BEHOLD.

Posted on | by Ed

So here it is – the all-new ginandtacos. It was created by the Courtney, and she did it for free. She is amazing. Her theory, posited several months ago, was that one of the things holding back g&t was its lousy mechanics. The search and archives sucked, updating the layout was cumbersome, and it generally looked dated. I think many of those problems have been solved.

First of all, I encourage everyone, be you new visitors or long-time readers, to use the comment function to let me know what suggestions you have. Is everything easy to read? Laid out logically? Are there bugs? "Design" is not exactly my specialty so please point out anything that isn't where it should be.

Second, I'd like to add to the Blogroll. Post a link to your site in the comments and I'll probably add you. Strong preference is given to the reliable regular commenters and friends of g&t, of course.

Lastly, good god almighty does MoveableType suck dong compared to WordPress. I'm not sure I can mathematically express how many times more straightforward and user-friendly this is.

So that's that. I'm pretty goddamn excited about it, but obviously there's always room for improvement. Let me know, and enjoy.

27 thoughts on “BEHOLD.”

  • Matthew says:

    As an amateur logician, (which is how I plan to preface everything I say from now on) I can say that this is nothing short of stellar. Bravo, to all involved.

    "Opiate of the asses." I love it.

  • William Parker says:

    Hi Ed:

    My name is William and I am CEO of the blog, http://www.Joboja.Blogspot.com . I look at your website regularly and I think it is good. In fact I have bookmarked it. I would like to partner and trade links with you. I am based in Chicago and I receive traffic locally as well as from all over the world. I hope to hear back from you soon and if you have any questions please let me know. If you decide to trade links with us please send back your web address and how you would like your site's name to be listed. Until then have a great day.

    Best Regards,
    William Parker
    CEO, Joboja
    jobojablogspot@gmail.com
    (773) 835-0188

  • mitchco says:

    I also created a livejournal syndicated feed here, and added a link at the bottom of the page, so now folks can play along at home on livejournal.

  • Rick says:

    I like the site and the new layout. I do have two suggestions:

    1) The "see through" content (where you post content, you can see through to the background) slows the site down. It slows load time and page scrolling speed. I think you can accomplish the same stylistic goal by just painting the content section white rather than have it 10% transparent. (for research purposes, I use Firefox)

    2) In comparison with your new site, the masthead is visually boring. The "GINANDTACOS.COM Opiate of the Asses" is fantastic, but I think you need to graphically represent it, be it with text that has flashy effects or just something that looks shiny. That was the first thing I noticed. Then I scrolled up and down, which is why I bitched about that first.

    As an example, my site that I'm (slowly and painfully) building uses a visual masthead. http://www.donkeypunch.tv/catch22 It's simple and stupid (the KISS method), but it looks better than text.

    Other than that… the Russian theme rocks. And rock right the fuck on with GnT.

  • jkm says:

    Wow, what a happy surprise for a regular reader! Looks very nice. But requiring emails now? Are you going to sell them to a website that advertises CIAALISS and VIOGRAA?

  • Peggy says:

    AMAZING. I am a huge fan. Courtney, this is almost as good as "SOULS 99c" with live-action Sailor Moon (priceless). Ed, 3 out of 4 teachers in the office agree: that is awesome. (The fourth is the one who seldom talks and also his mouth was full of Hot Pocket at the time; I think it's safe to say that he would go along with majority opinion if pressed.)

  • Peggy says:

    ps, to Rick: you're complaining about slow load speed with the see-through text area (which is awesome), but you've got a whole separate splash page? The logo's nicely done, though.

  • j tyler says:

    Great new design. The colors are much more striking and i think it works better on different sizes of screens (the other one maybe not so much). The biggest improvement is how much easier it is to navigate, I'm glad you are embracing a blogroll, and the categories and archive are so much easier to use now.

    i'm not super thrilled about having to give an email address, but i guess if that stops unwanted "bot" advertising, I'll deal with it. Besides, this why one needs an email account just for spam…no offense.

    Also: love the new "abouts" and I have to ask…did you really do stand-up? I am sad to see that with progress comes the end of the gin reviews.

  • Ed says:

    Yes, I'm sorry about the must-give-email thing but it's just so goddamn hard to stop spam and bots. I think that is a sacrifice that must be made. I assume/hope most people, as you suggested, have a hotmail/yahoo/whatever just for spam.

    The gin reviews are technically still somewhere in the archives, but worry not: I will be improving and resurrecting them soon. Huzzah!

  • Rick says:

    Peggy: The splash picture (which is entitled "A Meeting of the Minds"… we are particularly fond of it :^) is just a placeholder for the other content on the left and right. When the links are active, it'll replace the splash picture. See derrickcomedy.com for a working example. And thanks on the logo!

  • Heqit says:

    OK, much more navigable and I'm glad it's easier to use, but…waaaah! where'd the green go? Why so much red and orange?

    Also, this site just got a lot harder to read at work. Just sayin'

  • jkm says:

    Wow, all my long thankless hours of putting up with your bilious rage have now paid off. Manifold!

    And now you require my email for commenting? Are you now soliciting advertisements for CIALISS and VIAAGRA?

  • BK says:

    I miss getting to type 'gin' before posting a comment. Something about paying homage to that sweetest of the nectars of the gods just seemed apropriate prior to mouthing off about something I probably don't fully understnad anyway…

    I give it 3.5 tacos and 2 Hendricks and Tonic (don't forget the cucumber).

  • dbsmall says:

    1) I'd love to be blogrolled.
    2) I find the margins visually appealing, but I also find that utility function decays over time (at which point I wish there were a higher center-column to margin column ratio)
    I hope I'm able to come up with more useful feedback, as I sit with it. But, to be honest (as will be apparent on the community blog I run, Small.to) I'm really a lot more interested in the content than the presentation.

  • cerb says:

    Love the layout, but it views absolutely horrible in Opera. Scrolls unbelievably slow and the header reads

    GINAND . CO
    OPI, O TH ASS

    At least ASS still made it through.

  • Ed says:

    I don't even know what "Opera" is. Therefore it is not surprising that I did not pay much attention to the performance therein. I'm sorry? If there's something specific I can do to fix the problem, let me know. Because the odds of me figuring it out on my own are minimal.

  • Andrew Dahlin says:

    I agree, this is a much better looking site than the previous one. I'd also like to second whoever said the site scrolls very slowly. Also, please bring back the gin reviews and drinking games. I've been reading this site for a couple years now, and the gin reviews are how I originally found it. Thanks to you I've worked through a couple handles of Sir Robert Burnett's.

  • warmbowski says:

    The site looks great, Ed. But I do miss the pic of Mr. Martin.

    I just now (2/12) figured out that you moved the feed, as I usually keep and eye on posts via rss. Only took me 2 weeks to catch on to the reason that no new posts were coming up. One suggestion, you might put a link in the old feed (http://www.ginandtacos.com/index.rdf) to this Behold article and tell folks to update to the new feed. I think you might recoup a few of the denser readers (such as me) that way.

Comments are closed.