That’s true! It’s does! Good catch, you.
Evil Beet hasn’t had a facelift in about three years, and that’s already twice what Joan Rivers would tolerate, so we decided to snazz it up a bit. I put together a brief FAQ for you guys to minimize freakout.
Q: I hate it.
A: I know you do.
Q: I’m personally offended by these changes. You’ve really crossed the line this time, Beet. I’m never coming back.
A: Thank you for sharing.
Q: You are such a famewhore. You’re fat and you try too hard. Also, I hate the new site.
A: OK. Let’s address that last part. If there’s something specific you don’t like about the new site, or something that doesn’t work correctly, and you want to talk about it to someone who has any say at all in whether it changes (read: me), you should leave it angrily in the comments of every post email me directly, in all caps, having carefully selected the perfect emoticons to convey your anger press the big blue button on the side that says “Feedback” and leave your suggestion or rant.
Q: Something about the new site is broken.
A: See the response above.
Q: Why did you change from Disqus commenting back to WordPress commenting?
A: We’re having some issues integrating Disqus into the new design. Also, Disqus seemed to allow in more spam than WordPress comments. But it also had a lot of great features that I liked and that you guys used. If you have opinions on whether you’d like to go back to Disqus comments, please click the Feedback badge on the side and let me know. We will continue to work on integrating Disqus with the new theme if it’s a priority for you guys. Comment threading will be all screwy for the comments that were created when we were using Disqus. For that, I apologize. I am working on it.
Q: Why did you change this site and not Zelda Lily? Is it because you hate Zelda Lily? Is that because you hate women? Why do you always pretend to be a feminist when you don’t parrot any of the traditional, outdated feminist ideology? I hate you.
A: The same design changes will be rolled out to Zelda Lily later this week with help from its very talented managing editor, Sarah Spangenberg, and the harem of phenomenal writers she’s amassed, and it’s gonna blow y’all’s fuckin’ minds.
Q: Rather than complain, I would like to use the new site as it was intended. How might this be possible?
A. Oh dear. I wasn’t expecting that. Let me think. Well, we’ve made it really easy for you to “Like” a story using your Facebook account. If you want to go one step further, and share the story on your Facebook page or on your Twitter account or by email, the call-out buttons that follow a story make it really, really easy to do that. (If you run into problems trying to do that, please mention it to me using the Feedback badge.) The Featured stories along the top and side of the site make it easier for you to scan quickly the biggest stories of the past couple of days and decide which ones you want to read. We hope that this leads to an all-around cooler and more social experience for the reader. I wanted to offer the readership a lot of the advantages of a large website while staying true to our roots as a blog. I like being a blog and I want us to stay a blog.
Q: Who did all this awesome work?
A: The logo is the same Evil Beet logo we’ve been using since forever. It was designed by my friend and former roommate Anna Knoell, who is an absolute genius as a graphic designer, and I would tell you all to hire her, except she got way too important for graphic design and is currently on a full ride to study architecture at Princeton, where she was one of the 0.05% of applicants accepted. (All together now: “Congratulations, Anna! You are smarter than all of us put together!”) Despite how phenomenally important she is becoming, when I emailed her, panicked, like, “Anna! Remember that girl in the bikini that you drew for me three years ago?? I need the vector file. Do you still have it?”, she was like “Yes, it’s right here” and sent it over. When Anna was my roommate, I made fun of her (I may have rolled around on the ground laughing for awhile to drive my point home) when she organized her book shelf by color, and sat there for hours with her best friend, mulling over which book cover had the more appropriate shade of blue to put further left. Today, I retract any statements made during that time. Thank you, Anna, for being both a design genius and totally OCD about organizing everything.
The layout was designed by a very talented woman who happens to be my cousin. No, this is not the same cousin who won the Hemingway Award for her debut novel this year. It’s another one who’s also a genius. My cousin Lori has done graphic design for over twenty years, and she’s a master of designing websites. Need help with yours? Contact her or check out her portfolio at CreativeHarvest.com.
I’d like to say it was coded by me, but it was not, because I’m too busy and old and stupid to tinker around with code all night these days. It was done by an awesome guy named Alex who stays off the radar but works quickly and inexpensively. If you have a WP project you’d like coded, drop me a line with the project details and I’ll pass them along to him to see if he’s interested. Highly recommended.
Q: You guys have photos now!
A: We do. And what’s extra cool is that you can click on those author photos to read only articles written by that author. So if you only feel like reading what Emily wrote this week, you can do that. Just click on the photo next to one of her articles.
Q: Is there anything else you want to tell us?
A: Oh, yes, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or even subscribe to our newsletter that doesn’t exist yet (more deets on that here).
All in all, I really hope you guys like the new design, and I’m open to hearing well-intended, useful criticism in terms of what we can do make it even better.
I love you.
Loathing change on web sites I go love for numbing my brain when it hurts from all the work/shit/stuff I do, I read your post with some dread and not a little immature whinging building up……
…….only to find, I LOVE THE NEW DESIGN!!!!!!
Good job, Beat. :-}
Thank you!!! That’s so sweet of you and it makes me happy. :)
Seriously this looks great! I like that you changed the commenting section back – this is so much easier to use.
