I’m excited. Are you excited? The crinkly wrapper is coming off and it’s about dang time. Today, July 1st, after two years (and two months) of tinkering with graphics, plugins and a soupy mixture of html code, we’re launching the all new SolidSmack.
It’s shiny, don’t ya think. But that’s not all there is to it. This is a new day for what’s going on with SolidSmack as well. This is also a testbed of sort. One, to find better ways of sharing cool content with you and two, to make it more a more engaging experience for you. Here’s the details on some of the design and what’s to come.
Why the update?
Frankly, the old site layout, while minimal, was getting a bit blotchy, dated looking and difficult to manage. We just can’t have that now can we. I also wanted an easier way to add content, experiment with different web technologies on the site and yes, slap some ads up in your face to get a little support going.
The theme I’m using, and it’s versatile backend, allows me to do this and really, to do it much easier than before. This makes the site much more dynamic and able to change quickly. Some things you’ll see, some things you won’t. The point being, we’re gonna put the top down, have some fun and see what this site can do. So, you might be wondering what the site is running on.
What’s it running on?
I’m building a whole About section for the site that will give details on everything from the framework to the fonts. For the time being though, here’s some quick facts
- Hosted on Hostgator
- Running on WordPress
- Rockin’ the Thesis Theme (aff) Framework
- Uses Icons from the free Function Icon Set
- Took over 1 year to design
What you should check out
If you’re seeing this in a feed reader or email you won’t be able to enjoy some of the features in the sidebar and footer area. So, yeah, you should definitely visit the site. There’s a few things you’ll want to come back repeatedly for.
The sidebar
Right now there’s ways to connect with me via Friendfeed. There’s polls! Delicious polls. A new one every week or so. And there’s the Disqus Combo Widget where you can see what being discussed and who’s discussing it.
The Footer
I love this area. It slides back and forth. There’s nine areas that I’ll be adding different content to occasionally. Currently, there’s ways to connect via Google Friend Connect. See some of the top CAD sites and see post by different criteria.
The Archive Page
The Archive page is where you can find posts organized by category and view post based on popularity and randomness.
Some things we’ll be trying out/looking into
Since I hold a high regard for complete randomness and highly useful information for you all, we’ll be trying out a few things.
- Real-time blog posts (Like this one, see below)
- Guest Posts (contact me if you’re interested)
- Cloud Apps
- Broader Content
- Video
As always, please let me know what you think, what’s annoying, what’s cool, what you would like to see and how the site could be better in any way. Thanks for helping SolidSmack go this far. Let’s kick it up a notch or two.
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SolidSmack is a very small behemoth of an online community about 3D CAD, technology, design, robots, and ninjas… Ok, maybe not ninjas so much, but those guys are COOL so there just might be something about some dang ninjas.
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The site looks great. Keep bringing the awesomeness for many years to come.
I can tell the site has the Solidsmack touch to it. It will take a bit to determine what is liked and what is not. I do like the glossy look to it though very much. Likes the polling area, very nice. Comment rating is slick. Overall look and feel is cool and slick.
Love it. Nice work. Aren't product releases a beautiful thing?
Looks great, nice job Josh.
Devon
Yes, love it. Only wish I could have a little bit more time
Congrats on 2+ years hope there are many more with the new layout. Looking forward to see what else gets added and posted.
Only one word comes to mind josh – AWESOME!
Nice Job man!
Ricky
Loving the new site design, Thesis is a beautiful theme!
Unfortunately, IE seems to break it; that's all I can run at work.
But at least I can see the site now; after they upgraded me to IE8 a few weeks ago, your site would just crash whenever I came to it, with or without compatibility mode.
I am working on a redesign for my site, but I think it's going to take me longer than a year…LOL! It's going to be a while before I can work on it much with the new baby here.
BTW, your first Flickr link has a “member no longer active message”…
Is IE still breaking it? I thought it was mostly ironed out for IE. Let me know what is going on and I'll look into it.
I fixed the Flickr Link. Thanks.
Btw, I'm always up for answering any questions about theme and wordpress stuff!
Thanks Ricky, now I just need to get some of that good ol' video going. There's somethign calle time that gets in the way of all this fun stuff.
