What’s New at Tutorial9?
This is a followup to a Post announcing our Redesign. I thought it might be necessary to go over some of the important changes we’ve made around here, and wanted to do so in a post of it’s own.
You’ve probably seen our redesign by now, and maybe you’ve even noticed a lot of the changes we’ve made around here for the better. However, with all the changes, you may have missed a few new timesavers and conveniences around the blog.
RSS and Subscriptions Made Easier
We’ve made it easier than ever before for our viewers to grab subscriptions to the Latest Tutorials, Latest Comments, and even subscribe to individual posts to stay in tune with ongoing discussions.
In the past, we’ve had a hard time getting back to viewers on a timely basis if they have questions about a specific tutorial. One of our goals here at Tutorial9 is to always be as helpful as possible – and the old system left much to be desired.
Now, if a viewer asks a question, they can subscribe to follow-up comments (just check the box below the comment form), and when an answer is posted, they’ll be notified immediately!
Author Highlighting & Comment Streamlining
We’ve done a few things to improve conversations around here aside from the subscriptions spoken of above. Now, when the author of a tutorial replies in the conversation, their post will be highlighted – making it easier to differentiate between a viewer and an author.
It’s not that user comments aren’t as important as an authors, but folks did have a hard time scanning through the comments at times finding answers to their questions, which is no longer much of a problem.
Aside from that, we’ve made a few other revisions to our comments section to have things load faster, take up less space, and overall just keep conversations flowing better. There’s even a way to reply to a specific comment now!
Revised Footer
While analyzing parts of our old design, we noticed that lots of folks were having a difficult time using the site – whether we did a poor job of laying something out, positioning a navigation menu where folks couldn’t see it, or simply left something out altogether – things needed improvement.
One of the sitewide design improvements we made was a revised footer that suited the needs of our viewers much better. There are now prominent links to return to the top of a page, or back to the Tutorial9 Homepage (Dashboard), as well as a series of highly used links from across our site.
Not to mention, the footer now feels a bit more complete with a link to our new “About Us” page.
Wheel O’ Bliss
Our New Featured Reel, or the Wheel O’ Bliss as we’ve so cleverly dubbed it, keeps viewers aware of our latest and greatest post – while not taking up a great amount of space.
Before, we featured a single “Featured Tutorial” in just about the same space as we can now fit 4 (currently), and we’ve saved space around the rest of the Tutorial listing as well by cutting out the nonsense and making things a bit more reasonable in size.
Oh, and we’ve also added the most popular Tutorials all around the site (dynamically generated by our users), which we hope will help lead viewers onto see what all we offer here at Tutorial9!
Revamped Category Pages
A quick look at our Photoshop Tutorials, Photography Tutorials, etc pages will show you that we’ve put a lot more care into directing viewers in the right direction. Sub-Categories are now listed in a convienent location for quick browsing, as well as the most popular tutorials shown for that area.
More! And More to Come!
We’ve made numerous changes all around to make your viewing experience at Tutorial9 as blissful as possible, and will continue to do so.
Actually, there’s a big, new change coming to Tutorial9 in the very near future that I think a lot of our webmaster/developer/blogger visitors are going to love! Stick around folks! Can’t thank you enough for all the support during the redesign!
19 Comments
Great reading! Thanks for sharing136
Flag as inappropriateGreat reading! Thanks for sharing129
Flag as inappropriateGreat reading! Thanks for sharing124
Flag as inappropriateGreat reading! Thanks for sharing
Flag as inappropriate@Devise: I’ve got a tutorial going up that answers your question tomorrow morning. Sorry for a late response (as you’ll see, it’s really simple) — but I thought it would be best to answer it for everyone all at once.
Flag as inappropriateI LOVE IT! :)
Flag as inappropriateJust a heads up – I believe the feeds are all in working order now – and as an added bonus, “Lead Images”, or those really big thumbnails in some tutorials should also display in feeds to give you an idea of a posts contents right off the bat.
Gah – getting feeds in wordpress to work correctly can take some real messy toying around.
Flag as inappropriate@Marco: Actually, that wasn’t intentional, I wasn’t aware that by taking use of the “Excerpt” feature of WordPress, our feed would be cut short. It’s something that will be fixed immediately.
Thanks everyone! Glad you found such great use of the new feature Jana.
Please, if you notice anything wrong, or simply have an idea that you’d like to see implemented in the future, let us know :)
Flag as inappropriateI don’t do it on my website too, but why aren’t you displaying full feeds (full articles) anymore?
Flag as inappropriate@David Leggett: I see it now, that’s cool, I just wasn’t sure of it while I was posting!
Flag as inappropriateOh and thank you for giving me a link to Gravatar :)
Flag as inappropriateI’ve already noticed the follow-up comments check-box and I think it’s one of the best new inventions on the site ;) Keep up the good work guys ;)
Flag as inappropriateI really like this redesign. A lot of little fixes and some layout changes make for quite the effective change. I haven’t noticed any bugs yet, except a brief moment where the top banner got a little weird, but it’s fixed now. :)
Really like the site!
Flag as inappropriate@Gabe: We do use gravatars actually (yours is showing up!)
@Devise: I’ve actually answered that question a few times around Tutorial9 in various areas. I’ll dedicate a post to that real soon for ya ;)
Flag as inappropriate@Lennart: Love the new site, and I’m pumped for some more tutorial awesomeness. IT would also be sweet if ya’ll used ‘gravatars’ for commentors icons.
Flag as inappropriateHey David! Can you answer my question in:
http://www.tutorial9.net/photoshop/text-effect-quickie-vibrant-pop-text-effect/
please thanks!
btw, i think you should put a flickr stream on the nav. thanks!!!
Flag as inappropriateI can’t wait!! ;-)
Flag as inappropriate@Lennart: We have a pretty strong line-up, and you ought to see the first of it as early as tomorrow morning!
Flag as inappropriateGood luck with your new Desgin. These features sound cool but now I want to see some awesome Tutorials :D
Flag as inappropriate