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A fresh lick of paint Ship of Fools celebrated its 10th birthday online with a fresh new design. Simon Jenkins, the site editor, talks about the thinking behind the Ship's new look, and how it is intended to integrate different elements of the site. Ship of Fools has had only one major paint job since it first hit the waves back in 1998, so our new look, which went online yesterday (1st April), was long overdue. For anyone who has been a regular visitor to the site in the past few years – and especially for the users of our bulletin boards – the changes to the way pages look are pretty huge. So here's the thinking that lies behind how we've reorganised the Ship and the way it looks. We had three objectives in creating our new design. Firstly, we wanted to do something which has been on our minds for several years: integrate the bulletin boards with the rest of the site. Our boards have always had a joyous life of their own, to the point where some members aren't even aware that the rest of the site exists. When they're told there is a whole editorial section of Ship of Fools, including the Mystery Worshipper, Gadgets for God and the rest, they usually express mild surprise, and then just keep on posting. Looking at it from the other side, many visitors to the site have no idea that we have such a large and dynamic bulletin board community. It's been a best-kept secret of Ship of Fools that we have one of the longest running and largest Christian discussion boards anywhere in the world (at least, that's our impression – correct us if we're wrong!). On 1st April alone, for instance, over 5,000 people visited the boards to lurk and post. The new design aims to bridge the gap from both sides. The new masthead and menu system runs across the whole site, including the boards, encouraging board members to explore the whole of the Ship, while our new homepage features 10 headlines from the latest discussion threads in our Purgatory and Ecclesiantics boards. We think this is going to drive traffic in both directions, and we're looking forward to seeing how it works. Our second objective was to bring Ship of Fools into the 21st century of web design by going widescreen. A look at our old design (see the snapshots of our homepage between 1998 and 2008 on the right) shows how much space available on modern screens we have been wasting. The new horizontal layout opens up great possibilities for creative presentation, while the margin columns make room for internal ads so we can point people to the things they really want to see. A key part of the new page layout is the shift of our menus from the left-hand side to the top of the page, opening up more horizontal space. We've taken the opportunity to simplify our menu, too. On the old homepage, there were a bewildering 17 menu items; now there are just five. The biggest change has been to group our humorous and satirical material, including Gadgets for God and the Caption Competition, under the menu item "Foolishness". The "Features" item points to our special features and projects, with new material to be added regularly. In our third objective, we wanted to make space for advertising in a right-hand column. We've carried masthead advertising for several years, but always on an ad hoc basis, when advertisers approached us to request space. Our ads are now being served exclusively by London's Premier Christian Radio, whose sales team are selling our advertising space. This new arrangement over advertising is one of the ways we are going to be able to stay online, develop Ship of Fools and do creative and exciting things. At the moment, it doesn't take many clicks in the different sections of the site to rediscover our old design. We still have to carry out the design changes in areas such as Gadgets for God and Ship Stuff. Our archive material, including features that were created years ago, will stay looking the way they did when we first published them, but the areas which are regularly updated will soon receive the new look. If you have any comments about the new look, or want to report any display problems, broken links or other anomalies, please post them on this thread on the bulletin boards. |
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