KYspeaks.com with brand new look and features
Ladies and gentlemen, after weeks of design and development, the new design of this blog finally goes live yesterday.
The template is the brainchild of Haze, the awesome max designer and artist who did my wall mural too. She is, of course, also my fiancée, as some of you might have found out from facebook already.
Anyway, lets dwell a bit on this theme and allow me to showcase what has been added and how the new features could be useful to you.
- Food Map: while there was a small food map link in the previous theme, this is now a live widget on the right sidebar
- click on the filter (KL/PJ/Penang) will resize the map and show only those results
- click the check box of the filter allows you to select multiple filters
- “Show Sidebar” gives a list of results, clicking the result shows an info bubble
- “search location/cafe” searches only the results on current map view instead of the whole database, and list of results is updated on real time in sidebar
- zoom in/out and panning functions are supported as per google map
- “full screen”, well, that’s self explanatory
- Twitter feed:
- latest tweet is displayed as default
- “expand” button dynamically expands the tweet feed to show 5 latest tweets
- replies are filtered out to avoid cluttering the space unncessarily
- Food post links via thumbnail (left sidebar)
- a list of randomly generated thumbnails linking to food posts on this blog
Other than that, the blog is also updated to the latest WordPress installation and the comment system finally supports threaded replies too. Something that was supposed to be done long ago. This allows me to reply comments via the dashboard and also WordPress for Blackberry application, not to mention it makes more sense too.
the version of the KYspeaks.com till 11th July 2010
Compared to the previous theme, this is quite a major upgrade. I didn’t want to only make the changes purely on aesthetics alone, form over function is ok, but always better when you have both right?
Over the next few days we’ll be troubleshooting the new theme a bit and make necessarily debugging/changes along the way. Let me know your feedbacks yah.
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wah! beautifully done!
yess i have the best designer all!
Woke up just in time to see this post. What a coincidence. Hope y’all like it
woohoo nice timing
NAIS!
tenkiu!
very very nice! last one was nice too but this one looks very polished & bright wtf
eh but how do you update to the latest wp? how to back up files wan?
er.. update’s actually pretty simple, just click the “auto update” usually ok liao. if you’re worried then backup the database first, you should check out some plugins that can do backup for you.
thumbs up for the food map! i like!
thanks, spent a lot of time working on that.
o O.. cant use Chrome to browse your blog liao…
chrome is supported, in fact it is my primary browser, try again?
Just loaded with Chrome on Windows 7 – works fine here.
works better with chrome/safari/firefox, slightly less stylish with IE, everyone hates IE! lol
nice new look and more informative
!
thanks, glad you like it.
Awesome sauce +10
Few notes from me:
1) Some of the posts on the image sidebar fail to generate thumbnails, perhaps you can check those out – manually put the thumbnail in.
Tags have a comma before the first tag e.g. – , curry-mee, klcc, nasi-lemak, otak-otak
I’d probably remove it and put the link to an ‘Archive’ page instead.
2) tags need fix0ring – front page has no description it’s only KYSpeaks and single pages like this should have the post name first followed by KYSpeaks – skip out the “Blog Archive” bit to avoid dupe content.
3) Add META Keywords and Meta Description for all pages.
4) The tab thingy in the right sidebar, the titles are overflowing the div so one of them is dropping down (by default links is dropping)
5) The contact page is a bit weird, there’s no borders round the text fields so you can’t see them, and the main text box is small.
6) Archives page is blank – http://kyspeaks.com/archives/ a nicely ordered archive would be nais!
7) Main search box at the top doesn’t clear itself when you click on it so you need to manually delete “search blog post..” before you search.
9) Single posts don’t show tags, also category detail etc doesn’t match the style for the rest of the blog.
10) For categories ‘files under’ should be ‘filed under’
11) For comments the “Reply” text is bigger than its container.
12) Consider using the_excerpt rather than the_content for tag, search results and category archives if not it’s a bit hard to browse.
13) Remove or make less prominent the subscribe to comments link, you want people to subscribe to the main feed not the comments
thanks for the feedbacks, some of the items are being addressed as of now, like the thumbnails (doesn’t work if it’s flickr), archive plugin had a problem, fixing that as well.
thanks dude!
Fixing. Number 4 I fixed it earlier on, not sure if its still bad now. For number 11, I can’t really see the problem here on my side. For the rest I fixing nao!! Next time, I ask you to QC my blogs… much faster to wrap.
Yah after CTRL+F5 reload the stylesheet 4 is ok. 11 perhaps just try making div.reply a bit bigger I think the text padding making it overflow. Try 50px.
Just fixed most of the stuff. Excerpts for search, categories n tags. Tags comma n filed under thing. Removed the width selector for the reply button not sure if it works. Contact page styled n tabbed widgets title font smaller to fix the problem. The search input I set the default value to ‘search blog post…’ probably need to put it as bg image instead like the food map one or use JavaScript. Thanks g.. Great feedback. Now if only my clients are all like you… Life would be complete.