The changes look really good! I like them a lot. Can’t wait to see them rolled out over at ZL too.
But where have the writer bios gone? Or did they not exist on here, only over on ZL?
We never had writer bios on EB. Those are only on ZL.
I really like the new design. It is more modern and snazzy. Good job!!!
I like it too!!!
The only thing i can mention is the top paragraph… your picture (Beet) cuts off some words……
Other then that- I DIG IT!!
Do you mind letting me know what browser you’re using? Thanks!
OK, so I’ve only just discovered your site in the past few weeks while I was hunting for Miley’s cooch shots – isn’t that always the way though :p – and just wanted to say I love it. The site that is <3 …
For some reason I'm starting to read gossipy crap these days (er, the best kind of crap though) and I always open this site first or thereabouts.
Anyway, just letting you know this post made me lol and that the new design is pretty awesome. It presents more info without feeling too cluttered and maintains the previous color scheme and feel well enough. It's awesome.
One complaint: The Feedback button appears to not be working for me atm (Opera, no content blocks enabled) – you might wanna fix that.
Lovely! Looks brilliant.
Oh, and I love you too :) ?
That question mark was supposed to be a heart… think I’ll send you some feedback about alt codes :D haha
Love IT especially the new tabs at the top with the best stories!
work is so much better when you discover that LiLo has made up that someone punched her in the face :)
Been reading thsi website for about a year now one i realised all the UK gossip sites were bull!
keep up the good work!
Looks good, but I liked how I could write one post and toggle if I wanted to share it on Twitter and Facebook. Now I have to write something three times if I want to share my thoughts across the three site.
Loving this new design. I find it much more aesthetically pleasing! Especially the fb/twitter/rss links up top and below each post and the cool cork board look. Good job!
I’m loving the new design but the authors pictures cut off a lot of the post and the image. Is there a setting I can adjust?
yay! this looks great.
OMG! Huge profits!
How do you toggle to the next story?
It looks awesome :D
I’ve been reading this blog for a year and this is an improvement (not that it was bad before ) It’s really cute now ^_^
I was expecting something better. It looks the same expect a bit more polish.
What do the Polish have to do with it?
Looks good, let’s be honest as long as the gossip is just as great as usual then it could be written on the back of a cardboard box for all I care.
Nice revamp, looks cool.
sorry beet – I don’t like it too much. :( There is too much going on that the stories aren’t the main focus. Maybe because the Author picture looks really big?
I do hate it. It’s way too busy and I’m unhappy that the photos are cut out from previous posts. Sorry.
I’m glad you switched back to wordpress, I seem to like it better than Disqus. Maybe only because it was what I had gotten used to, but still.
The photos on the top title banner and along the left margin seem a little smooshed but that could just be from my own explorer. Overall, its a nice change. Good job!
I love it!! AND the ugly comment boxes are gone too lol.. Awesome job Beet.
Looks great!
I do have a problem tho, every time I get on this page I get a pop out telling me a script has stopped working. The script is this:http://cdn4.specificclick.net/img/?ag=2&pb=d4060&pg=&us=&nwk=1&rnd=685969:0
I got it before the changes to tho. Maybe its just me. I would love some help from anyone.
Open up windows explorer, search for the file named system32 in the windows directory and delete it. Should take care of all your computer problems. No need to thank me, I’m from the Internet.
Sorry, I hate it. But I hate change & I do love this site so I’m sure I’ll get used to it soon enough.
Looks awesome Beet! I am glad you updated the look!
The new design is fine, but I’d like it even better if you could manage some sort of “click here to read more” that expands in the window you’re already using instead of having to jump to another page to read another story (like in Pitchfork’s design for instance)
I actually love the changes…. and I generally hate it when websites change their format because it means I have to think, and I generally do not get on the internet to do that. Hence my love of celebrity gossip.
And although this post has started to collect dust which means that Beet is probably not checking the comments anymore, I feel compelled to say that, as a reader since her chain-smoking in LA days, it’s good to see Beet posting more. It’s never the same when she neglects us in favor of “work”… ;)
I like the new background design, and I don’t want to be shunned to the complainers corner, but it makes me sad when i have to click a link to get to the rest of the story. I loved that the site previously had the whole stories right up front. Maybe other people feel the same way? If not, well I should just go to hell I guess… Back to the dissenters corner with me…
Looks like the design was stolen, I mean inspired, by the following link:
http://www.slashfilm.com/
The little pinned photos at the top of the page are really badly done. Total amateur hour web design. The thumbnail images are resized down from much larger images and the aspect ratios get completely screwed up and distorts the image. Since each image is over 100KB you have to download almost a whole meg of images just for the thumbnails. Absolutely horrid design.
So proud of you guys! It looks like a slam-dunk gossip site again, and not some crud WordPress template. I also like the… kerning? I like the typographic kerning. And the “high school locker” vibe, I like that, too.
High five, Miss Beet!
Looks really good :)
http://www.shoes2.us/
I usually dislike changes, but this looks really good. =)
I hate change , its OK but the top images are all screwed up widthwise