New Pure DWTS Design
I imagine most of you have seen the redesign of Pure DWTS. I still have a few changes I want to make (like the menu bar at the top), but I wanted to ask people’t thoughts on the changes. Are there things you love? Things you hate? Is everything working correctly? I’d love to hear if you see things that look or seem odd so I can try and address them.
Also, in preparation for the season, I’m hoping to implement a better caching plugin to be able to handle the spike in traffic without issue. We’ll see how that goes. Hopefully it resolves some of the issues with the site going down.
Also, I know that many of you have noticed the avatar that gets associated with your comments. In case you’re wondering how to make that happen, you just need to associate the email address you use to comment with an image/avatar at Gravatar. Once you do that, all of your comments with your email address will show the avatar.
I hope you enjoy the changes!
I like this new design and everything seems to work fine with me, and to be able to use our gravatar is a good thing. Thanks John
It will take a little to get used to since some things are moved but it seems to be working and looks good too (although I must confess, I liked the look of the old site a little better – it had a classic look to it).
I like the new site… It is tough teaching an old broad new tricks…. hehe!
I do have one question though, Are the Recent Comments Section lower on the page? It seems like there is more scrolling involved to reach them. But honestly, I would scroll until doomsday if I had too, just to keep reading all the juicy tidbits on this site.
Thanks for headups on the Gravatars… I will have to set one up.
Thanks John!!
Will take some getting used to but I like it!
I just love everything. Thanks so much John!!! BEAUTIFUL!!!
The only thing I’ve noticed is that the cute smiley faces don’t work anymore…
other than that, it’s great! Good work, John!
I love the new design — it’s much cleaner and easier to read.
One nuisance: I use Safari and when I click to read comments, then hit my back button, I keep getting a “to reload this page, Safari must submit a form again” popup which requires selecting a cancel/send reply. Is this something that can be addressed from your end, or do I need use Firefox to avoid this (or maybe I just need to navigate the site differently than I used to?)
Nice work, John. The new design looks very clean. Looking forward to joining everyone here for the new season.
I love the new layout! However my only issues is that I prefer the full site in my browser on my iPhone over viewing the mobile version but when I switch it to full site now I get this big white bar with only an ON/OFF switch on the top and it takes up the entire page! Even when you scroll down it follows you and I have no idea how to make it go away. Other than that love it!!
I’m one of those “hard to teach an old broad a new trick” and I could do without the pop up with related articles that keeps opening even after I close it but I’m sure I’ll be able to tune it out in no time,
Still, I love it and really appreciate all the work you do John to keep this site up and running so beautifully. Thanks!
I like the both designs. The new design is cleaner, but I also agree with Lisa C. regarding the old design having a classic look. Or maybe that’s just cause it was what we were used to.
I do like this new Gravatar feature. Pretty cool.
I think John’s looking into the smiley face think, Sally.
I really like it too, but as always, just gotta get used to the new design as I’ve been used to the old one for over a year.
If I just had one suggestion is the color theme. It’s a lot of white, so maybe some contrast in color could make things pop, but that’s just my graphic design eye coming out.
Otherwise, it’s looking really great!
Yep, working on the smiley face issue.
Sandy,
The recent comments is probably a little farther down in this design.
Change is always hard, but I think this design will work better for a number of reasons. We’ll see how it goes.
This new layout is very lovely, John! I find it easier to navigate than the old one.
Uhmm, there is one thing I would like to suggest though and that is to implement a new “live-chat” system for DWTS live shows. I think it’ll be fun to engage all the readers that come to this site to write and post on the spot about what they think of the dances? Just a thought.
Good feedback. I think I have a way to do that on our Pure DWTS Facebook page if people are interested.
I absolutely love this site, so far be it for me to register any kind of negatory …..
The comments from the mods are very easy to read with the exception of the mod’s name. The red type does not stand out very well against the dark grey background. It hasn’t caused any issues, of course, I can usually tell who’s writing by the content, but just a thought.
‘course, I’ll be 60 on my next birthday, so it could just be my eyes LOL
8o)
I have a few small observations.
The floating box over there —> with the related articles is a pain in the patootie.
As is the “Recommended for You” box up between the article and the comments. There’s just a lot of extraneous stuff between the two that I find distracting.
I agree with Linde that the red on grey is not a good combination.
And I really wish I didn’t have to comment to track posts.
Other than that, it’s great!
Evaine, totally agree with you that the “Recommended for You” and the “Related Articles” links are a pain, but I figure only a pain for us die-hard fans (nothing new there as we’ve already read all these articles, 99.9% of them right here, so what’s the point, right?). For the casual viewer, maybe another story ?
Evaine and Linde,
Good feedback. I changed the fly out related articles list to only 3 links instead of 5 so it’s not in the way as much. That should help a little. I agree the “Recommended for You” is too big. We’re just testing out that plugin for a little bit. They say they might be able to make it smaller. We’ll see once I get the stats if we should keep it or not.
