. Yeah, I’m still ironing out some details here.

  4. Johan Bakken

    Incredible redesign, Rob. I am speechless.

    Is it too early to post it on Styleboost?

  5. Rob Goodlatte

    Johan: You’re more than welcome to share it on Styleboost — thanks man. Still working through some bugs, hopefully nothing too major.

    Twitter profile pics are currently down here because Google App Engine is down. I use a caching service hosted on App Engine.

  6. Ben Blumenfeld

    Well done Mr. Goodlatte. When’d you get so damn tasteful?

  7. Mike Krieger

    Looks wonderful. Love your use of TypeKit :)

  8. Keith Robinson

    Nice style here Rob. Congrats.

  9. Brandon Walkin

    Love it.

  10. Alexandre Roche

    Looks great except for the “Connect with Twitter” button.

  11. Justin Wickett

    I agree with Alexandre on the Twitter button.

    Great design though!

  12. Tom Watson

    Atta kid. Looking very, very nice.

  13. Joey Primiani

    Beautiful job man!

  14. Rémi Prévost

    Excellent attention to details — I especially like the post’s dates and the separator line just above the footer.

    Good job!

  15. Josh Enders

    It’s bold, it’s usable, I like it!

  16. Dan Romero

    Nice job, Rob.

  17. Jeff Bowen

    So tight Rob. Love the simplicity. It looks great and feels great to use.

  18. Joshua Brewer

    Skolar and Proxima Nova, eh? Nice choice! Looking good Rob! Cant wait to see more conversations going on here!

  19. Mark Bixby

    Looking good Rob! Tweet tweet!

  20. Teddy Hwang

    Wow, looks great! Very smart to require a twitter/facebook login to comment.

  21. Peter Gebhard

    I really like how clean it is. I hadn’t checked the site in a long while (because it’d been lacking updates), and the day I check back, it has a new design! I’m looking forward to your posts.

  22. Dave Morin

    Congrats Rob. Looks beautiful!

  23. Mike Gowen

    Looks great Rob!

  24. Brian Delicata

    Beautiful work Rob!

  25. Drew Tufano

    Looks great! Glad to see you back Rob! Was beginning to get anxious while you were away. ;)

  26. beth dean

    Congrats on the new design, the connect to comment thing is different but I like it, very easy!

  27. deepseafish

    Very nice, but in your effort on reducing clutter you killed the year of the post date. I think this is still an important information.

  28. Rob Goodlatte

    Deepseafish: Good catch. I’m planning on showing the year on posts that were not posted in the current year. I agree that it’s useful metadata.

    I intentionally excluded metadata like post time, category, and tags. Also got rid of less-useful nav features like browsing by date and category.

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