Post CSS Reboot wrap
The Spring CSS Reboot has finally come to a close and after perusing comments & emails concerning 5ThirtyOne and other rebooted pages, I can finally begin to collect my thoughts concerning the experience. I guess it’s fair for me to explain why I decided to participate in this years Spring Reboot. The simple motivating factor, which I am almost ashamed to admit, was recognition. A few more wandering eyes - which I had hoped to lure in as best I could with the paltry 200×140 px thumbnail - to notice that 5ThirtyOne existed.
Snagged lines
My overall experience with the design community driven project was mixed. An honest 50/50 split. On the upside: exposure, interaction, and feedback between and from peers. On the downside, total lack of respect from anonymous readers. Note to future “I do this for a living professionals” that decide to flame a site, make sure your own link doesn’t point to Blogspot or Google Pages. And what’s with the low ratings on pages. I have yet to see any sites - after a day of voting - with anything above 3-stars. Has the voting gone asshat backwards like Digg?
Oh look! The blogs are flowering…
Nothing beats Spring cleaning like a fresh new front page look. Conveniently, I decided to stress myself with each page load: “Look, The Foliage Mod is decent, stick with that and modify it for the reboot. Wait! No, the fonts are too small, lets make something a little easier to read and call it 5ThirtyOne v2 and call it quits. Dammit, the content layout is piss poor and now I’m kicking myself. Get your ass into gear and whip up something new. You’ve got 24 hours!”
What’s planned for the next reboot?
My hope is that OCDD [Obsessive compulsive design disorder] does not kick in before the net reboot. The ultimate goal is to keep this gridded layout up as long as possible. There are no guarantees that I won’t make subtle changes here or there, but the base of the site will remain untouched.
Stay tuned for my favorite layouts wrap up. 15 pages of submissions is a lot to sift through.
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Poldo
pj.fh-net.com
Congratulations! You’ve really made a good design for the reboot.
Now, if only I could rip this theme, apart…ehehehehe
May 2nd, 2006 Quote
Derek
5thirtyone.com
Don’t even think about it… You know what happens to rippers.
May 2nd, 2006 Quote
kristin
wiphey.com
LOL… I know what you mean. I actually had something else in mind up my sleeve but did not get around to finishing it, so I went with something simple instead.
I’m so impressed with what you’ve come up with. By far the best design you’ve had on this site so far. I hope you stick with this one for a bit
I think the voting has gone sideways on cssreboot this time also. A lot of the great sites I think deserve high scores aren’t showing yet. Maybe in a few days after more votes come in they’ll get what they desrve
May 2nd, 2006 Quote
Poldo
pj.fh-net.com
I was kidding, Derek BUT, if ever you get tired of this layout, would you release it to the public? (public = me)
May 2nd, 2006 Quote
Derek
5thirtyone.com
Thanks Kristin. That one made me smile.
May 2nd, 2006 Quote
Jon
I agree, this is one of the nicest looks you’ve had so far (eve though on my iBook with Safari at less-than-maximised I have to vertically scroll a tad). I just checked out css reboot, and I’m really surprised to confirm what you’ve said. The highest scoring site gets 3 stars. I’m far from a design expert, but that seems a little skewed.
May 3rd, 2006 Quote
Terry Ng
kineda.com
You did a great job derek… even with the short 24hrs you had!
May 3rd, 2006 Quote
Derek
5thirtyone.com
Oh something it definitely off with the voting. Either the current votes need to take into considering that 3-stars is the top score (and swap scores accordingly), or the better sites be judged on number of sites along. Neigther of those methods would help though.
And thanks for the comment Terry, your page was sitting prominently atop all the others for the reboot.
May 3rd, 2006 Quote
Terry Ng
kineda.com
I really thought a better voting system would’ve been in place this time around. Unfortunately, it looks like we’re having the same problem of the last reboot.
May 3rd, 2006 Quote
Derek
5thirtyone.com
It’s difficult to moderate. I can’t even think of a way to prevent hit and run single star votes on random sites. I was thinking that registration be mandatory, but that only curbs [temporarily] the frequency of random votes.
May 3rd, 2006 Quote
Alan
azcazandco.com
Hey man, I like your reboot, I have voted but like you say, the votes don’t really seem to go anywhere and I personally think they made a pigs arse of it.
Keep up the good work, I’ll be checking on you (he says in a sinister tone lol) when I get a chance although I too have 1500 sites to get through!
Cheers
May 5th, 2006 Quote
Derek
5thirtyone.com
So true. I just checked the front page and it looks like scores as a whole are dropping in general.
May 5th, 2006 Quote