Ladies/juggalos –
With the exception of some dysfunctional bells and whistles, Stereogum’s format hasn’t changed that much from the personal blog I created in January 2002 as a way to share stupid Britney Spears photos and Avalanches MP3s. Everything’s different now. (‘Til Tuesday reference — great start, Scott.)
The impetus for the redesign is our move from Movable Type to WordPress as a publishing platform and community toolset. We had been using Movable Type since importing blog archives from LiveJournal to Stereogum.com in 2003.
Due to early attempts to customize this content management system for a music blog, every day since has been fraught with major technical difficulties. 404s, slow load times, publishing errors, etc. Often the site would be down for hours at a time. That is what we call a “bad user experience.”
The move to WordPress resolves a lot of issues and inefficiencies that are invisible to users, yet enable us to blog better. But also there are changes that are not invisible!
The most prominent cosmetic upgrade (aside from spiffy logos and color palettes) involves new areas of the homepage intended to prevent stories from getting buried. If you prefer to browse via the old uncategorized, reverse-chronological format you still can: stereogum.com/news. Otherwise, on the upper left of the site you’ll see a TOP STORIES module that cycles through teasers of recent notable posts. On the upper right of the homepage is MP3 & STREAMS, a list of the latest audio we’ve posted. All MP3s we host will now automatically have associated streams so you can preview tracks before downloading.
In the center column of the homepage are links to our latest VIDEOS and PHOTO GALLERIES. Photos and videos on the new site are bigger, and gallery pages load quickly thanks to Ajax thumbnails that let you more easily find Zooey and Noah, for example.
The bottom left of the homepage highlights recent editions of regular columns like Band To Watch, Progress Report, Premature Evaluation, and Haunting The Chapel.
On the bottom right is a quilt of album covers showing our favorite new music. We have been updating and archiving this HEAVY ROTATION page for years, but it was difficult to find on the old site.
Videogum — our sister site about TV, movies, and trampoline accidents — has been given a facelift as well, but its homepage intentionally retains the old blog format for various reasons I will tell you about another time. Congratulate the monsters here.
Most importantly, both sites have disabled the ability to comment without a user account. This will not only raise the level of discourse about the topics we cover (o hai, radiohed), but will cut hours out of my week spent deleting duplicate comments, spam, hate speech, bands promoting themselves, band publicists commenting under fake names (yes, we track IP addresses), street teams, and people having conversations with themselves because they are bored and/or aiming to annoy everyone.
We would not exist were it not for the informed (and often clever) readers who share feedback, tips, and gossip. We are tired of seeing your voices drowned out by assholes.
If you already have a Stereogum/Videogum user account, you will have to change your password before commenting on the new site(s). Won’t you please do that right now? I’ll wait…
…
Thanks. You no doubt noticed that our new user pages have fields for you to link to your profiles on popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter, last.fm, Hype Machine, and MySpace. Promote your band/brand there, not in the comments of a random post.
If you don’t want to create a ‘Gum user profile for some reason, you can comment using your Facebook account.
On Stereogum you can now comment with html to embed images or format text. Previously this functionality existed only on Videogum. Comment ratings (i.e., community “scores”) on both ‘Gums will display only to folks who are logged in.
You can still be a dick; there will just be a bit more transparency.
If you subscribe to either site via RSS you should not have to change a thing. Our feeds are the same. If you experience problems with that or anything on the new sites, get in touch via our new tech support line, admin@stereogum.com. Glitches happen, but we have done everything to prevent them. Operators are standing by.
On a personal note I want to thank my staff — Amrit Singh, Brandon Stosuy, Gabe Delahaye, and Jessica Suarez — who are the best coworkers anyone could ask for, as well as Jim Jazwiecki, Angela Williams, and Lindsay Robertson who played essential roles in bringing us to where we are today. More than anything this site produced I am glad to have their friendship. You are all fired.
Finally thanks to BUZZMEDIA’s product development team — Ron Parsons, Justin Street, and Greg Jackson — who worked tirelessly on this relaunch and have Skyped daily with me since mid-November. I hope to meet them IRL very soon.
