I’m proud to announce that I made the switch. Fortunately I found a convenient way to migrate my old data to ExpressionEngine - namely by using EE’s MovableType import functionality. I just had to create a text file with a specified format and EE imported all entries and its associated comments. So more or less all sections of Bartelme Design should work.
When I started working on my new templates I tried to create an exact copy of the previous site. However after a while I noticed that this would definitely be the wrong approach. As some of you have already noticed, I stopped posting articles in the former “Articles” section. Instead I just posted them in the journal, which had a couple of advantages like commenting and archive functionality. So I cancelled the section and moved all articles such as “Aqua style with Illustrator” or “Creating organic wallpapers” to the journal.
I also removed the forum from the main navigation: on the one hand because I haven’t created any forum templates yet, and on the other hand because I’m not sure whether I wanna provide forum functionality any longer. Let me know what you think and how I could deal with the old data.
By the way there are still some other sections respectively components not working or even missing. One of them is search. I also wanted to implement some sort of live search, but I still have to get a bit more familiar with EE’s templating system. So stay tuned :)
And last but not least I wanted to additionally emphasize the switch with a new layout. I actually tried to get the best out of previous layouts and to create a new one. Beside the dark color scheme, the fluid layout is probably the most mentionable change. Even though there is still a lot to do I had to go live, because I had no possibility to create further entries other than hacking tables using PHPmyAdmin. And to be honest, I wanted to avoid that ;)
So for the time being that’s actually everything I wanted you to know. Have a nice weekend. And to all of you guys currently enjoying “Oktoberfest”: Prost :)
61 comments so far
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Biomech September 16, 2006 at 11:27 PM
Whoa… the new design caught me by surprise. It’ll take me a bit to get used to the non-white colours, but I love it as always. Nice work!
Appleologist September 17, 2006 at 12:16 AM
What was wrong with the last design? This one seems “incomplete”.
Wolfgang September 17, 2006 at 12:23 AM
That’s mainly because it is still incomplete. As mentioned above I had to switch right now, because I had no CMS to manage the site.
Scott September 17, 2006 at 12:51 AM
I love it Wolfgang! It’s a pretty amazing layout.
Andreas Ploch September 17, 2006 at 01:02 AM
Hallo Wolfgang, Dein Re-Design ist Dir wieder perfekt gelungen. Hut ab!
Cabcom September 17, 2006 at 01:23 AM
WOW was für eine veränderung sieht sehr sauber aus aber vieleicht könnte man die RSS und Recent Comments noch farbig vom rest absetzten
greez
pm September 17, 2006 at 01:23 AM
Cool design! I like it.
Michael September 17, 2006 at 01:28 AM
I liked the old design a bit more, nevertheless great work :)
Martin Hofer September 17, 2006 at 01:48 AM
Gratuliere, sehr schönes Redesign, das Archiv gefällt mir besonders gut.
maribel September 17, 2006 at 02:13 AM
hola maribel como estas esto es para ti byeee te cuidas
Peter September 17, 2006 at 02:43 AM
Yee i like it :)
Woody September 17, 2006 at 02:48 AM
I like it a lot, but blue text on blue background … my eyes hurt.
Mackie September 17, 2006 at 02:48 AM
Looks great!
Pati @-;-- September 17, 2006 at 03:07 AM
lol I got all confused at the first two seconds… this very morning ur site had the ‘old’ layout… u work fast!
pickupjojo September 17, 2006 at 03:35 AM
I love the new design, congrats mate! :)
pickupjojo September 17, 2006 at 03:37 AM
Err, that was my wrong email.
Could you edit my last comment and delete this one?
Thx Wolfgang. ;-)
Marcus September 17, 2006 at 03:43 AM
Hmm… It feels like this design is… to blue :S
Tom S. Weber September 17, 2006 at 04:22 AM
You might should set a min-width. but it looks great!
Manuela September 17, 2006 at 04:42 AM
Wow, this is an absolutely amazing layout. It is very clean and powerful. Love it :-).
Wolfgang September 17, 2006 at 04:50 AM
Thank you for your feedback. As mentioned there are still some issues to be fixed and there are other ones, such as the header, that still need some polishing.
I also need to think about how to assign widths to specific elements. Anyway, I’m glad that the transition was that smooth and that I now have a fully featured CMS. Take care, Wolfgang
Stefan September 17, 2006 at 05:07 AM
This is a really nice layout! Congratulations, every time you do your updates I find myself impressed more and more.
