Preview the New GirlsChase.com

[Chase]

Sometime soon (this week, hopefully), we'll roll out a new theme for GirlsChase.com. You can preview the new theme here:

• Site Home
• Sample Category Page
• Sample Article Page

We worked really hard to build an attractive, functional theme that looks great on both desktop and mobile, and I think we've done that. Kudos to our talented design team for their great work!

Once the new theme is live, we'll begin making a few tweaks and changes to the layout as well, including an overhaul of the Girl Skills Diagnostic Quiz and other improvements like dedicated pages for phone coaching offers for the various coaches we have on the roster, including descriptions of their backgrounds and different styles and approaches.

All we're waiting for at this point is our head dev to duplicate a script we use to clone the live site to a separate subdomain, so we have a backup in case anything goes wrong when we roll out the new theme (we have to change around some of the structure of the site too - our design team cleaned a few things up from when we rolled out the present structure in 2013). As soon as we have that script, we'll make a backup copy of the site, and set to work bringing the new theme online!

Also in the works: I intend to transition the forum to XenoForo and away from phpBB, which is a little dated of a software and lacks some key features (like a "New Posts" button you can use to easily see new posts across the forum whenever you log in). We don't have a set date for that, and that might not happen until after we roll out the new course (which likely won't be any earlier than October at this point), but that is on the drawing board.

Chase

 

[Alchemist]

Looks sweet. I had been thinking for some time that the logo and the general look of the site was seeming a bit dated, removing the frame and updating the theme feels refreshing IMHO.

Perhaps you might consider updating the look of the newsletter as well Chase, when you have the time. The logo is a bit dated there as well, and low resolution. Heck I might even submit some examples of a newsletter, if they would be welcome.

One thing to consider is that when there is a hyperlink to an article that includes an apostrophe, inside another article, the current website has an issue with that. The security/firewall system prevents the viewer from accessing those links. It's probably because the apostrophe symbol is converted to unicode, e.g. "girlschase.com/content/she’s-a-bad-girl-bla-bla". I think this is causing a small but certain loss of page-views.

Another thing is that when you submit a comment on an article there is a badly formatted tiny popup message on the bottom left hand corner, but the text color is white and the font is too small so you have to highlight the text to read it and new users may not see the message that "administrators will confirm" their submission so they may unknowingly post multiple times on an article.

 

[Big Daddy]

Looks gorgeous, Chase.

Just a suggestion, though: experiment with different font types and font sizes (especially tending to bigger ones) as to improve readability (and time on page).

 

[Skippy]

The new site looks amazing and I'm in love with the font you used for the body text! what is it's name?

I also had a suggestion for the forum: For posts, could you add an option to collapse text? Sometimes if I want to write a really long report, I think it could improve readability if I collapse certain sections so that people can just skim over it or click on it to expand if they want to see it.

 

[Chase]

Thanks for the feedback, fellas!


@ Alchemist-

If you have example newsletter layouts you've seen that you like, I'd love to check them out, sure. We'll have a new logo soon, but beyond that, we could probably use some pointers on good newsletter design.

I will see if we can figure out which articles have smart quotes / dashes in them, and clean up those URLs. Our naming system doesn't include those characters in URLs anymore, but there are still some older articles with links like that, you're right.


@ Big Daddy-

Think the article font ought to be bigger? I just checked; looks like we are on the smaller side. Breitbart has 16px font; NYTimes 17px; and WaPo's at 18px. We're at 15px. I'll put this on the list to experiment with and see how that affects time on site / pageviews.


@ ShauiGe-

Here's the body content font:

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Roboto

Developers picked it. Apparently it's a standard font in Android operating systems.

On collapsible sections, I will try to keep this in mind for after the forum update (some months down the road).

We likely won't make any further updates to the forum software as it is now.

What I intend to do (when I get a little more bandwidth) is have us migrate the forum from phpBB to XenoForo and roll out a new custom theme for that. That'll make for a much more streamlined forum experience (not to mention mobile responsive).

I believe XenoForo has collapsible text options within the software (it has pretty much everything, really). We'll have to wait until the update, though!

Chase

 

[Byron]

Damn Chase,
I'm really enjoying the new logo and new design of the site.
Very sleek.
b