No Joking: Welcome to blogdowntown

By Eric Richardson
Published: Tuesday, April 01, 2008, at 01:50AM

Eric Richardson

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — While the calendar may say April 1st, I'll gladly assure you that this isn't a joke. After months of work, the all-singing, all-dancing, new blogdowntown is ready for its public debut.

First off, yes, it is quite different.

That out of the way, I'm really excited to get to share a project that's taken large chunks of my time ever since last fall. The purpose of blogdowntown is to present information that helps create a community conversation about Downtown, and I think this code presents a framework that'll help us in our pursuit of what that goal actually means.

Over the last year I've grown increasingly convinced that the traditional blog format has some serious shortcomings. Since all content is organized in a strictly chronological basis, each new story is pushing an older story off the home page and out of view. That creates a tension between content -- one is tempted to not post fun content when a more "important" story is up for fear of pushing that bigger story out of view before it has gotten its due attention.

That original motivation -- to try and redefine a sense of "priority" into the blog format -- drove what eventually morphed into what you see up on the site today.

I'll expound more on redesign theory later, but for now let me just give those of you who visit the site regularly a few things to notice.

First, if you're really missing being able to quickly glance at the home page to see if anything is new, consider bookmarking Latest Content. That'll give you thumbnail views of every story we run, organized in traditional chronological order.

Second, notice the Headlines section in the sidebar of the home page. Headlines are stories about Downtown that we think you should read, but that we aren't going to be writing a story.

Third, take a look at the Subscribe page to see a bunch of new options for how to receive blogdowntown content in your inbox or feedreader. The traditional feed will continue to show only stories, but there are new feeds to give you Headlines, Combined (Stories + Headlines) and a Daily Digest that wraps up all that's happened on the site during the past 24 hours.

While we've tried to kick the tires on this thing as much as possible before setting it live, I can almost guarantee that I'll wake up tomorrow to some report of a corner of the site I neglected. Be patient as we work the kinks out.

Hopefully this is just the beginning of fun things to come for blogdowntown in 2008.

Comments

Don Garza writes:

God Bless America!!!! See what happens when there is competition... Improvements galore...

I credit angelenic for this new and improved Blogdowntown

I think this new format has just killed the Downtown News. Sorry Sue... But this is outstanding.

You can't beat this......

# on Apr.01.2008 AT 02:47 AM

Dave Bullock writes:

Clearly I'm biased, but man this looks great!

# on Apr.01.2008 AT 08:23 AM

loveandhatela writes:

damn wow... a make-over lol quite the visual(more pop in the color department) i must say. You see the main story and then can also glance over to the right side and see the other stories of the week, comments and links as well.I kind of like it.

# on Apr.01.2008 AT 10:26 AM

meekorouse writes:

hmmm..WOW! it's VERY busy.. and green... and hey, what happened with the images? Thumbnails are handy but not to the point of not being able to view the image.

The banner looks nice though.. despite the green (very minor though) Guess we'll see this goes in the near future. Too soon to really say too much one way or the other at this point,(could be I'm just used to the old busy). grin

# on Apr.01.2008 AT 10:41 AM

skidrowdude writes:

The new site looks great!!! You are definitely the first site i go to when I want to know what's going on downtown. Definitely blogdowntown smokes Downtown News with it's layout, coverage and photography.

Now I'm not going to miss angelenic.com as much...

Eric

# on Apr.01.2008 AT 11:16 AM

Derick writes:

I don't like this thing. It's confusing and over busy. Also if you decide to make the layout more busy at least add new content and features. Thumbs down.

# on Apr.01.2008 AT 12:54 PM

Sue Laris writes:

Nice job, Eric. It's a great site. Fresh concept, ahead-of-the curve thinking, as we all would have anticipated from you. There simply cannot be too much solid information about Downtown, and you always provide that.

# on Apr.01.2008 AT 12:58 PM

Don Garza writes:

You know, I was going to make some great changes to my latowncrier website , using a lot of the open source resources that I see Eric used with this one.