I hope your’re comfortable with EE, I never regret my switch. Maybe you want to visit/join ExpressionEngine.de, small german community (50+) – but growing.
adrmis September 17, 2006 at 05:21 AM
Nice design as always. I love this colours, now reading doesn’t tire my eyes. Take care Wolfgang
Johannes Leis September 17, 2006 at 06:40 AM
wow echt gelungenes design. Weiter so ;-)
Bubs September 17, 2006 at 03:47 PM
I love the new design! Great use of space… very innovative!
Martin Labuschin September 17, 2006 at 04:09 PM
Yeah, this one rocks!
Dion September 17, 2006 at 06:27 PM
Glad to see you made the smart choise of letting EE handle your backend. With each update it is getting more powerfull….
Just when I was getting used to the former new layout, I have to adjust again but I must say that the first impression is rather like, hmm yeah ok, new fresh aproach, always nice…
Good luck learning EE, it will keep you busy for a while :-).
Wolfgang September 17, 2006 at 07:06 PM
Dion, seems as if your comment was not displayed because I accidentally limited the number of comments to 25. sorry :)
Michel Balzer September 17, 2006 at 08:22 PM
Blau auf blau ist ein wenig schlecht lesbar aber ansonsten find ich’s gut :)
Martin Labuschin September 17, 2006 at 09:10 PM
Michel, als der Kontrast zwischen den Blautönen finde ich alle mal ausreichend. Eine kleine Änderung wäre aber auch in Ordnung.
Tim September 17, 2006 at 10:01 PM
Would be very sad to loose that forum functionality. I’d believe that it is one of the big reasons, why people come back to your site quite frequently. Perhaps you could categorize the forum a little more and therefore keep the thing.
But I also know that creating those forum templates might be a big amount of work.
Otherwise if you’d decide to remove the forum, perhaps some kind of “knowledge base” would be cool. Where you could present like worthy discussion from the forum in a categorized way. Of course that would require some kind of selection.
Aaron September 18, 2006 at 01:05 AM
Redesigned again :-)
I like that you’re changing your page layout and design so often.
My opinion on the new design:
+ Fluid Layout
+ Comments are well integrated in the new design
+ The dark theme makes pictures and photos look better
+ The top-most navigation with the “tab” style looks great – Contrast: I think it is way to low. Check it with the colour contrast Checker and you get a “No” for this colors: http://www.snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html – Green looked great.
Over all as always a good design.
Go on!
aaron
boooster September 18, 2006 at 02:53 AM
Sehr schön! Wirkt nur ein bisschen nach rechts gedrückt. Wie wärs mit einem etwas helleren BG in der “Zeitleiste” auf der linken Seite?
Nick La September 18, 2006 at 05:06 AM
Hey, I like your new design. I like the way you layout the left column (commenter, date, etc.)
Funny, we made our switches about the same time. N.Design Studio made the switch a day before you. I switched to WordPress though.
Morishani September 18, 2006 at 03:06 PM
Great ! i love the design, it might be too much dark, but i like it anyway :)
The new archive is good.
Martin Labuschin September 18, 2006 at 06:14 PM
Mir ist aufgefallen, dass deine Smartlinks nicht rictig übernommen wurden. Es steht zwar “Link” bei den jeweiligen Kommentaren, aber nur als Wort. Ich denke mal, du hast noch ein Backup von deinen alten Daten, oder?
Azad September 18, 2006 at 07:39 PM
Nice design Wolfgang, but it kinda reminds me of Windows 98 Blue screen of death :|
Edward Scherf September 19, 2006 at 10:42 AM
Your crazy Wolfgang… your crazy! Amazing work my friend, I really love the new design. It’s something different from you, which is why it’s so great. Your normally not one for full window fluid designs, but you really pulled it off. Great work!
Patrick Haney September 19, 2006 at 03:59 PM
This is by far one of the best looking blogs on the web right now. You and Veerle are a close tie for my personal favorite blog of 2006, just so you know.
Oh, and stop making the rest of us look bad.
Wolfgang September 19, 2006 at 05:46 PM
Thank you guys. The fact that images – just as those in the showroom – look far better on a dark background, was one of the main reasons for my decision to switch to an all-dark design.
I’m aware of the fact that there may be some contrast related issues – but I plan to implement some sort of “accessibility theme” with high contrast, larger font size etc. in the near future. So stay tuned.
Pat September 19, 2006 at 10:01 PM
this design is much better than the old one :) i love it :D
sibbe September 19, 2006 at 10:13 PM
Great “redesign”. The layout is handy and simple, but powerful! Love it!
Backspace September 20, 2006 at 01:35 AM
Wolfgang, welcome to EE. I’m sure you will enjoy the friendly and open community at the EE forums. Plus the support staff is great! :)
I’m definitly liking your new design. My favorite part is the details column to the left. It lets the reader focus on the what’s being said rather than who said it, while still showing the details of the comment so you can respond to a specific one. Really like the color scheme too! Great work!
Julian Schrader September 20, 2006 at 06:08 AM
Very nice and simplistic – but hard to read.
Lucian Marin September 20, 2006 at 06:54 AM
What a nice surprise with the new design :)
Jason Beaird September 20, 2006 at 07:46 AM
Excellent new design Wolfgang! Great use of the fluid layout and the brighter, yet still diminuitive, left column. Cheers!
Tim September 20, 2006 at 09:03 PM
Hey Wolfgang, one question: When you create a new layout, do you go the whole way from Screen-Layouting with e.g. Photoshop over to Templating and after that putting it into a CMS; or do you simply start of with building templates?
Wolfgang September 20, 2006 at 09:29 PM
In case of my own site I don’t actually sit down like “Let’s do a new design”. I rather visualize certain ideas every now and then. And if I like one I may even create a template. When switching to EE I actually didn’t want to create a new design – it just “happend” ;)
Josh Illichmann September 20, 2006 at 11:02 PM
Wow, i love the new design, always loved your work.
~Josh
John September 21, 2006 at 03:16 AM
The Index-Page has a great Design und Layout. Congratz.
The single post view has a very low contrast at the comments-area (blue, some lighter blue, some even lighter blue). That’s somewhat hard to read.
Anyway, the simplicity, the freshness and the fluid layout… is done very well.
macx September 22, 2006 at 01:13 AM
Schönes Design, Wolfgang. Wiedereinmal sehr gutes Design.
Alexander Hahn September 22, 2006 at 04:49 AM
korrekt!
war sehr überrascht als ich so ohne vorankündigung auf die seite kam!!!
dachte zuerst ich wäre irgendwo falsch gelandet..
ich finde es sehr gelungen, schön übersichtlich und bilder knallen gut bei dem dunklen rest, nen bisschen weiß fänd ich trotzdem nett!
Anand September 23, 2006 at 04:37 AM
Top Notch!! I love it.
Michael September 23, 2006 at 07:57 AM
Great work, Wolfgang! I am amazed by the enormous frequency of you re-designs…
Keep it up!
Lowell September 24, 2006 at 07:17 AM
I love the redesign! However, the color of the pointer on the dark comment boxes are the same as the light and it looks a little strange. But I love the site!
Jamie Hill September 26, 2006 at 12:40 AM
Much prefer the old design.
erwin September 26, 2006 at 11:05 PM
nice, have to give expression engine a try…
Heiko Klingele September 27, 2006 at 09:09 AM
Wie mal sehr gut gelungen das Design! Störend finde ich nur, dass es keine Suche und Kategorien/Tags im neuen System gibt.
Wolfgang September 27, 2006 at 03:59 PM
Wie gesagt, zur Implementierung der Suche bin ich noch nicht gekommen. Das kommt aber noch. Bezüglich der Kategorien: die sind schon vorhanden. Nur noch nicht “aktiv” – sprich filterbar.
Cabcom September 29, 2006 at 07:38 PM
Hi Wolfgang!
Sagmal wie macht man eigentlich so große 45° Linien die dann auch noch Kachelbar sind ? Wie man kleine feine Linein macht weis ich aber das die so einen großen abstand wie bei dir haben daran verzweifel ich noch. Könntest du nicht ein kleines Tutorial schreiben ? Danke im Vorraus Greez
Wolfgang September 29, 2006 at 08:05 PM
Das funktioniert im Prinzip exakt gleich – du brauchst nur größere Kacheln :)
Wayde Christie October 03, 2006 at 11:57 AM
Again – truly gorgeous design.
The layout of your comments is brilliant – so easy to understand.
Contrast is perfect in my opinion.
Well done all round!