HU To Focus Exclusively on Green Lantern Slash Fiction, Effective Immediately

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As you know, we’re planning a redesign here sometime in the not-too-distant future. I’ve got some ideas about what I’d like to do, but if you have suggestions please let me know in comments.

Speak now or suffer the consequences.

Update: Also, we’re on Twitter now — http://twitter.com/hoodedu. Vom Marlowe is handling our twitternessing, or whatever the kids call it, so sign up and tell her hi!

66 thoughts on “HU To Focus Exclusively on Green Lantern Slash Fiction, Effective Immediately”

  4. I do actually have something constructive to say. Let’s see. What I would most wish for here, would be a significantly wider space for posts. This could be achieved by going with a magazine-layout front page & full-width individual post pages (like I have on Manga Bookshelf: front | inner), or even just a wider design overall (maybe 960 px-ish wide?) that would keep the sidebar from stealing so much of the space for text. Not only would this be much easier to read, it would also allow you to post larger images that could be viewed right in the post.

    I’m a fan of magazine-style layouts in general for blogs with multiple bloggers (or even just multiple regular features) since I think it keeps more content accessible from the front page. But some people don’t like them, so I won’t push too hard for that. Just. Wider space for posts. I plead for this.

  7. Well, ultimately, you want to let the content guide the design, so if you think a magazine layout doesn’t work, it probably doesn’t. At MB, the current layout exists in order to keep new content from getting buried with three full-time bloggers (plus guests) posting daily at a pretty brisk pace. Being able to separate out certain kinds of features for their own space also allows everyone to feel free to post as much as they like, without fear of burying someone’s Very Important Feature with their lighter blog posts. But you all seem to have a more structured way of scheduling things, so that may doesn’t matter as much.

  9. Then, yeah, I’d definitely recommend a magazine-style layout. As I said, of course, I’m a fan. MB would be a complete mess without one.

  12. “Green Lantern? Ugh. I’d rather read Incredible Hulk porn. ”

    Or Green Lantern/Hulk … amazing what someone can do with a power ring and enough will power

  15. As Hal Jordan rubbed the soap into his body, he found himself stealing glances at Kilowog, in the next shower over. Every so often, Kilowog would turn around and give Hal a peek at his massive alien penis.

    No, thought Hal to himself, what am I thinking? This is wrong…

    well, someone had to get it started.

  17. Just checked out Melinda’s site. Very nice, it’s impressive.

    So magazine-style layout goes straight across the page and has a lot of different zones where different sorts of items can be found? Like posts here, whatever over there? I can see how that would work nicely for a blog with a lot of contributors.

    One thing though, and this may be simply a personal preference, but I find it a lot easier on screen to read down rather than across. I clicked on a post at MB and found that the full post went across the screen too, just like the front page.

    Any way that the new HU’s posts, once clicked, could read down with lots of white space on the right side of the screen? That would be like the design you have now, but it’s always worked very well.

    To sum up, I’m hoping that the new HU’s magazine style will be confined to the front page, with the individual posts being laid out pretty much the way they are now.

  19. Tom, with pretty much every magazine-style layout I’ve ever seen, there’s always been an option to have a sidebar for the inner pages. In fact, I’d say that’s much more common than what I have set up at MB. I like full-width pages for articles, but one could have a magazine-style layout like Kate’s, for example, which maintains its sidebar on the inner pages.

  21. I agree with Mr. Crippen whole-heartedly, assuming he’s factoring in a widened text field (wider- please! :) )

  23. For the record, David, I find it much, much harder on the eye to read a long narrow column of text. I’d far rather have a nice, full page, with a slightly larger font, and paragraphs that can have more than two sentences in them without becoming blocks of doom. That’s why I always liked the default post page on LJ. I know I’m not alone in this, so I don’t think I’d call it web design 101.

  24. It’s difficult for a lot of people to read past a certain length and return to the left. I can’t handle colorful muck on the sides at all.

