Welcome to Redstate 2.0
A new platform for a new generation of blogging
By The Directors Posted in Featured Stories | Miscellanea — Comments (49) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Welcome to the new RedState. Thanks for stopping by.
Since the beginning of this year, we have been plotting the relaunch of Redstate. There were many reasons for a relaunch - but none so important as the need to devote our efforts to a platform that was modern, scalable, and was appropriate for our needs. What you see here today is not the culmination but the beginning of an all-new Redstate Network that will take this already sturdy ship and give her speed and agility.
Read more . . .
Here are some of the things we're excited about. Firstly, notice the placement of this story. One of the biggest complaints we get at RedState is major stories get pushed off the front page rather quickly. We now have a way to keep stories lingering near the top, while keeping the 'blog' feeling of the site below. Additionally, the new backend site allows us to launch other network sites with very little effort. Your Redstate Network login is now good at ConfirmThem.com, and for future Redstate sites.
Second, we decided to abandon diaries. That's right. They're gone. In return, we've converted all your diaries into your own blogs -- right here at RedState. And yes, we've listened to you. You can now edit your blog entries. No more emailing us and asking us to fix a typo. "Recommended Diaries" are now "Spotlight Blogs." Over the coming months we'll be working to make your RedState Blogs even more interactive and adjustable. Customized themes. Voting. All sorts of exciting enhancements that will make you more comfortable with Redstate as your political blogging home.
Third, over the course of this week you'll be seeing the expansion of the RedState Network. We have some special surprises in store for you. ConfirmThem's roll over to the new system is just the first in a series. Now, with just one user ID, recognizable by the various sites in the network, you can visit and participate across the RedState Network without logging in at each site. We will have at least one new site for you to visit each day this week!.
Finally, this was a great opportunity to improve the look and usability of the site. Besides fresher graphics and a cleaner interface - we had the ability to make everything more readable and approachable for first-time blog readers. A great deal of real world interviews led us to understand that in order to reach out to the masses of folks who still don't read blogs, we needed to have a more professional and clean design. The result is what you see here.
Thanks again for making RedState the premier place on the internet for conservative activists to engage, discuss, and have fun. Be sure to stop by every day this week!
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Welcome to Redstate 2.0 49 Comments (0 topical, 49 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Hope no one gets confused!
P.S. - cool new format for the site, and thanks for changing the terminology from "diary" to "blog." I was getting tired of weird looks from my friends when I told them I was busy "writing a diary." I'm excited to see all the new features you guys will be rolling out in the next week or so. Good luck on all the coding.
Has the "Recommend this Diary" function been preserved in some form? IOW, do we, the rank and file, still have some input to which blogs become Spotlight Blogs?
Clayton custom wrote the code in the old site for that. We are working quickly to implement it with the new site. You're going to have to be patient on that one.
Along with the MediumVote module on scores? You should even be able to have it trigger an Action to automatically promote articles with a certain score to the Spotlight box.
Unless there is a conflict with something you already have working, that seems like a fairly clean and quick solution for restoring a way to recommend blogs.
Hope you enjoy your site a lot more, it looks fabulous! Congratulations!
And not just at the top off the title and a statement of 'Click the title to read on . . .' at the bottom.
Better to have a 'Read More...' link at the bottom (and the title for those folks who want to click there).
I'm going to give it a week before I start making requests, since the features seem to be coming quickly even since last night (such as the nesting of reply comments).
If things settle down and some stuff is missing, then I'll put up a diary (no, you can't make me stop calling them that. If it's Bombay, Peking, and Turin, then they're Diaries).
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
Not to bug Clayton endlessly. The stuff he added in just the last day is remarkable.
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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
than seeing my guy friends being overtly friendly. *wiggling brows* I'm kidding. Seriously. Go on. Hit each other. Do something manly now. I know you want to.
Ok, now kidding aside, Clayton, job WELL done. It's beautiful. It's all about the little things like the little swirlies around ~redhot~ and little things that make the site look really good that you don't notice unless you are looking. You perfectionist you. It's almost there. The rest is technical stuff that I know nothing about. But as far as pretty, this is great!
