It’s been an amazing 20-months since the very beginning of mybeerbuzz.com. From the live launch on April 1st 2008 up to today, it’s been quite a ride. About 6-months ago, it became apparent that our beer community had outgrown the original mybeerbuzz.com playing field, so I set out to create a new design. I wanted a design that allowed my readers to see everything important without scrolling or searching and one that allowed us room to grow as a community of beer lovers. With all of that in mind, I now present to you mybeerbuzz 2.0.As you can see I’ve widened the playing field to give us more real estate. I realize some readers don’t use the highest graphics settings, but most users are at least 1024 pixels wide which will work well with the new page. Within our new playing field I’ve added quite a bit of new functionality:
- Blog posts remain large and in the center of the blog. This is the content most readers want, so it gets the largest section. Links to member pages remain prominent on the right side also to make it easier to find your favorite beers.
- A link bar has been added at the top under my logo to allow quick access to important links like my Facebook page, my Twiter feed, my faq, and of course my swag stores ;)
- The New NEPA Beer Calendar has been moved up to the top. Now you can easily find all of our local beer events.
- A mybeerbuzz Search Bar has been added to allow you to search ALL mybeerbuzz pages. This includes all mybeerbuzz member pages. This will allow you to more easily find content (or beers) on any of our pages without searching each individually.
- A Recent Comments section that highlights any comments posted recently under ALL posts on the main mybeerbuzz.com page. This will allow readers to quickly see what posts have new comments and quickly link to that post to add comments if they wish.
- A Facebook Status & Links feed to display my most recent Facebook status and link updates. This area is a work in progress, but so far it has been useful so it will remain active.
- I have improved Post Comments to make it easier for readers to participate. Most readers didn’t even know they can add comments to each post. I’ve now made the comment link a brighter color and embedded the comments into the page below the post when you click on comments. Comments are still moderated (damn SPAMmers) by me.
- Each post has a 1-click Share on Facebook button, and Re-Tweet button to allow you to share one of my posts with your Facebook friends or Twitter followers. Also note the ReTweet counter I’m experimenting with that actually tells you how many times another user has retweeted that post.
- A more robust Contact Me section allowing you to e-Mail me or chat with me live if I’m on-line.
- A Read More post option allowing long posts to be summarized and expanded as needed. In fact if you’re reading this you’ve already experienced that.
- An extended Twitter Feed section displaying all of my Tweets and links to corresponding posts.
- A Photo feed to display my most recent Photos. This will allow readers to stay up-to-the-minute on mybeerbuzz photo activity.
- Expanded counters allowing you to see page hits AND current visitors/readers on the site. As a bonus you can click on the current visitors button to map where those visitors are!
- A Tell Your Friends box allowing you to quickly tell your friends (Facebook) or followers (Twitter) to check out mybeerbuzz.com. This is in addition to individual Facebook & Twitter links in each post allowing you to share specific post content.
- Simplified RSS Feeds allowing you to feed post content and/or post comment content.
- A Green Options section allowing you to share mybeerbuzz content without wasting paper.
- Expanded Sponsorship Options and categories. In the past I have run one random Google adsense ad to try to offset the cost of maintaining mybeerbuzz.com. I have expanded my adsense campaign to several blocks in the lower portions of the page. Over the last year, I’ve also been approached by local beer-business wanting to have advertising blocks on mybeerbuzz.com. To accommodate these requests, I have established a robust set of sponsorship options, sizes and categories. This will give interested parties many different avenues to advertise their product. Yes the blog continues to be FREE, and no it is not my intent to profit in this venture…I simply want to cover my costs and perhaps enjoy a beer.
- A Wilkes-Barre Brewing History page. This page will contain a rag-tag collection of images, documents and items from our local Wilkes-Barre brewers, Lion & Stegmaier. Stay tuned as this section grows.
Finally and perhaps the most interesting addition…the mybeerbuzz Social Section.
I have added an expanded social section at the bottom of the page. This will keep it out of the way for most readers, but available to those that want more. In addition to the standard Google Followers section, I’ve also added new Friend Connect and mybeerbuzz Discuss sections. With Friend Connect you can become a friend of mybeerbuzz.com AND also interact with other friends of mybeerbuzz.com. With mybeerbuzz Discuss, you can discuss anything you’d like (preferably beer) with other readers and friends of mybeerbuzz. Post a question or comment or reply to someone else’s question or comment…all in real time and all available even after you leave and return to mybeerbuzz.
This social section is experimental and a work in progress, but please try it out for yourself. Also stay tuned for more possible social section additions and updates in the future.