    For those who like white space around their text, may I recommend Readability? I have bad eyes and it is a life saver. It’s a browser plugin that renders long articles into easier to read formats. I heart it unreservedly. https://www.readability.com/addons/

  25. “I agree with Mr. Crippen whole-heartedly, assuming he’s factoring in a widened text field”

    No, not wider! But, you know, I’m willing to be reasonable.

  28. I’m sort of debating whether to dump it all or allow some of it to stay if it can be retroactively edited to fit the new hegemony. For example, you might go back through your Tintin posts and insert some hot GL/Snowy scenes, etc.

  29. Wait a minute; I just realized that you were asking a serious question.

    It will all still be available. That’s a good question though; I need to ask Derik what would happen with a reformatting.

  30. Redesigning the theme will not affect content. No worries. The only thing we’ll have to pay attention to (or that I will) is how a change of width (if there is one) of the main text of posts would become too small for the width of images. But I doubt that will happen as the text is pretty narrow already, if anything it would get a bit wider.

    In re the same issue further comments up, I’m not a fan of the text going all the way across the page (and yes, that is web design 101), so that won’t be an issue. Text should be as easily readable as possible, particularly for a site like this were the posts tend to be long.

  32. I don’t know; I’m like Melinda. I like reading your site, Derik, and I think too narrow gets weird.

    I’ve never read HU on anything except a wide screen laptop — do you have these GIGANTIC white space columns on both sides of the text on a non-wide screen? That’s one of the things that I think makes it a little hard to read — it’s really BRIGHT. Just this little band of text in the middle of a sea of shine.

  33. Apologies to Melinda, I did not mean to imply any stupidity or ignorance on her part in re my design 101 comment. I do find wide swaths of small text hard to read.

    Caro: Yes, those white fields are there on my screen too. It can be a little blinding. Maybe that’s something we can address with we a redesign.

  35. I think what Vom said is right. I definitely get befuddled when the text goes ALL the way across this big monitor. That’s like trying to read in landscape, which is no good.

    I will say that the narrow HU as it is currently formatted reads just fine on my mobile phone…

    Oh, to continue with the fetishization of Senses of Cinema, I like their width.

    They do have the blinding white space too, though. I hope we can fix that.

  37. melinda, all i’m saying is you’ve got to find the right middle ground between too narrow & too wide.

    when lines are too long, the eye wastes a lot of time just going from the end of one line to the beginning of the next one (when the column is too wide, there’s even a chance you don’t find the next line on a quick glance, which is very distracting).

    more than that though, web design boils down to: a good font, well spaced, well sized. the panelists is a good example of something that works. HU’s current design is a bit too cramped for my tastes but it’s not annoying or unreadable. it could definitely be classed up though.

    what caro says about “blinding” white space is relevant, though that’s partly up to the user to change their window size (or maybe that’s the mac user in me that says that). at any rate, it’s always possible to colour those empty spaces with a light gray, to defuse the “white light” effect. i wouldn’t go for a deep black if only because high contrasts aren’t easy on the eye either.

    sorry for the nitpicking, just a quick professional opinion. free of charge, too!

  39. David T — I actually find it really distracting to have my window smaller than my screen (whether I’m on a Mac or not). That makes my desktop part of the “design” I’m seeing, and there’s no relationship between my desktop and the page I’m looking at. It goes from blinding to cluttered, and I actually prefer blinding. But I’d like neither one.

    Since my desktop is set up to be efficient for work, not in the least bit pretty, I don’t want to have to tinker with it for visual effect.

    I definitely agree though that text needs to be narrow enough that the eye doesn’t waste time scanning. A little wider, not a lot wider.

  40. Davidt, if you like the panelists design, you’ll probably like the new HU design, since Derik was responsible for the first and is planning to do the second!

