Nick Denton has finally acknowledged the backlash from Gawker’s controversial site redesign, in a lengthy post that rubbed a few commenters the wrong way and didn’t seem to deliver much word of actual improved functionality.

Denton’s tone suggests perhaps the issues weren’t so much with the site’s frankly awkward design (although there were dozens of “bug fixes,” he admits) but rather that people just aren’t seeing the vision. He begins by explaining that the site’s lack of official word on the backlash was because they were getting a bigger picture of user opinion on the site’s function:

I should first explain the radio silence of the last couple of weeks. We’d wanted to respond to feedback not with promises of future improvements but with actual fixes. So that’s what I’m doing now—but I regret any impression that we weren’t listening.

The post outlines several revisions of the new Gawker, but comments like this from Denton didn’t go over well with remaining readers, many of whom (myself included) use the Canadian Gawker site to bypass the redesign:

News web sites may indeed become more application-like and readers may grow accustomed to swiping instead of scrolling. But they’re not there yet, as the extensive criticism of the sidebar made clear.

Amusingly, the comment thread brought out some of the old-Gawker snark that has been missing in the comments since the new Gawker stumbled into being. One commenter said:

This thread is like finding a surprise packed disco in the bowels of the Marie Celeste.

In an email to staff, Denton described the new layout rollout as “more bruising” to both Gawker media staff and readers than was necessary, and describes the impact on traffic:

Obviously, the reduction in traffic from Google — as from most design changes — has been significant. It doesn’t affect readers of the site — but it does have a disproportionate effect on uniques. Search optimization of the new layout is a top priority.

What I personally find most interesting about all the redesign hand-wringing is the reader response, which seems to be very old-school message board style. The bastard child of the new layout and ensuing outcry is a snark-site called crasstalk.com, and many of the site’s top commenters have apparently fled for good in favor of it, much like what often occurs when a big message board melts down:

I haven’t been back there since about a week after the glitchy new format hit. I – and about 200 of Gawker’s best and most loyal commenters – are now over at www.crasstalk.com , where we get to not only comment but contribute to the site by writing posts on a variety of interesting subjects.

So, who’s right? Are readers just too pedestrian and behind the times to “get” the new Gawker, or was the site a tone-deaf interpretation of what Nick Denton imagines the future of blogs to be? Do you think the readers and commenters that fled are gone forever?

Denton addresses controversial Gawker makeover, details ‘bug fixes’ is a post from: The Inquisitr

I’m a New Yorker, and obviously, a blogger by trade. Gawker is like my New York Times.

I saw a bit of buzzing last week about Gawker and blogs dying or somesuch, but I must have tuned out, because it was a bit of a shock for me to fire up my morning tabs and discover someone had completely revised Gawker and now it is really, really weird. It’s not just Gawker- Jezebel, io9, Deadspin, Kotaku, Jalopnik, Lifehacker and Engadget have all undergone the same re-jigger to display a jarring one story per page.

It’s early to pass judgement on the makeover, as first off, it’s buggy. Kotaku and io9 both failed to load for me, displaying sidelinks, but no main content. Opening different posts in tabs failed for me as well, changing the main tab you’re clicking links off of to the link just clicked- a major pet peeve for people who read sites by opening every relevant link in a tab and then working backwards to the first tab.

At the risk of sounding like the people who get spasticated when Facebook changes their layout at all, I’m not very sure this redesign is going to catch on very well. For one thing, it makes catching up to a large backlog of posts difficult, and pages seem far slower to load. Ads at least seem to take up more space- an understandable change, if that observation is correct, but I found the placement to interrupt my reading of the content. Even now, as I flip back to the Gawker tab I have open, the sidebar still hasn’t loaded and is spinning despite the several minutes the tab has “working.” (See image above.)

Nick Denton seems to disagree with me, saying of the new design:

“It just feels inevitable,” Denton says. “We have a crying need to showcase both exclusives and visual posts. The visual posts are now at least half of our top-performing stories. And audience growth on sites like Deadspin and Gawker has been driven by our most sensational scoops.”

Ex-Gawker editor Gabriel Snyder didn’t concur, however- even willing to wager against Denton that the redesign was ill-conceived:

“I’m on the record that I think the redesigns will fail. And I’m now officially opening the betting pool. I think Denton is going to be forced to pull back on this. If anyone wants to wager that the redesign don’t get yanked back (or greatly modified) by, let’s say, June 1… I’ll take your bet.”

Do you think the redesign will win over Gawker blogs readers? Do blog readers want more of a magazine format? Skimming Gawker, it kind of reminds me of what I ‘don’t’ miss about magazines- difficulty finding and sorting content, having to skim away from large images in which I have no interest (rather than clicking to enlarge interesting pics), and a more time-consuming overall user experience. What are your thoughts?

Are you digging on the Gawker Media extreme makeover? is a post from: The Inquisitr

The new white look in blog designs jettisons content borders in favor of no borders at all. Content, advertising and background share the same uninterrupted white, or with some limited background changes/ lines. Visually the designs offer a clean look that reduces visual clutter and presumably helps speed load times by reducing the number of CSS elements required for each page.

Here’s some recent examples of tech blogs embracing white.

GigaOm

In GigaOm’s current template, all lines are removed between background, content and advertising. The header in maintained as a block, a common element in this type of design.

ReadWriteWeb

ReadWriteWeb goes for a full width block header, and a thin line between content and advertising, but blends the rest.

Mashable

Mashable is an interesting mix. The current template embraces horizontal lines, but ignores vertical lines. The sidebar ad elements get gray individual boxes.

VentureBeat

VentureBeat has taken minimalism differently to the others, embracing it with their header as well as the rest of the site. The sidebar gets a background, but there are no other dividers.

Is white right for your site?

Just because white is in at the moment doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s right for your site. There are advantages, including the potential of increased CTR if you’re not dividing your ads and content. The theory there goes that by not providing a visual barrier to ads, visitors are more likely to see them, therefore click on them.

The problem though with white is that if you do have a lot of sidebar items up that aren’t great to look at, white may actually highlight their nature more than a traditional side.

Also white can appear to be stark visually and may be a turn off. For example VentureBeat has combined white with a gray text color, so the white appears very, very white. It actually hurts my eyes, but that might be a thing with me only. Always keep in mind that you need to maximize readability on your site.

Conclusion

There are many more sites not mentioned embracing white at the moment, so there’s no doubt that it’s a trend that is well and truly in place. It’s this years take on Web 2.0, and it will probably spread a lot further until the next design trend is embraced.

White is the new black in blog design is a post from: The Inquisitr