Thanks Rod, you know I value your input a TON. so hammer away if something is not liked… or liked
Upon refreshing, the sidebar seems to have moved up some, but there is still some blank space. And the 3 adds right below the header seem to be floating out where they shouldn't be. I just sent you a screenshot.
wow awesome looking site you have now. Keep up the good work. I'm jealous, need to do something about my site…
Mr. Mings,
I find your new site to be terribly refreshing and downright awesome. Normally, I wouldn't be quite so vociferous, but I feel compelled to heap upon you compliment after compliment. Amazing, stupendous, superb, astounding, completely friggin' awesome.
Nice job, Josh! When are you going to do mine?
Hey it looks good, but it really really needs some tweaking.
Should use this site http://browsershots.org/ to get it right on all browsers
Hope you have some free time, I also designed a theme for e107 it was a pain in the ass to get it right on ie and ff mostly ie screwed things up
IE 6 explodes the new page… but who uses IE6? What a perfect excuse to upgrade!
http://www.seestoryrun.com/sirhc/solidsmack/Sol...
IE 7 doesn't like the div above the content much.
http://www.seestoryrun.com/sirhc/solidsmack/Sol...
IE 8 is pretty happy, it shifts the side bar down a little.
http://www.seestoryrun.com/sirhc/solidsmack/Sol...
Same deal with opera.
http://www.seestoryrun.com/sirhc/solidsmack/Sol...
And of course Firefox is happy as a bug in a rug.
I don't have safari or chrome to test in, but they're usually along the lines of FF and Opera.
I'm fighting the same browser battles right now redoing the company webpage using wordpress as the back end, I feel your pain.
I actually just found this IE collection yesterday, it lets all IE versions install at once which is handy handy for checking out compatibility. I pretty well always ignore IE6's crap, its so much different than IE7. Hell it doesn't even like transparent png files. Screw IE6.
IE Collection: http://finalbuilds.edskes.net/iecollection.htm
I think the site looks pretty great. I'm not sure about the grunge stuff you've got behind the entry div's. I actually thought my monitor was dirty, then broken once i noticed the streaks when i first saw it
I think if you had grunge elements else where in the design, it'd help it look a little less out of place. Or vice versa, pull in some sort of techy looking gradient pattern that fades out as you go up. I think that'd be a little more fitting.
Good work though, I love it.
Hi Waikit! Thanks! Well let me know if you have questions about web/theme/wordpress/html stuff. I like messing with it and helping others out with it too. See ya!
Ha! Thanks Jeff. you're toooooo kind, but I can take it
Thanks. Hey, I'm open to at the very least answering questions about website and theme stuff! let me know!
Ok, looked the archive page. Looks nicely laid out with no problems except for one that I see. When on the archive page, your link bar on the very top is jumped to the left side of the page and does not match its location on the home page which is on the right side.
The only thing I would suggest changing at this time would be to possibly move the Connect Via Google at the bottom to the sidebar above or below the FriendFeed. Just seems that they are similar and should be grouped
Woke up this morning and got an extra hard smack with the new site. My head hurts now.
Looks great, nae, smackalicious!
Congrats Josh, Love the new look and features, keep on smakin'!
Smacktastic! Congrats, Josh. I think all that sweat and hard work will pay off.
Hey Chris, thanks. IE has been the biggest pain. I'll check out the collection. I hadn't checked it in 6. What kinda weird is IE auto-fixes (?) some of the elements when refreshed. not sure what is up with that.
I'm with ya on the grudginess. I was trying to decide how to add some division and transition between sections. I went for subtle, but think it may be a little too subtle. I'm already looking at better ways to have it all flow together better. I've tried some techy stuff but it looks too busy. Will keep looking though! Thanks so much for the input.
dude, ya don't know how painful IE has been. (maybe you do) What it's doing now is sweet compared to how it's jacked things up for me before. can't wait till it dies off completely. thanks for the input man. I'm working on some fixes, but would for sure rather be posting cool stuff.
It's a whole new Smacktown going down. New Site new Twitter Avatar. I can only add my compliments like everybody else. Looks great
pff I ended up with 1 empte pixel because IE some how did not wanted to align it properly. The math was good the numbers where good the code was good but IE just did something else :S , what can you do then…
Maybe show this when reconized IE 6 or lower:
http://thenextweb.com/2009/05/29/nsfw-and-nsfie/
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Just as we expect from you Josh….Professional!
Ok everyone, just want to thank you for the input about the IE bugs and general feedback on the new site. I'm getting things hashed out slowly. Still some oddities with IE7 in particular. So, let me know if you see anything that is really jacked up. Thanks again.
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