Cool
Yah for search you got default value set but you need to add onclick=”this.value=”” or similar like the map search so it blanks out when you focus it. Comment Reply still overflowing for me.
Perhaps just install Platinum SEO to kau tim all the titles and meta stuff. It’s lighter than All-in-one.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/platinum-seo-pack/
ok fixed that.. had to plug it in the plugin php file. KY used to do the titles n meta in the theme instead of SEO plugin. lol. now all gone.
Ok.. testing nested thread level 6.
this is like a live changelog wtf. form fixed for depth 5 above. date gone from depth 5 above. reply button gone from last depth = 7.
Ok cool, btw you can remove this part now too “Posted on Monday, July 12th, 2010 under Others. Subscribe to this comment feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site. ”
Date already at the top and got all the other stuff it’s redundant.
nice but not sure why the font came out to me a bit weird. like, jagged. must be just me
could be missing some fonts on your PC, emmm
Added arial to font family. Maybe will render more naisly nao.
Like the new layout and the colour scheme as well. Totally awesome. ST has already given super a lot of feedback already which I think is very thorough. Btw, congrats on the engagement!
thank you thank you mark
that’s Haze’s creation
not sure if it’s my browser…. but the food map on the side doesnt show penang as an option unless the map is in full screen
it is. in firefox the sentences break down. i’ll actually get fever if i try to fix it…. cuz i tried for some time.
yeah, the problem is only on firefox. chrome seems fine
oh… and some of the food thumbnails dont show up, sometimes… but the color scheme is really nice and the layout is simple to navigate … dig it
the thumbnails problem will be sorted out, mostly due to external image hostings, getting them fixed. Thanks.
Great. Albeit the sudden transition to sunny yellow got me squinting a little.
But all in all, a refreshing change.
thanks.
very nice! this definitely has a HAZE-feel to it.. touched by magic.. see why i luv this gal;)
congrats KY. u finally look cool. (mwuahaha.. kidding, just kidding.. could not resist)
hahahhaa, i finally look cool while you looked cool since about 2-3 months back right?
i feel like god now. being praised by so many. *sun rays shine on me*
when i get my new phone, we go exercising together all!
no, i always looked cool. (*ducks behind the water-cooler*)
hahaha of course you are, esp. with the lashes!
careful josen is reading.
Looks nice KY!!! Keep up the good work!
thanks thanks, mostly done by Haze
Nice design man.
Was wondering what are those Japanese fonts at the footer though.
those Japanese fonts are links that I sold, will be gone in a couple months since the company’s going burst. lol
Awesome! I like it! Hmmm how much does Haze cost?
sorry haze is not for sale. lol
guess i m sold out.
Haze! Love the fork, spoon and knife! Awesome!
ky: your map…. wah selangor over populated with points alreadi!! hehehe so over crowded!
hahah cos i stay in PJ la what to do
thanks.. i conveniently forgot to add in the chopsticks as requested by ky.
this is cool la but i like ze old one!
you can keep the screen shot of the old one and savor it like old wine, i like the new one
i like this one~
vy nice yellow~ looks pro ler~
Hahah cos the pro did it
Some of the pics on the left hand side failed to load sometimes, and it creates an overlap to the actual posting. But very nice and yellowy feeling…
Yaa, those are some permission errors, fixing them soon
thanks
Nice! – like the new colour scheme n format – gives a very fresh feeling.
(Oh but oso same feedback as JD : Some of the pics on the left side dont load and it overlaps with your main post)
Thank you!
oh lala! so nice!!!!
Hahaha oh lala?
ya…surprise Haze is your fiancee. thot u r still with Mellissa.
ah, that was almost a year ago already.
simple & clean
yeah, function with simplistic form.
Love the yellow feeling, since my surname is yellow too
But I still love the little food map that you used to have last time, and I found the page harder to load then the previous one.
Well, maybe its my sucky connection. Good job to the creator and the blogger!
yeah the current one requires a bit more bandwidth but once it’s cached in your browser it should be faster
Nice. I like this new layout, especially the food map.
thanks, glad you like it.
so..basically from archieve, haze painted your wall, mel’s story got slowly less and less and stopped on october 2009, then haze story keep on adding until CNY 2010 when you say mel and you are no longer together and shared dinner at a stall somewhere.
now you guys are engaged. congrats. i hope this time it lasts.
but i like mel and her stories. too bad mel deleted mostly everything. if you see her, please wish her well :/
however i will be coming here still just to look/check on the foods.
ah, very good observation. mell sorta restarted another blog instead, we’re still friends.
thank you for the well wishes.
*archive
I’m normally not the kind of person to submit my opinion on other’s sites, but for your post I simply had to do it. I have been cruising around your blog a lot nowadays and I am really impressed, I think you could really become a main opinions for your market. Not sure what your free time is like in life, but if you started devoting more time to posting on this site, I’d guess you would begin receiving a mass of traffic soon. With affiliate stuff, it might become a great passive income source. Just an idea to ponder. Good luck!