ALLO v5 Coming Soon

Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 0753 hrs

Several months ago, I started coming up with concepts for what the next version of this site should look like. While Version 5 isn't quite ready to launch, it's getting close and there are some exciting changes on the way. That having been said, I am actively working on it and weird things may happen with the site as a result. So if you click on a link, and it behaves in a way that you aren't expecting (for example, it doesn't do anything or it loads a different, much cooler version of this site), please understand that it's (hopefully) only temporary.

Since there are still a few details about Version 5 that I haven't nailed down yet, I don't feel like I should give you an official preview (although you may stumble upon one while I'm working on it). I will say that two site really inspired me: Digg and Dooce. The left-hand navigation that Digg used to have inspired my left-hand nav, although shortly after I started working on v5, Digg changed their layout, so the left-hand navigation that they were using is gone. Some of the colours are similar, but much of the colour scheme is drawn from v4 (the current version at the time of this writing).

The inspiration I drew from Dooce is something that I've wanted to incorporate for a while, and that's the mastheads. If you've never browsed through Dooce's masthead gallery, go take a look. Some of them are hilarious, and the quality is fantastic. I love the idea of being able to give the site a fresh look at random intervals; updates that don't require writing tons of code.

So that's my little tease. I'm not sure when I'll have the new version complete, but I'm hoping to get it done soon. I've been managing to work on it for at least an hour every day, usually more. There's still a large list of stuff do, however; templates are a blessing and a curse.