And now on a serious (not serious) note, I share this threat I just found in a pile of mail:
Amrit went to law school, I will ask him about it.
-s
Scott Lapatine,
Founder/Editor-In-Chief, Stereogum/Videogum
P.S. re: will we listen to your band, the answer is here.
 |
 |
FIRST
to realize that the site change was a mistake……
it seems that some may disagree with you
Great. Can’t wait until the name of this site is changed to A.V. Club Jr.!
I did like Scott’s “Mr. Show” reference in the title, though.
This gave me a hearty laugh.
stereogum could you please stop with the animated bookmark icon? I have not deleted you from the bookmark bar because it’s INCREDIBLY annoying
The animated bookmark icon is brought to you samsung mobile…
Yeah, I agree. We will have it stop animating.
not=now
As a long time Stereogum fan, I say yes to the new look! Congrats!
LadiesJuggalettes/Juggalos. woot woot!Scott, this new Stereogum will get so much more of my monster love with this new format! Maybe someday you and Amrit will have a monster family of your own! I basically sound like your moms, “when are you gonna give your mothah some grandmonsters??” -your mom, probably.
Seriously though, the site and everything:
…html fail…guess we aren’t ready for gifs yet?
one more try and I’ll give it up…
I think the grey/white scheme is a little dull. The site is easier to use though. As long as the commenters stay then I’m happy to keep reading. The transparency thing is good but sometimes the ‘dicks’ strike comedy gold and It’ll be missed.
Yeah I agree the dicks can sometimes be funny. The extra barrier to comment was necessary, though. I was going nuts from moderating and as this site has grown it has become more time-consuming. Here are some examples of what I have been dealing with every day:
SELF-PROMOTING BANDS
DUDE HAVING A CONVERSATION WITH HIMSELF
Maybe one day we will have an intern to moderate comments, but probably we will need an office first.
That random lady-hater who insulted me for no reason was just having a conversation with himself?! I feel used.
Anyway, now that I finally have the password reset thing squared away (I’m smart, really), I love the new look and all the little changes. Way to go, Stereogum!
I’m really digging the change — it’s a huge upgrade! The grey/white is a bit bland, but anything is better than the “theme” schemes that popped up from time-to-time on the old iteration. I understand you gotta do whatcha gotta do to stay profitable, Scott, but please spare us the obnoxious full page advertisements in 2010 and beyond.
The message NOT brought to you by: Coca Cola and movies starring Michael Cera
I do my best to keep the sales team in check. I know we all hate skins. I can’t promise we won’t do any, but since the new content well is wider and the homepage actually has fewer banner placements, “takeovers” should be less intrusive
Looks great folks! Kudos!
-V
So wait, is there actually a Scott Stapp sex tape on stereogum? Where in the world is it….I mean, ummm, my friend, you don’t know him, would like to know.
No, I just once LINKED to Fleshbot!
Area Lawyer Says No Linking On The Internetz
But I thought the internetz was made of linkz and porn! What will we do without our linkz and porn??
“You can still be a dick, but now you have to log in”
- Stereogum 2010 motto
As an oldie stereog um.com user, I’ll say that the only constant thing in life is change and looks like this change is for the good. Congrats to everyone!
Quickly I will add that there’s no reply tracker in my profile = nay.
Look! It’s the heavy rotation list. Hello Besnard Lakes album! = yay.
Also, most of the images on the video section are pixelated. This make my geeky heart weep.
congratulations Stereogum! looks amazing and is seriously pleasurable to navigate!
You guys are gonna win alot of bloggers over with this change. It looks great, congrats guys.
On a rather diffrent note….. whats the deal with the tape??
D33r, yay to the new besnard lakes album
also, congrats on always doing an incredible job and being my favorite website to read EVERYDAY.
yeah this looks great! good work.
Thanks for the nice comments! We rarely get positive feedback; it is good to hear after all the work we put into this.
Also please note:
1. I know there are bugs. We are working on them.
2. This is just phase 1! More exciting stuff coming in 2010.
much prefer this new layout, so much easier!
only qualm is the colour scheme, but i’m colour blind, so what do i know.