So there you have it boys and girls…..mybeerbuzz 2.0…feel free to play in our new playing field, and let me know what you think. Who knows…maybe I’ll have enough brain cells remaining for mybeerbuzz 3.0 someday.
I counted down and the site changed EXACTLY at midnight!!! Looks fantastic mbb.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year to mybeerbuzz.com. The new site looks great and I can't wait to explore all of the new features. Looks Great!
ReplyDeleteLooks great & am looking forward to cruising around it more in the New Year! Thanks for all your hard work!
ReplyDeleteThanks SamO....please do check it out an let me know what you think....
ReplyDeleteDude: This is great! Fantastic job, thanks, and I love it!
ReplyDeleteWow! The search is great! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThanks Taz...
ReplyDeleteWow.. Bil fantastic job.. love the new format AAAAA++++
ReplyDeleteThanks Lindo...
ReplyDeleteBuzz,
ReplyDeleteI think the new page looks great. Bigger and bolder and appears to be user friendly, all good stuff. It is a bit difficult to see the bar links on the right with the color scheme you've chosen though...
Thanks Anon....The What's on Tap links?
ReplyDeleteI tried to update the NEPA Blogs live link on the sidebar so that it points to the new site - but for some reason it is being redirected to the old Blogspot site, AND to a post from April 25, 2008 ("mybeerbuzz.com welcomes Elmer Suds"). (This is also true for the live link for the old Blogspot version. Weird.) Can you check your Atom or whatever the heck sends out a live feed to be sure it's properly pointing for this site?
ReplyDeletehuh...very odd. What feed are you using? I'll check the regular feed but it's all google-based so it should be up to date. Are you setting it to http://mybeerbuzz.com ? I checked now and you're still pointing to mybeerbuzz.blogspot.com and not mybeerbuzz.com We did change the redirection of that last night but it never pointed to an April 25th Sudds post so I have no clue where that's coming from. Sometimes DNS changes can take 24-hours so maybe it's catching up or maybe the cache on the machine you're using needs to be refreshed or cleared to pickup the new change. Thank you for trying. Please let me know where you're getting the feed/link from. mybeerbuzz.com should work.
ReplyDeleteI like 2.0 for the most part... just seems to me the blog entries should have more space than the two side columns on the left. (one slim column on the left would be perfect.) Keep up the great work.
ReplyDeleteThanks Tom. it's a tough balance handing out the real estate. While the posts do get the most area, they do come and go as they get old, whereas the columns are used for longer & narrower more permanent items (twitter, photos...). It's also tricky because some items require a short fat space and others a thin tall space. This was why I went for the number of columns I did (more flexibility). I also added the new "Read More" feature allowing the blog posts to be summarized and expanded as the reader desires. This way a long post only takes up a small space...thus saving space to see more posts. It's a work in progress for sure but much better organized than the older format.
ReplyDeleteBuzz,
ReplyDeleteYes, I meant the "what's on tap" inks. On my monitor it looks like grey letters on white background, it just looks a bit small and blurry, somewhat compact. Like I'm looking at the bottom row of letters at the eye doctors chart. I think it could use either a change in background color and a darkening of font or an increase in font size.
Thanks Anon. It is Black text on White background so I suspect the font may be playing games in your browser or graphics/screen resolution settings. It does highlight the text to a slightly different color for visited links and it does turn green when you hover ove rthe text so it may also be one of those causing it to look funny. I have updated the font to a more standard font than what I used yesterday so hopefully that helps.
ReplyDeleteActually, yes, much darker and easier to see now.
ReplyDeleteThanks...glad to hear it works well now. It may have been a font you didn't have on your computer and the substitute font it chose was problematic. We're back to Arial folks!!
ReplyDeleteI like it!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Johnny...
ReplyDeleteHey buzz I measured for you. By widening your overall page, your main posting column is actually larger than it was on your old site. Thanks for the new page setup. I can't wait to try out some of the new features.
ReplyDeleteAbout the NEPA Blogs thing...I keep on repointing it to the new site, and it insists on pointing to the Blogspot site! At least now the live link seems to be working...I think. I'll try repointing again and see what happens.
ReplyDeleteThanks DB I appreciate the effort. The change to the new site you're seeing is a result of a change I made last night to reuse the original address...either way http://mybeerbuzz.com should always point to the correct page. I suspect you may need to clear the cache on the machine you;re using to get it to re-read the re-direct but as I said it should be fine either way now. Thank you again.
ReplyDeleteI love the Wilkes-Barre Brewing page and the new layout. You've outdone yourself once again mbb.