  41. David, I simply disagree. I find it much, much easier to read a wider page than a narrow column of text, it’s much easier on my eyes, and since I got a lot of compliments from grateful readers when I switched to the current width I use for individual posts on my website, I know it isn’t just me. There surely are readers with the opposite issue, but that doesn’t actually make me & the people whose experience matches mine cease to exist.

    I didn’t come over here to defend my website’s design to strangers, and honestly I’m really regretting having commented here at all. Though my intent was to be helpful to Noah, the result has been a couple of guys telling me that not only am I wrong to imagine that I know anything about web design, but that I’m also wrong about what I personally experience as a reader on the web.

    I’m not suggesting that HU should go with a full-width design for posts (though I mentioned it as an option, because it is one). But for me as a reader, I would find the site much easier to read if the area for content was at least a bit wider. Currently this is what I see in my browser once I’ve scrolled down past the sidebar on a HU post. Not only is the column of text so narrow that an otherwise reasonably-sized paragraph becomes a huge block of text (something I find difficult to look at), but also it feels like a real waste of space and is not pleasurable for me from an aesthetic standpoint, which is part of what influences my overall experience with any site I’m reading. Obviously not everyone feels this way about narrow columns, but that’s where I’m coming from. I’d love to see that area of content use a bit more of its reasonably available space. I would like it better and find it easier to read that way.

  42. Eesh; a flame-war about web design? Come on, people.

    Melinda, your comments have definitely been helpful. I think we’ll definitely have wider columns, though maybe not the whole screen width. If nothing else, everybody wants more space for pictures. And using more of the available space better is I think a good idea; the archive down the side just isn’t super useful.

    I think your site is kind of amazing, actually. Kate Dacey’s too. I saw them soon after we moved over to tcj, I think, and I was plunged into envious despair. (The lovely comics comics site also caused a certain amount of teeth gnashing.)

    Would you mind telling me what template you used? Or are there WP magazine templates you’d recommend? We’re trying to figure out what to go with, but it’s a little overwhelming.

  43. melinda, what do you disagree on? that there has to be a middle ground between too wide & too narrow? how much more conciliatory do i have to be?

  44. FWIW, I really like magazine layout for the front page and for various section pages. I’d love to see a magazine layout page for things like, I don’t know: reviews, focus on craft, interviews, flame wars (kidding, kind of…). That way we could have pages that show some of the really good content longer than a week? And then the content pages themselves with a sleeker look because we are a long winded lot and we like us some pictures. I just can’t manage to find anything using the side bar (no offense to side bars everywhere.)

  45. I’d kind of like to have pages for the columnists where you could see all the columns going back, like on Comixology. And maybe something similar for guest posts. I don’t know if that’s going to be too much of a pain though….

  46. Sorry for being so sensitive, Noah. I’m definitely feeling my lack of morning coffee today.

    I’ve become a big fan of the Studiopress; Genesis Framework, so my current design was built on that. Mine actually began as an offshoot of their “Magazine” child theme, but I’ve altered it so much at this point, it barely resembles the original. I think the next time I redesign I’ll probably just start with the Genesis base and move on from scratch. The advantage to the framework, for me, is that they update the core regularly (like, anytime WordPress releases and update at least, if not more often), and they actively respond to bug reports, so their code is always really clean and up-to-date. Also, I don’t have to be a php expert to get really creative with design & function, which is a big help to me, since I’m not one. Derik may not have that issue, so he probably cares less about that aspect of it.

    I’d recommend any of their child themes, though. They’re easy to customize, and pretty much the entire front page is (or can be) widgeted, which makes it easy to move things around at will.

  47. One thing I really want is comment editing. *pleads shamelessly*

    And Noah, I agree about the columnists. That would be fantastic. I think there are some themes that will do that automatically based on tags? *witness my ignorance*

  48. Yes, please, to comment editing and more summative columnist pages.

    I think we’re decided on a wider width, but for the record, Melinda’s screenshot is exactly what I see too, and it is really hard on the eyes. Less white would help, but it’s too narrow.

