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
Lovely design. I really like this new version :)
And oh, just realized it’s still under test… but this popped out in my rss feeds ;)
Hahah, thanks. Yeah, I’m still ironing out some details here.
Incredible redesign, Rob. I am speechless.
Is it too early to post it on Styleboost?
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.
Well done Mr. Goodlatte. When’d you get so damn tasteful?
Looks wonderful. Love your use of TypeKit :)
Nice style here Rob. Congrats.
Love it.
Looks great except for the “Connect with Twitter” button.
I agree with Alexandre on the Twitter button.
Great design though!
Atta kid. Looking very, very nice.
Beautiful job man!
Excellent attention to details — I especially like the post’s dates and the separator line just above the footer.
Good job!
It’s bold, it’s usable, I like it!
Nice job, Rob.
So tight Rob. Love the simplicity. It looks great and feels great to use.
Skolar and Proxima Nova, eh? Nice choice! Looking good Rob! Cant wait to see more conversations going on here!
Looking good Rob! Tweet tweet!
Wow, looks great! Very smart to require a twitter/facebook login to comment.
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.
Congrats Rob. Looks beautiful!
Looks great Rob!
Beautiful work Rob!
Looks great! Glad to see you back Rob! Was beginning to get anxious while you were away. ;)
Congrats on the new design, the connect to comment thing is different but I like it, very easy!
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.
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.