ReplyDeleteI've taken my time perusing the new site before I give some feedback, but I think I've browsed enough of it now that I can give it a good shake.
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost, I think the site is just too busy now. At the top of the page you have 3 columns, and further down you have 4 (once you clear the calendar and get to the twitter feed/update section). This is WAY too much information to try to process in my opinion, and the page also takes way too long to load. I have a high speed connection and this page takes longer to load than ESPN.com. In my opinion I think you need to streamline a bit; more is not necessarily better. My .02
Thanks Josh. It's always a challenge including the content readers have requested, and balancing that with making the page useful and quick loading. Using free web-resources also limits me even further. With that in mind I will say it was "busy" by design. With only a few experimental sections, all of the content on the new page DID exist on the original page. Unfortunately it was crammed in the right hand column where most people never knew it even existed. The new layout gets things like Recent Comments up where people will actually see them and use them without compromising the important parts like the blog posts themselves and the What's on Tap list. The intent was to give the readers who wanted lots of social networking content what they wanted AND also give the people who just wanted to read and find out what's on tap what they wanted without either group having to scroll or dig for content. It's a balancing act for sure, but given the requests I've received and the sheer amount of traffic that comes to my page from Twitter and Facebook, it's impossible to ignore.
ReplyDeleteThe new page IS certainly a work in progress and there are sections I've already relocated, removed or put on a diet. That process will continue as I work to make the page more efficient. Given the budget ;) this process is not a simple or easy one and not always an easy one to quantify. I have about 9 or 10 different connection speeds/connection methods and 4 different operating systems I can use for testing. Unfortunately they're all working just fine. Beyond that it's hard to account for the connection speeds, browser levels, security settings, anti-virus software and the litany of other things that may make the page load slowly for some and not for others.
I appreciate your input and I hope that you will tune in and let me know if anything I alter does improve your performance. Thank you and congrats on the new future-beer-lover in the family.
I would imagine that a lot of your users use the site differently; personally, I use it to check what's new at some establishments, what's on tap, etc, and the slower speed with which everything loads (even this comment box has a lag now as I type) hinders my ability to do that quickly and easily.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately I think it's become a bit too clunky. I think some compartmentalization might make sense. Do you have a sense for what are the 2, 3 or 4 primary ways in which people use the site? If so, maybe you can break the site into those components rather than trying to put it all together on one page. That might improve efficiency and make things easier to find and navigate.
You do a great job bringing together a lot of information on, as you point out, a limited budget, and this site is a great resource. I think it's equally important that it's easy to get in, find what you want, and get out, though, or the information, no matter how good it is, becomes difficult to access. Food for thought.
The most visited resources on the site are the things that appear at the top (by design). Blog Posts, Whats on Tap, Recent comments, Calendar, Search, Twitter, and facebook. By design this lets readers of all varieties get what they want up front. I experimented with splitting pages but honestly minimizing how many clicks it takes to get to what you want is really important and it was my feeling multiple pages only serves to confuse.
ReplyDeleteWe do disseminate quite a bit of info, and the demand for that (and more) seems to be growing every day. I suspect as time allows some elements will go on a diet to speed up the page, but ultimately because the mybeerbuzz-budget (yes I laugh whenever I say that) demands I use free resources, and I try to present as much content-rich material as I can, it can be a difficult task. I did investigate producing a Lite-mybeerbuzz, but search engine rules make that VERY risky. Keep in mind that I do RSS-feed all of my posts and all of my comments and those can be read in google or any other newsreader without having to go to my site. I certainly would prefer people visit to see other content, but it does allow people to read in a manner they are comfortable with.
It's a work in progress for sure so stay tuned.
I love the new page. From home on regular old DSL the page loads for me from top to bottom in about 15 seconds. From work it's even faster. On my terrible 1g phone it takes 35-40 seconds to load. All of these are perfectly acceptable and faster than even Facebook or beeradvocate load for me. You deliver a lot of information in a compact easy to use format and that's why I love your page. This is what a portal-like page should do and you do it for FREE. I'd rather wait 15 seconds and get what I want than see you reduce content and have to spend hours searching other beer sites to get what I can get here in one page. Keep up the good work and don't change a thing for me. J&J
ReplyDeletePS By the way, how often is the Beeradvocate site slow or broken. All the time lately. I can't believe you do all of this for free and people that obviously read your page would complain. Have a beer guys.
Thanks Anon...appreciate your opinion. It will all work out I'm sure. We'll be fine tuning to see if we can make everyone happy.
ReplyDelete