I was kind of slow to work on it because I thought it would be too lazy , but it turns out you can manipulate a lot of open source code out there you want to use . The Latowncrier website will be using a lot of these free open source programs to manipulate my content at my blog. Bringing many bloggers to the site without having to be edited by myself and use all creative control from their end. Of course I can still moderate by controlling the framework of the site. But basically what I will be doing is creating content mangement without the use of a webmaster.

And it is amazing that I won't be using my own server. But then again I have a dirty little secret I have a pal who has given me free hosting.

Thanks Eric, I thought I was way off base. But I am inspired. And Sue , you might as well hang up the best of downtown community blog and hand it to Eric, there is no competition out there now . Unless you count best looking blog. Boy Sounds like a Town Crier Competition. Oh and sue , you might want to think about hiring Eric to build you a new website , considering his site would probably reduce the amount of money you are probably paying for bandwidth with a dedicated server.

# on Apr.01.2008 AT 02:59 PM

Dan in LA writes:

Derick,

I think we are all used to (and fond of) the old site. BUT the fact that you can see older, still active stories is fantastic. Good job Eric, thanks for letting our town square evolve...

# on Apr.01.2008 AT 05:47 PM

Craig writes:

Great job! I'm looking forward to the next generation of the blog!!

# on Apr.01.2008 AT 06:13 PM

Fred Camino writes:

I for one, love the visuals. There's a lot of info, but I definitely wouldn't say it's "busy". Personally, I prefer the traditional chronological blog layout, but I'm excited to see if the magazine style grows on me for a blog I read regularly.

# on Apr.01.2008 AT 07:16 PM

Heather writes:

Lovely. Different, but definitely more useful in keeping the interesting stories fresh for people to access.

# on Apr.01.2008 AT 07:24 PM

Joe Cornish writes:

This is beautifully effective, Eric. As a former high school journalism teacher, I can attest that you have hit some solid journalist layout standards squarely on the head. Congratulations on a big step forward.

# on Apr.01.2008 AT 07:31 PM

the daniel writes:

A + + + + + + + + + + +

# on Apr.01.2008 AT 09:31 PM

Bert Green writes:

Love it.

# on Apr.02.2008 AT 12:02 AM

Don Garza writes:

I just read the LATIMES. Eric is no longer a blog, he is now a website. Love it. NOW that his blog looks like a newspaper , the LA TIMES calls him a website.OH MY GOSH!!! The link back to blogdowntown is broken though.

Bloggers are now mainstream.....

I just checked out the scene.. at Downtown news , not only is it quicker to download , there are all kinds of ads and the links go on forever. I wonder if they are trying to appeal to me, they have an ad with a spaceship and I am a scifi junkie.

Oh!! God Bless America ... Competition makes the world go round!!!! , whoever is their webmaster looks like they have just gotten off their butt and gotten busy.

Wait until you see my new website if I ever get off of my behind.

I went over Eric's code and boy....he wrote it all by hand. I am the lazy one using java script generators and other tools. But my new website will be fabulous ....

He did use a burner site though. Man ,if I would have put my site together already , I would have gotten some attention.

But boy how this guy links is amazing. It will be studied for years to come, I assume.

We all know that one of the problems is keeping the posts up for a while and allowing others to comment. This problem has been overcome.

# on Apr.02.2008 AT 12:30 AM

Urban Bruin writes:

BDT:

Great job on the update. Like downtown itself you've undergone a transformation from something good to something new and even better. Now if I could only learn how to use "Markdown" formatting.

New feature suggestion? "Markdown" for dummies link?

# on Apr.02.2008 AT 01:15 PM

Sarah writes:

Hey Eric, nice work. I have one more suggestion to add: Have you thought about adding an events tab, that would let readers post events happening around downtown?

# on Apr.02.2008 AT 03:05 PM

Jamie Schwartzmman writes:

Very nice rework Eric. Thoughtful, functional & decisive. I'm really impressed.

# on Apr.02.2008 AT 11:49 PM