New Site Rectifies Old Design and Keeps It Clean with Social Features

We have been talking and writing about a new architosh.com for many years now. Actually for the better part of five years. Finally, after all this time, the "third-generation" of architosh.com is soon to arrive this Fall.

New Look - Stays Even Cleaner

When we introduced the present design of architosh we were instantly praised for its relative clean design compared to sites back in the early part of this decade. Apple's website has always been an inspiration when it comes to clean design and there were several design elements from what Apple was doing back that we admired. However, the next generation site doesn't look to Apple at all. Our role models have changed.

The image above is a majority portion of our new header bar and it officially introduces a new trademark for us which has been a part of our ToshLetter reports. (more on ToshLetter below). The singular letter "a" done in our unique beta sans font is a new branding element for what will become a larger meaning architosh brand.

The overall new architosh look-and-feel is going to be white, gray, and a blue we have been using for quite some time in text elements on the current site. A generous amount of white-space is employed throughout the site and the number of web ads will be going down by nearly half.

New Features

We are really excited about the new site from the point of view of its new features. Our current site has become a technical laggard for quite some time. This will be completely rectified in the new architosh. Some of this new technology is actually much more exciting for us, the site's producers, than for the end-user reader.

However there will be a boat-load of new features for the end-user reader that we think folks are going to love. Without going into all the features in this report today we'll cover a few of the items that are going to be in the new site.

Commenting

For starters, for years we have wanted readers to be able to "comment" on stories. We attempted to push commenting into our forums but that didn't work too well. We understand that CAD and 3D are not the most exciting topics to talk about but over the years there have been, indeed, many hot debates. Readers will now be able to comment at the end of all content regardless of type, on the same page as the story itself. So the next time we write about AutoCAD on the Mac, for instance, we expect some healthy feedback commentary. Below is an image of our new comment box. As you can see, you will need to be logged in but trust us, this will be a good thing.

Readers Decide Popular Content

Another major change in the third generation of architosh.com is that the site will now be completely database driven. This may come as a shock to most readers knowledgeable about such things that we are not there already, but that is indeed the case and it has become a real bear to deal with.

This will be a real win for us because the site content will be easier to produce (faster...) and thus we will be able to increase our publishing production load by at least 30%. There is even more to talk about in this domain but we'll hold back for now.

As you can see below we will have a new Most Popular javascript tab bar zone. It will be a real win for readers because their viewing action will help promote what is the most popular content on the site. This means when you come to architosh.com -- and land on any page -- you will be able to quickly see what is popular and what deserves your attention.

Like many top-tier online publications, this box will change actively based on the dynamic calculation behind site activity. The most popular stories is the left tab and will be determined through a mix of "views" -- that is, page views -- and homepage clicks, tag backs, RSS, and discussion via commenting. Likewise, the most discussed stories will be listed based on commenting. A final Editor's Picks category allows the publisher (us) to hand pick some content that we think deserves feature attention. The number of most popular stories will likely be around five (5) but we can tinker with this.

Other Changes

There are many other cool changes coming to the site but we're going to hold back a bit for now. We don't want to spoil the introduction. But some things readers have been asking for over the years include:

• much shorter home page (too much content below fold line)
• less number of ads (we agree and this has been fixed)
• way to find related content
• how to know what is new
• how to find all product reviews
• how to find all interview articles
• how to find all event reports
• how to know what is most popular to read (where's the best stuff!)
• inclusion of RSS

We have attacked all of these items in the new site, including some items like better site navigation (though our site nav in general has always been pretty good), integrated site search and -- if you happened to notice up above in the nav bar preview -- we will now have a real Blog!

But that is just some of the new features in the next (third) generation of architosh.com. And we can't wait to launch and introduce the new site this Fall. ---- ANTHONY FRAUSTO-ROBLEDO, EIC.

Postscript: Speaking of the ToshLetter. We have published several ToshLetter PDF newsletters in the past and unfortunately, we have been slow to release new ones over the past year and a half. This will be remedied once our energies going into the new architosh 3.0 can be directed back into the ToshLetter and other things. We appreciate folks who have been very interested in the ToshLetter format and would like to continue to receive it.

Got Feedback? We'd love to hear it so please write in: info@architosh.com