"I'm just beginning...The pen's in my hand...Ending unplanned"
Nice site guys.. I didn't know this, but come this September, I'll be a one year old poster on Redstate. Keep up the good work guys.
My question is will debates that get rather long going to still stretch all the across the screen?
Good job.
Since the archives are here, best best would be to dig up an old diary or story with a long reply series and see.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
wives, they change on me, and I have to start all over again.
"If they attack us, it means we're winning." - Rush Limbaugh
Right now, I'm looking at a white site, and I know at least from rolling my mouse over that there must be an image up top. Is the site currently mostly white, or do i need to adjust my settings? And if so, how? I have a yahoo browser.
Disclaimer: Works for Alan Schlesinger (R-CT). Volunteer, no pay.
Whew! [heavy breathing noises] That was *horrible.* An entire weekend without RedState! I almost didn't make it! The liberals in Massachusetts realized that I would be in a weakened condition and were girding their loins for the final assault on my compound this morning, in the event Drupal sunk like a lead balloon at 0 Hour.
I've been frantically preparing for the onslaught, stoking the fires under the oil vats and winding up the catapults, but I dropped a huge stone on my foot and Ted Kennedy, peering through his spyglass from atop a distant hill, told his troops to assemble on the opposing flanks of my fortress and prepare the battering rams. And you can imagine the unspeakable atrocities they were prepared to commit once they breached the walls.
Thank God you're back! When the news came across their steam-powered Blackberries that RedState's relaunch had been successful, Kennedy called off the assault and decamped for Hyannisport. Keep it running or he'll be back! I cannot hold this ground alone!
Things look wonderful and I can't wait to try the new personal blog format and play with the new whimwhams and doodads. You've already gotten a list of suggestions; I'll hold off on mine until you have a few more days under your belt.
Great work, Clayton. Imagine: an internet blog/website relaunch on a completely different platform that actually went ahead on schedule. You're *good*.
But there are an infinite number of ways to exhibit greatness.
I guess we wouldn't want to end up like Cuba where the '57 Chevy outnumbers all other models on the road.
"If they attack us, it means we're winning." - Rush Limbaugh
If the old Red State worked great, it's because we were well trained in its quirks through repetition.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
What about the "New Comments" info on blogs that we've read? Both at the blog level and at the directory on the right column. That was a wonderfully handy feature that let us know when new comments had come up on threads we were following and commenting on.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"
Can't find prior comments. Is there a new location to find them?
I really prefer the old solution for comments; at least from what I understand of the new approach.
You could understand the conversation much better at old RedState than other blog type sites. You could quickly see if there were replies to your comments, lending a community type atmosphere to the dialogue. It was easier to keep track of multiple conversations, and get feedback from others if your points were on or off target. (some of us need feedback to adjust our fire.)
Maybe I am missing something and you can still quickly see where others have replied to your comments, I just have not found it yet.
But, the recommendations thingie needs to get up and running. Only took me a couple of months to figure out how to do it on the old site ;)
The new site looks great. I am still getting adjusted to the rearrangement but that is just me getting used to it.
I agree with Horse that the old comments section worked much nicer for the reasons he stated. also, unless I cant find it, why can you no longer see comment histories of other users? It was a very good feature. Sometimes you see a suspected moby, troll, moonbat, etc. and this can be verified by looking at the user history. There is a difference in whether they have been here forever or have only three posts in their history with the same rant.
just making a note. comments seem to be threading properly, but they are being renumbered to be in numerical order, top to bottom, rather than chronological order. I am not sure that the chronological numbering is strictly necessary with the "NEW!" notations (though we had those in the old version too, and it does provide a backup for finding the most recent coments when scanning a thread), and am not sure it needs changing, just making sure y'all are aware.
looks great guys! thanks for all the hard work in bringing us v. 2.0!
I would like to add to the comments of others on, well, "comments".
