The designer's thoughts on the new design :-)

Hey all! Thanks for the feedback (and ratings!) of the new design. I’ve been reading the forums all day making tickets out of bugs and features and still going. Sometimes it’s pretty hard reading (if you’ve ever read hundreds of people discussing your design you’ll know what I mean but overall it’s been pretty positive!

A few thoughts I wanted to share about the new design:

• For regular users who feel the design is too (big, spaced out, insert adjective) – over time I believe you’ll find it’ll feel more and more comfortable. It’s always hard changing over from something you’ve grown used to, especially for such big changes. That’s why we don’t do too many big changes like this. But sometimes, like moving house, it’s just necessary because of a change in circumstances.

• There was some discussion as to whether the new design is going to be bad for new buyers. I guess only time will tell, but my gut feeling is that this will be a big improvement for them. It’s a much friendlier, more usable site. It’s always hard to justify statements like that, but I’ve been designing sites for large audiences for a while and had some successes and some not-so-successes, and I think I’m starting to be able to tell. My instinct is this one has come out right. But as I say time will tell!

• The new design has set us up for the future, the old design was starting to cause problems for growth. The new menus mean for example we have lots more space down on the page. We’ve also left gaps where a bunch of buyer features are coming soon (shopping carts and so on). Similarly the menu structure has a lot more space for adding sections, and the wiki has space for lots more content and so on.

• One criticism I’ve seen is that this wasn’t enough features for 3 months of work. Keep in mind that whole time we have been doing things like improving site performance, doing backend maintenance work, generally keeping the sites running and even releasing some features (e.g. comment threading came out during those three months). I’m always a bit protective of our devs as I know how hard they work, but just wanted to point that out I’m very proud of our team and what a stellar job they’ve done. For a small outfit to produce world class sites is not an easy task. Especially when you keep in mind that sites like Facebook employ hundreds of developers … we have a team of six!

• There will be improvements we’ll make in the coming months. Think of it as getting the design settled in. First we take care of bugs, then small improvements and over time we put in the bigger ones. Today I’ve made a good two dozen tickets for fixes in the next week and a half and then we’ll move into the bigger improvements which is something we’re always working on.

Anyhow I’ll be keeping an eye on the Improvements thread on the forums as well as the bugs thread, so feel free to add any more feedback.

In the meantime in about 20 minutes we’re rolling out a bunch of fixes including one that authors have been asking for, for a very long time (but which needed a bit of performance testing)

You guys are really great, I don’t have criticism I only have suggestions, I’m absolutely confortable with the re-design!

In the meantime in about 20 minutes we’re rolling out a bunch of fixes including one that authors have been asking for, for a very long time (but which needed a bit of performance testing)

Tell us man don’t be evil! 20 minutes? I’ll wait

Oh by the way, in case anyone has forgotten what the old sites look like I grabbed some screenshots before we took it down …

• AudioJungle Old Design

• ThemeForest Old Design

• GraphicRiver Old Design

• VideoHive Old Design

• FlashDen Old Design

... since I designed those too, I feel i can say without offending anyone … man those sites were UGLY ! I hated those so much, so glad we got rid of them

Hate to be a pain in the butt but you said 3 months of redesign when we have been repeatedly told 6 months and even the front page says 6 months The new row on the homepage makes up for it though!

It was probably 3 months for the design itself and another 3 months for the rest of the development.

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I think it would be kinda nice to have an option somewhere to set the number of rows (up to a max) on the home page. Maybe that’s silly but I like options, lol.

Hate to be a pain in the butt but you said 3 months of redesign when we have been repeatedly told 6 months and even the front page says 6 months The new row on the homepage makes up for it though!

It was probably 3 months for the design itself and another 3 months for the rest of the development.

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I think it would be kinda nice to have an option somewhere to set the number of rows (up to a max) on the home page. Maybe that’s silly but I like options, lol.

Good idea but what would be REALY cool is keep everything like it is but make it so people can arrange the homepage themselves – like bbc.co.uk – then those who don’t want the entire top of the screen taken up with author followers and blog intro can move it down or simply remove it – now that would be options!

+1 Now I really like that idea!!!

Good idea but what would be REALY cool is keep everything like it is but make it so people can arrange the homepage themselves – like bbc.co.uk – then those who don’t want the entire top of the screen taken up with author followers and blog intro can move it down or simply remove it – now that would be options!

I have to say, I’m a sucker for options and I like this idea!