NEW THEME: Vote on the 2019 GirlsChase.com Website Theme

[Chase]

Howdy gents!

We're doing a retheme for GirlsChase.com. Current theme is 3 years old, the article sidebar is in desperate need of an overhaul, and in general we could use a more coherent overall design.

We have a bunch of options for how the new theme would look.

If you'd like a say in what the Girls Chase of tomorrow looks like, please cast your votes!

Three separate options here, one for the article pages, one for the category pages, and one for the homepage. We're just looking at design here, don't worry about text / etc. Also, images will change (so if you think this or that girl isn't very sexy, that's not important, since she probably won't be in the final design) -- most important thing is layout, colors, fonts, etc.

• Article (content page) theme

• Category page theme

• Homepage theme

Any and all votes/thoughts are highly appreciated!

Chase

 

[Space]

Chase-

Steve Jobs said some time something like design is not just how it looks, but how it works. I don't want to bore you too much with that, I'm sure you eventually get there. I can't judge from the small size samples, but probably my pet peeve, that the text is too small on mobile would be solved. Oh! And how about adding time stamps back to the articles?

Now onto the how it looks part. You say the current design is 3 years old. Well, for me it feels like it's 10 year old. I'm a practical person, I care more about how it works, but I can't not notice it: It's subconscious. Then probably others feel the same way about it as well. If the new design going live feels 2019 (I can't judge by the small size samples), then it's probably going to be more appealing to more people. Other than that: Whichever works best for mobile. It's a tie for me.

 

[Poli]

Chase,

I would say keep it as simple as possible. I was thinking they were all a bit to flashy for my taste because I like to stay as concentrated as I can when Im reading an article. but if I had to choose any of these three I will go with the article theme since its the least flashy and there aren't as many distractions like pics or other tabs.

Cheers

 

[Chase]

Howdy gents,

Sorry to take so long to update this thread.

Everyone's responses were SUPREMELY helpful in picking out the new theme.

We got a ton of ratings for themes, and a lot of guys shared their thoughts on their ratings, which was very, very helpful as well.

There was an interesting dynamic in the ratings and comments, where at first one theme that looked the most familiar to our current them was winning in the ratings, with even a few guys writing things like "It seems the most like the current theme" in their remarks.

That's always a thing to be careful of in design changes, because people tend to like to stick with familiarity, which can make you a little blind to better designs that are less familiar.

As the ratings went on, another theme emerged as a clear favorite. It was actually my original favorite design as well (though all the guys voting for the "similar to present theme" one were starting to sway me). I reviewed both themes with a design consultant who has a great eye for both form and function, and she was all-in on the favorite design. So we chose that.


VIEWING THE NEW PAGES

The initial coding on the theme is done. You can see the mockup pages here:

• Homepage
• Category page
• Content page

MD (our lead developer) has been working on converting these pages into a full theme for the website for the past couple of months. He expects to have a working theme ready for review ready 3 weeks from now.

It's taking him a while because MD is laboring to make this thing as fast, lean, and optimized as possible.

After we launch the new theme, we'll do an AMP version of the theme for mobile as well, so we can get take our mobile speeds from "atrocious" to "blazing fast." But this theme itself, even before the AMP version, should load a lot faster on mobile.

I can't set a date for when we go live with the theme just yet. But it's one of the things I'm pushing to have happen as soon as possible -- this is one of the most crucial projects for GC right now, getting this new theme deployed.

So, it's coming down the pipe. Everyone's feedback here was invaluable.

I'll update again as we draw closer to theme launch.

Chase