I liked the feature of checking my comment history to know if someone had replied to a comment I had made. It seems that I now have to remember any blogs (formerly "diaries") I commented in and search each of them to see if someone responded to a question or statement I made. Any relief on the way for this? I'll try to remember where i postred this so I can come back and look for it and the answer.
"Greater is an army of sheep led by a lion, than an army of lions led by a sheep" - Defoe
My company does over $10 million in business on our websites per year. I have web designers, database managers and programmers on staff and on contract. Consequently, I appreciate the amount of work it has taken to relaunch this site. Thanks and a hat tip to Clayton for making it happen.
The new format is excellent for publishing blogs. The old was excellent as a forum that created a community of give and take. Integral to that was the running list of comment posts and the ability to track one's own comments and replys. I certainly hope that these features are added soon otherwise you will have just another blog site that may be informative but no fun.
It should also be noted that for those running at 800, it is necessary to use the scroll bars. Further, the ads and navigation should be on the left unless you are a; making it easier to translate the pages to Hebrew. or, b; wishing to make the same marketing mistake as Kos.
After about a week, you should watch your page views very carefully.
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
Total disagreement there. You give priority – let people read FIRST – to what's important. And on any given page, what's important is the body of the document on that page, NOT the Red Hot/Featured Contributors/etc.
I'm GLAD Red State moved the navigation and cruft to the right side and ONLY the right side.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
you put them on the left. Your comment proves my point.
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
Put the ads there if you must (not like I'll see them), but leave the navigation where it belongs: out of the way.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
navigation is to eliminate the use of scroll bars to get to the navigation buttons if the display or browser doesn't resolve the page to fit the screen. It is easier to adjust the right margin in the last column than to adjust the margin in the first column with 2 additional columns to the right of the main text column. My tag line is good for politics, bad for web design.
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
Well yes, if you're going to have a fixed size for the layout, I can see how that's a legitimate reason to do that. Good point.
However I would suggest that the reason most sites do it that way, is because a) many people are sheep and want to be just like everyone else and b) many people use prepackaged stuff written by people from category a. Heh.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
rather than jump of a bridge is not because they are sheep, it is because that's the way things work. In this case, technology for the navigation and because we write, and consequently read, left to right, advertisers want to be on the left. It's a "duh".
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
You said ads AND navigation. Most sites on the Internet don't have ads.
But whatever, heh.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
Well yes, if you're going to have a fixed size for the layout, I can see how that's a legitimate reason to do that. Good point.
However I would suggest that the reason most sites do it that way, is because a) many people are sheep and want to be just like everyone else and b) many people use prepackaged stuff written by people from category a. Heh.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
On the other hand, having a big empty gap on the left side probably isn't a good use of the space... I know I'm waiting a week to start asking for features, but dropping that margin way down is probably a good idea.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
The scrolling comments list and the ability to check and see who has responded to our comments is a huge loss!
La
"Some dogs bark just to hear their own heads roar," my Appalachian granny.
and I have just stopped posting here, and reading much for that matter. There are too many stories and not enough comments.
Already posting on other blogs with a more community feel vs. publishing feel. May not be coming back much if it doesn't improve here. sigh
Hello, I'm new here, though I did used to stop by and read the articles from time to time...but yesterday I posted a link to a story here in another message board forum, and I didn't notice at first that it was to a "Diary". But in your switch, you said you had closed the "diaries" and for their authors to start new blog pages, or something, from this site????
That stuff is way over my head, but I'm wondering, this link is to a story that is only part of the hot issue of the battle in Lebanon, and the MSM coverage of it:
The Valiant Men of Al-Mari
By FrauBudgie
From the diaries . . .
There's been a battle raging off and on around the Lebanese town of Al-Mari, which you're not going to see picked up by any media. The Druze inhabitants are struggling to keep Hezbollah out of their town. The song of their valor is unlikely to be played on CNN, Al Jazeera, or the BBC -- but it should bring at least a whistle of respect from those of us who know about it.
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So my friends tell me the link doesn't work...so if anyone knows how we can access this information....????
THANKS TONS!!!
Looks good! When I have time later today, I'll spend some time digging... but my first through is "wow!"