6

I just noticed the blog got a new design after following a bug report saying it's down.

Can we get details about the redesign? It looks pretty massive, and I didn't see any post about it, neither in the blog itself nor here.

Improve this question
4
  • 1
    Let me guess, it's """responsive""" now and just displays less content? Edit: such little content such responsive such wow
    – CodeCaster
    Commented Aug 29, 2023 at 17:57
  • 1
    @CodeCaster think it was responsive before that, but not sure. Content is the same, but design itself is very different. Kind of like applying a totally different template, if they're using some external library e.g. WordPress this might explain the quick switch and lack of details, but dunno.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Aug 29, 2023 at 20:22
  • I honestly think the design looks great on both desktop and mobile now, but the time-based archive pages appear to have gone caput, which would be a huge bummer if its permanent. It also seems just generally a little unstable for the moment... but that's probably just a side effect of the recent roll-out.
    – zcoop98
    Commented Aug 29, 2023 at 23:11
  • 1
    @zcoop98 the initial load is now very slow for me (5-10 seconds) but then it's faster to load, as if it's preloading the whole blog or something. Not great, worse then before, but the design itself is better indeed. (If it won't improve soon, I'll post separate bug report about slow initial loading time.)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Aug 30, 2023 at 6:33

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
9

On Tuesday, August 29, 2023, we released a redesigned blog.

The last redesign was in 2020. We posted on Meta Stack Overflow at the time. No reason why we didn’t post on Meta this time - it was more that we were focused on doing the work and getting the bugs ironed out on the first day. The slow loading is fixed (adjusted caching).

For details, the biggest thing you’ll notice is the look and feel and the new navigation options on the left rail.

Other things we introduced:

  • A “releases” section for product announcements. We’ll still be coming to Meta for feedback and collaboration and to announce upcoming releases and this section will be in addition to what we post on Meta.
  • Featuring “From our Network” at the top of the page, highlighting interesting questions from across the sites. This is a popular feature in our newsletter and we wanted to share it with more people.
  • You can comment using your Stack Overflow account instead of a standalone account. This means your username, profile image, and reputation appear along with your comments.

Behind the scenes, Stack Overflow staff have benefits too. Things like centralized content creation/editing, improved performance and speed (once all those previously mentioned bugs are addressed), and an ability to make improvements to the blog faster and with less technical work required.

Of course, no one catches every edge case, I’ll be monitoring this for any questions you have or bugs you spot.

Improve this answer
10
  • 2
    What determines the “From our Network”? Is it manually selected by someone, or automatically collected using some formula?
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Aug 30, 2023 at 12:13
  • 2
    In the previous blog, anyone could comment, even without Stack Overflow account. So this option is now removed, or is there still a way to do it?
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Aug 30, 2023 at 12:14
  • 5
    @ShadowTheGPTWizard These are handpicked by our Content Team.
    – J007B
    Commented Aug 30, 2023 at 12:16
  • 2
    @ShadowTheGPTWizard you need a Stack Overflow account to comment moving forward
    – David Longworth Staff
    Commented Aug 30, 2023 at 12:55
  • @David thanks. Is there merit in asking (i.e. starting a feature request here) to bring back the option to comment without SO account? (I mean, is there any chance for such a thing to be done)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Aug 30, 2023 at 13:04
  • 4
    @ShadowTheGPTWizard yes feel free to, we're open to seeing how folks feel about that. For context, going with the global login was about making more connections between the blog and the main site as we're planning more integrations in the future, the secondary reasons were one less system to store PII emails, increasing the discussion quality and reducing spam comments.
    – David Longworth Staff
    Commented Aug 30, 2023 at 15:06
  • 1
    What would be nice is if the blog owner actually read our comments...
    – tripleee
    Commented Aug 31, 2023 at 12:00
  • The homepage loads more quickly for me, but the left nav links take a long time to load (up to 3 seconds), and there is no visual indicator that something is happening so it looks like nothing happened, or the links are broken. Interestingly when you navigate directly to those pages by entering the URL in the address bar, the load time is very quick.
    – Cave Johnson
    Commented Sep 6, 2023 at 21:59
  • 1
    Some tables are broken in previous posts. Example here: stackoverflow.blog/2021/01/28/…
    – curious
    Commented Sep 7, 2023 at 19:04
  • 2
    Looking at my old posts, they are pretty badly butchered. Thankfully the Wayback Machine has saved them. I'm also manually importing my own posts to my blog. But that doesn't help the dozens of posts from Jeff, Joel, Robert and Shog that people routinely link to and form so much of the philosophy of community on the network.
    – Jon Ericson
    Commented Nov 2, 2023 at 17:01

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .