Our new site is bigger, bolder, and better than ever!
Congratulations! You made it all the way here, to our brand new site which is (hopefully) a huge improvement on the old one. This bad-boy has been about a month in the making, notably the last 3 days pretty much flat out, but it’s now finally here and ready for you to see and comment on. I’m still ironing out a couple of bugs with Internet Explorer, but they should be all gone within the next couple of days.
The Story So Far
The old site was only 8 months old, and not that bad to look at really – but it suffered from one rather big problem: loading times. Due to the complexity of the design I had to use two HUGE transparent 24 bit PNG format images, which clocked in at *cough* 500kb each *cough*.
That, combined with rather heavy use of Sifr, meant that the site often took over 30 seconds to load. Not cool.
As we’ve now moved full-tilt in to Wordpress development as our primary service, this new site is built entirely on the Wordpress platform. There are very few images in use & as a result it runs much, much quicker than its predecessor.
The Concept
I wanted to do something outside the box for our little headquarters, so I really tried to shy away from current trends of gradients and drop-shadows on absolutely everything. I wanted to do something that was completely different.
Inspiration struck whilst reading a copy of .NET Magazine one day, and I decided to see how well I could translate print-style design onto the web. The result of this was the very simple homepage which you see today, the attention to detail on text and image layout, and the different layout for almost every page on the site.
The CSS file was the longest I’ve ever written, coming in at 12,298 characters of hand-written code.
The Main Feature
So the home page looks like a magazine cover, and as such it’s going to be different (almost) every month! Every time I post a featured article it will be listed in big bold writing on the home page, along with a big vector-style graphic in the center of the page.
I might see if I can get different colour themes going on a monthly basis too, but this’ll need a bit more research before I start making any promises.
The JQuery
This site has been my first experience with writing JQuery from scratch and I have to say I’m loving it so far. It’s extremely intuitive and easy to understand if you’ve got a strong grasp of CSS.
To see the bits I’m talking about first-hand, head on over to the services page and click on the big blue button at the top, (if your screen is big enough it’ll almost look like 2 pages of a magazine side by side) or check out the about page and try the big blue button on the left-hand side.
What’s next?
I’ve been blogging a huge amount over at my person blog on john.onolan.org and with the new design I’m also going to really pick up the blog frequency over here at Lyrical Media. With a brand new site to work with and a lot of big plans for 2009 I’m hoping to deliver some interesting and insightful content that will keep you coming back for more.
A semi-monthly newsletter with industry news and lots of discounts is next on the cards, so look out for that one in the near future. In the mean time – I’d love to hear your thoughts on the new site!
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Tony Chester
March 30
Can’t go wrong with bigger and better! Let’s see this cool new comment thread now.
John
March 30
Here it is!!
dede
April 6
nice site
Jash Sayani
March 30
Wow! Nice site. I love the comment preview at the bottom…
PS: Waiting for Billings 3 result!
Michael Savage
March 30
Looking good!
devolved
March 30
It’s looking good dude :)
Craig
March 30
Sweet:) Might be confusing but all for us devoted as I have been firebuggin the crap of it, but very very nice. I am on a wide screen now and I think you could captivate on the right side a bit. lol comments are off the hook.
No doubt something that should become a standard. Just include real time spell checking and your set.
Too much to absorb, just thought this needed a comment…
Nice work
John
March 30
I didn’t understand most of that, but thanks! (I think?)
Rob
March 30
Funky looking site, really pushes the boundaries of design. I love it.
Stefan Smit
March 30
Very nice job. And 12,298 characters of hand-written code, damn… that’s a lot. Respect!
John
March 30
Oh and I’m still going to style the comment input boxes below – will get round to that in the next day or so!
Martin
March 30
Veeeeery nice – how I love Creampuff!
Jenny
March 30
John your website is Fantastic! Love the new look- very impressive :)
Keep up the good work buddy! Lamborghini by 25 looking very possible indeed ;)
x
Japh
March 30
Great stuff, John! Really brilliant work, I love it :D
Tristan
March 31
Love the new site John, Well done!
Rockers Delight
March 31
Good job on the new Lyrical Media, John. I like the idea of seeing how well a print inspired layout translates on the web. So far, so good. Hope it brings you lots of new business. Take care!
Curvball
March 31
Stunning.
John
March 31
Thanks guys! Much appreciated :)
Marcus Neto
April 1
The new site is definitely something to be proud of. Love the look and feel of it. And your use of javascript is unobtrusive. Very nice!
David
April 2
looking goooood :) love it!
Gaya
April 2
Wow John,
this looks awesome! Really love the style.
I’ll keep checking the blog =)
John
April 2
I’ll be a good boy and add a subscribe button soon to make that a bit easier for you!
ErisDS
April 5
Congratulations on the beautiful site! I was a bit confused at first when I hit the front page, but then I grasped the whole magazine idea and it made perfect sense. I really like the idea, it works well, is easy to navigate & is just so darned pretty!
Looking forward to more blogging from you :)
Ed
April 18
loving the new site john!well done mate!
Eric
April 29
Awesome site John!!!!
JR
May 22
yo…. i just got a little c**k envy after seeing your home page… definitely dig it.