The Wardman Wire

I’ve been hinting for a couple of weeks that I’ve been thinking about designing a new “front end” for the Wardman Wire. Over the next few days I’ll be asking for comments and feedback. This first post explains why I think a change is needed, and introduces you to two prototypes I have built for you to comment on.

Bursting at the Seams?

Over the last couple of months, as we have had more people writing for the blog regularly and the frequency of articles has increased, the existing “traditional blog style” design is creaking at the seams in several ways:

1. Articles that are really good are vanishing off the front page too quickly.
2. It is beginning to feel difficult to find front page (and especially sidebar) space for things. As an illustration, there are half a dozen “regular columns” that need sidebar “decals”. There are four already: - Simon Barrow’s “Thinking Aloud” column and the 3 current Parliamentary Roundups. There are two more Parliament Roundups still in the works from Brussels and Stormont.
3. There are other things I would like to do - such as highlighting “Matt’s Favourites from the Archives” (I wrote lots of good articles when there were far fewer readers) or the “most popular” articles. I cannot do some of these because of space.
4. I am becoming aware of people who like to read by topic as well as by date. I’m not sure that the existing presentation is as clear as it could be for these visitors.

What to do?

The traditional “reverse diary” blog format gives a very good way for regular readers to keep track, while when I read blogs organised like magazines (if you like, half way to being a mini newspaper-style website), it feels more remote - as if I am having to go looking for things to read rather than having them presented to me.

So I’m looking at presenting an “alternative” view rather than a “different” view.

‘Blog’ View AND ‘Portal’ View

The best example of this approach I know of at present is at problogger.net, where Darren Rowse has a traditional “blog” presentation (as he has been running for several years) - but also a Front page “portal” which also includes:

• a weekly video post
• a summary of recent blog posts
• recommended posts from “all time” and “this year”
• links to posts for beginners
• Darren’s Favourites
• a poll
• a resource directory

I hope that gives you an idea what I am attempting to do.

And here are two I prepared earlier…

I have built 2 working prototypes of possible “Portal Views” of the Wardman Wire over the last fortnight, and I would appreciate your comments. The difference in look and layout is quite subtle, but is far greater in content. All the clickthrough links should work.

Version 1, the Wardman Wire portal, is designed to give a different view of the material on this blog, grouped into “Channels” based on:

1. Commentary
2. Parliamentary Reports
3. Daily Items
4. Online Media
5. News and Current Affairs
6. Regional Coverage
7. Campaigns
8. Humour

Version 2, which I call “Politics in a Nutshell” uses fewer “Channels” for the Wardman Wire material, in order to make space to incorporate much external material. This version is aimed far more at being a “one stop shop” for political news and comment.

1. A feed of the summaries of all blogging Members of Parliament in Westminster, Cardiff, Brussels and Holyrood
2. A feed of political news
3. A feed from Main Stream Media bloggers
4. A combined feed from a diverse selection of independent political bloggers.

Both versions include provision for “featured articles”, video, photo feeds, sidebar newsfeeds and other items. They are functional, if slower than they will be when made live. There a a couple of glitches - such as version 2 having a problem with the integrated video (due to the software platform being literally just released).

Let me emphasize again, this is simply an alternative to the existing blog-format for those who prefer reading by topic - which would continue to exist at mattwardman.com/blog/ while this site would sit on mattwardman.com.

Version 1: Wardman Wire Portal

Version 2: Politics in a Nutshell

Feedback, Please

I’m really interested to hear what you think, as it has been a lot of work and my opinions have changed during the project. In this post I am asking for feedback specifically about the content mix of the “front end” - not about colours etc. I can make them whatever colour I like - although these are presented as “light text on a dark background” - dark on light is possible at the drop of a hat (see the screenshots below).

Some specific questions to help prompt comments:

• How well does the “topic based web page” work, in your view?
• Which content mix do you prefer, why?
• Do you like Wardman Wire articles side-by-side with summaries of news and comment from elsewhere?
• Does “Politics in a Nutshell” cause confusion by combining “Wardman Wire” material with summaries of other information on the mattwardman.com domain? Or would you prefer this site to be somewhere else (such as nutshell.org.uk or political-life.co.uk, for example)?
• What other features would you like to see included?

And Finally

Here’s what they look like in “dark text on a light background”. The colour scheme will be designed to tone in with the current colour scheme on the blog.

Version 1: Wardman Wire Portal

Version 2: Politics in a Nutshell

Tags: wardman wire, new blog design, comments please[tags]wardman wire, new blog design, comments please[/tags]