I wish their was a subscribe to all comments feature as well or at least subscribe without commenting. I’ll reach out to the plugin developer to see if they can make it happen.
TY, Linde and Evaine for expressing my issues so well. The Related Articles and Recommended for You are particularly annoying.:)
And thank you always, John for keeping the site going to start with, for being innovative and receptive to feedback.
I agree with the above commenter about the amount of white. It just makes the page feel a little…unfinished? It’s just aesthetics though, as I haven’t had a difficult time navigating so if you guys like it, no big woop.
I am having some computer issues though… But I am just wondering if….
I can’t seem to log onto this site in the evening, Is anyone else having the same issue? I check other sites at the same time and I have no issues there, those site just click right on. Is it just that my connection has issues?
Thanks to anyone else that can share some input… The premiere is right around the corner, and I need to know if I need to see the computer MD stat!!!
I’ve had the same problem. For the past week or so, I’ve been unable to connect through my iPhone for about 2 hours every evening. I’m not around a computer during those times so I don’t know if it’s a problem there for me or not. Everything else I try to connect to works fine. I thought it was just me.
It’s not your computer. It’s the server. It keeps going down at about 6:30 PST each night. I implemented a new cacheing system last night that will hopefully resolve the issue. We’ll see tonight.
Thank you SO much John.
Thank you, John, for the new design. Lots of creative new things happening here. I have to agree about the “whiteness” of the new look – I liked the classic look a lot. One of my favourite new things is the autobiography from the writers at the bottom of each article. The things you learn! Thanks to all who make this such great site!
Don’t know if I have an avatar yet. Please be patient with me as I am just checking this right now.
You know what.. I just remembered I had to change my user name on avatar being there was already another sandy…. Guess I won’t be having an avatar then on this site, I don’t want to go by another username on here. Sorry ladies and John for any inconvenience I will just remain faceless on here… I want to just stick with sandy.
#Sandy – I had to be a different user name at Gravatar also (there already was a Linde) but it works for me anyway. I think the icon is connected to your email address, not your user name.
#Sandy – meant to add, and I’m not the most tech-savvy girl either, so if I can get it to work so can you!
Sandy,
We don’t use your gravatar username. It will still use whatever name you enter when you make your comment on here. The site will just use your email address to get your avatar from Gravatar. I think the username you’re talking about is just one that you’d use if you ever had to log in to Gravatar to change your avatar.
As you wish though.
@Sandy – FWIW, I think I had to go to wordpress.com and log in with my Gravatar account in order for the avi to display here at Pure…. I think. I was surfing that night with a glass (OK, maybe 2) of merlot…
WooHoo!! Logged on right away tonight. Thank You John…
Thanks for the info on Gravatar.
another FWIW – I only went to Gravatar, registered a user name (not Linde) with a password, and chose my icon (which was super duper easy). That was it. My very next post here had my Gravatar. And it didn’t take long at all ’cause I hurried right over here, couldn’t wait to see if it had worked. I’m so cheesy LOL
Perhaps I didn’t need to register at wordpress.com because this is the only on-line presence that I have and so don’t have any other accounts for anyone to keep track of.
Of course, I had had a glass or two of Chard
Thanks Linde… Heres my problem. “chose my icon (which was super duper easy)”….
I don’t know how to do that. I was thinking maybe they had a whole bunch of them right there for us old timers (referring to me)!! from the town of Bedrock, back when you chiseled your words in stone. Oh well, I don’t want to spam up this site any longer. So thats all.
Sandy, you did it ! I guess we know who you’re rooting for LOL
Any part of any photo will work. You just need to save it to your hard drive so that Gravatar can find it.
It’s all because of you Linde.
Ok, I think I’ve fixed the
issues. It may take a little bit for your browser to clear its local cache, but once it does the smiley’s will display properly. I hope 
Nice work Sandy. I knew you could do it. Nice part is that now you’ve done it, it will just show up as you comment.
Thank you John and Linde for the complements. And Thank You John for the updates. And most of all Thank you to everyone for your patience with me.
I hope my gravatar shows up this morning so I can see it as well. Last night you guys were seeing it but it wasnt coming up on my screen.
Looks great Sandy! I’m loving everyone’s new gravatars!!
I like the new design, but I enjoyed having the date posted with the article, since I only check it about once a week. I can see how many more articles are left and if I need to take a break or not.
Tara,
The date is still there, but we did move it from the top of the posts to the bottom next to the author of the post.
I was going to suggest you use this archive page: http://www.puredwts.com/archive/ I thought that it had dates for each post too, but it just has them listed. Still a cool page if you want to see all 3671 posts we’ve done on Pure DWTS.