Congrats on the new format, loved this site for awhile now, keep up the great work.
per ad astra
Ah! This is very distressing. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but right now my mind is reeling. It’s all very pretty though.
I miss the mp3 tag.
I thought I was on the wrong website for a good 7 seconds.
Yay! I might be able to actually post here again!
Rejoice! Exclamation points!
Three reasons why today rules
1. Stereogum making the big change
2. Joanna Newsom and Eluvium came of with new albums today
3. Less haters, more music!
No more 404s!
It will take some getting used to, but nice. Some design details here and there that I think could use refinement.
The one jarring thing is the giant “reply” buttons in the comments section. They overshadow the comments. They should really be smaller and set back in a lighter tone. A simple icon like Gawker uses would make for better user experience.
Thanks –
Good idea — will add to the fix list. Thanks.
You’re lookin good Stereogum, just give me some time to find my bearings. Glad to see Heavy Rotations on the front page.
It will have an archive page too soon, for launch we just wanted to unbury it. Still buggy…
Ah, that was a great fix. I always just went back to Google, and searched for Heavy Rotation, because I could never find it on the site.
Weeeeeeeeird. But cool. Well done, Stereogum.
Not too shabby. But a little more color is always good. Dont want to end up bland like Pitchfork.
Fine, you win. After two years of lurking this site, I registered.
This is a lot of change, but not seeing the upvotes/downvotes would be too much change too handle right now.
“Fine, you win. After two years of lurking this site, I registered.
This is a lot of change, but not seeing the upvotes/downvotes would be too much change too handle right now.”
What he said! Good work on the revamp.
If it wasn’t for the /news option I would have run away and never come back.
Thank you for being so considerate. Up the Luddites!
How has no one commented that the color scheme is the exact same as pitchfork?
So much easier to navigate. Loving it.
Initial freak out has turned into pleasantness. Took me a minute, but Well Done!
Congrats on the relaunch guys, and great to see you two at By:Larm!
Registered to say its a good start, but until the colors change I can’t come back. Many migraine sufferers will immediately pass out from all of the “shiny bright goodness.” Like I almost did.
This will require some getting used to but we’ll see.. I hope the double-(and sometimes triple)-post days are long and gone. Congrats on the new look.
Good job you guys! I really like the new site, and it’s nice that it connects to Facebook so I don’t have to command paste every time there is an awesome post (which is often).
The fact that businesses really cannot progress in this day and age without adopting new technology, I feel this is a smart move for both you guys and the readers. Just don’t become a publicly traded company or anything:) I’m happy.
Site is looking good guys!!
Thanks man
Loving the new site!
vampire weekend sux
Just kidding! Great redesign!
yippee. After the initial shock, I’m lovin’ it. Thanks for the re-design, and especially for installing the douchebag-filter to weed out all the weak-sauce PR phony comments. No more guilt-free sniping from the interweb shadows, time to own up suckas!
♫~I love the new redesign! It looks beautiful!!!
img?
?
Is it possible to get the link to Videogum on Stereogum and vice-versa? I made healthy use of those links before.
Boo to me. I just found it. Deceptively simple, that.
Looks great Scott! Congrats!
Change scares me!
Very snazzy looking, Scott and Co. Congrats. And yes, the change to WordPress should make things easier – but don’t forget to update WordPress regularly! I put it off for a few months; then two weeks ago, my site fell prey to a wicked redirect virus that exploited a security vulnerability in the outdated WordPress code. We purged the malware, and the site’s back up, but we lost all our design and theme elements, and the site reverted to “default” WordPress settings (sob). For our now necessary redesign, I may crib from Stereogum just a little bit…
i miss the old headphone logo! it was fun. this new layout isn’t fun. it’s too serious.
We got rid of the headphones 2 years ago. I hated that logo.
how did i not notice that before? huh.
I <3 the redesign. It's excellent.
i <3 u stereogum! you are my #1 favorite website.
I’ll get used to it.