    Especially since I am loquacious in comments and it makes me look even chattier than I am! I mean, sometimes a comment that took me a couple of minutes to write fills a page! It makes the even-narrower indented quotes insanely long too.

    If it were ALL text, from border to border, that would be hard too, but I think I could handle up to about twice as wide. A little narrower is probably optimal for me; any wider and I’d start to get scanning fatigue.

    Also, for the record, I don’t get why everybody thinks the Comics Comics site is so masterful a design. It doesn’t give me a headache and that makes it better than a lot of US comics sites, but I sometimes think too many years of looking at superhero comics have dimmed the subculture’s ability to recognize an outright visual DIN when they see it.

    I strongly prefer the site Derik recommended on our long ago tcj.com fail: http://www.galerie9art.com/ I think Melinda’s site is lovely. This is also nice: http://neuviemeart.citebd.org/

    –c

  50. Of course, having a columnist’s past columns listed off to the side makes a lof of sense.

    I think the Proximity article (link is a bit upthread) has a feature that works nicely. The column width is a little too fat for my taste, but the bars of black on either side of the page make a big difference to the eye.

    To sum up my preferences:

    > … mag-style front page
    > … not-too-wide posts
    > … black bars as frame for posts’ text space
    > … posts’ text space is white
    > … and black type for everything
    > … or, if the frames aren’t black, have them be dark and have the text match their color

    Hey, it never hurts to put in your vote!

  51. Thanks for the magazine them recommendation, Melinda.

    I do agree with most of you that the current text width is too narrow. That one example above where the text went across the whole page but had wide margins on either side was pretty nice.

    Noah: Pages for columns/ists and such is super easy. You technically have them now for posts by tag, they just were never designed to look good. You can have pages of posts by author if you like.

    You might also consider making use of WordPress’ categories, as they help for making easy groupings of posts on a page.

  53. Noah, I second Derik’s urging towards categories. If you do end up using a magazine layout (or even if you don’t), think of them as your means of guiding the layout. What types of posts do you want grouped together? What types of posts do you think need to be featured on their own? Reviews? Essays? Quick blog posts? Whatever you’d like to see separated out for the ease of readers, those are your categories. If you can determine a few primary categories, that will help you put your layout together in a way that makes sense to you. You can use subcategories to divide things out further, but the main categories are something you can rely on to guide the evolution of your layout.

  56. Yeah, that’s definitely a pain. But at least you can add/change categories on posts n the “quick edit” window, which helps it go by a little faster. And you can probably do it in bits. At first, the stuff that will be showing up immediately on the front page (so it will display where you want it to), and then working backwards as you feel motivated to do so. People can suffer with incomplete archives for a while if it saves your sanity.

  59. Alex, none of that would affect HU, since it’s not being hosted by wordpress.com (unless it is, and Noah’s paying for the domain mapping, but I doubt it).

    Or maybe you already know that and you’re just bringing it up as a point of interest. :-)

  60. Hey, I just thought of another request! It’s minor, and very silly. But if you disabled smiley images in comments, it’d keep me from always forgetting that you have them enabled and making a mess of things like I did just there. And would have just again after that sentence, but I’ll try to restrain the irresistible urge to smile in text. Argh. The pain! I realize this is really my problem. *sigh*

  61. Man, I hate the GIF smileys… I always feel like an idiot when I realize I’ve typed one… there’s something interesting and elegant about an ascii face, and something really jarring about a yellow and black… thing… in the middle of the text.

  62. Have those faces where one does an eyeroll and another has a shit-eating grin and is giving the finger with both hands. It would liven up your Eisner discussion forum.

    … Actually, don’t have any GIF faces. So I guess that’s a vote for disabling.

  63. fwiw: The people who run wordpress.com and the people who make/update/maintain wordpress the software are not exactly the same people.

    Also, I hate the smileys.

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