64 responses so far ↓

• 1 2-don // Jul 17, 2008 at 1:33 pm

  Swade, I like it! Good job!

• 2 swade // Jul 17, 2008 at 1:34 pm

  Thanks 2-don. I’ve still got a lot of setup work to do with the sidebars, but for the moment it’s a good start.

• 3 zippy // Jul 17, 2008 at 1:36 pm

  Swade, I love it. You looking for donations coz I, for one, would love to contribute!

• 4 swade // Jul 17, 2008 at 2:13 pm

  Testing the comments out. Is this going on the right article? We had a problem with a plugin conflict before where a comment on this post was being associated with another post.

• 5 turbin // Jul 17, 2008 at 3:02 pm

  Ahhhh, Ts 2.0, much new fun to be had. Well done. Critique ongoing.

• 6 ck1x // Jul 17, 2008 at 3:06 pm

  Swade, what an excellent job on the site man!!! very fresh and clean. Easy to navigate as well, I like it a lot

• 7 Dan S. // Jul 17, 2008 at 3:25 pm

  So very nicely done. Easier to read, good font & header menu choice & just so much more professional and much “tighter”. Your blog is now on a higher plane and will command greater respect (and I hope more targeted traffic)!

  BTW, in what time zone and/or geographic location is this Mike Smith? He does nice work. Glad you were able to find him (to save you sanity & your budget!). I’ll keep him in mind when I’m frustrated with the freebie WordPress themes…

• 8 Swade // Jul 17, 2008 at 3:31 pm

  Thanks gents.

  Dan, I’m pretty sure Mike’s in the US.

  The theme was largely as you see it now, straight out of the box. I changed the color scheme myself (Firebug for Firefox is a must for that sort of work) and got Mike to do the hard work. The theme was originally set up to display entries on the front page by category, like a Magazine theme. Mike did the coding work to get it to show entries as we’re used to seeing them here – most recent post appearing first.

  He also does fully custom themes from scratch, though. The best part about his work was the speed. I contacted him on Tuesday about doing the job. It’s now Thursday and here we are.

• 9 WooDz // Jul 17, 2008 at 6:58 pm

  Is it me or can a connection be made between Saab and MAC owners.
  The simplicity of design are in symmetry wouldn’t you say?

  Thanks to everyone involved on moving TS forward.
  The layout reflects that and has a more (don’t want to write professional) grown up look about it.

  Many thanks and hope TS has another 3 years of insider news, personal views and pride of ownership stories,
  before we head onto the All New TS site. Built on a new architecture for a greater user focused navigation and operating dynamics.

  Cheers to all
  WooDz

• 10 lance // Jul 17, 2008 at 7:18 pm

  Love it.

  Had feared it was going to be a bit messy – newspaper site style- have a look at The Times (London) site and you will see what I mean.

  BUT – it is not – you have done it mate.

  Bloody marvellous. The formula is refreshed- Swade has been facelifted!

  My only early issue was how do I ‘comment’ – but its so simple it is now obvious.

  So, is this still a hiatus hernia job or are you back with us at full chat- so to speak?

• 11 Kaz // Jul 17, 2008 at 8:12 pm

  Very nice matey.

  Clean and tidy, easy to navigate. Well done!

• 12 MarkoA // Jul 17, 2008 at 8:20 pm

  Excellent job Swade! As always.

  Great new look, easy and pleasing to browse. Better than the old one. Definitely.

• 13 J // Jul 17, 2008 at 8:46 pm

  Very nice, Swade! Sharp looking page!

  

• 14 Ken B // Jul 17, 2008 at 8:58 pm

  Well, I’m pleased, too. The site looks great and it shows how much of a difference a “mid-cycle enhancement” can make.

  I do have one issue, but I can fix it myself. The CSS isn’t conducive to early morning/late night, bleary-eyed reading because using gray text instead of black text has reduced the contrast ratio; further, the comments are in a really small font. (OK, it may also be the age of my eyes, but I prefer to think that it’s the gray text!)

  The body and comments are in #737373. The body text is sized for 1.1em (about 13.2 pt for most folks); comment text is 0.7em (about 8.4 pt). I’d make the text color black and makes the comment text larger (I’ll use 10 or 11pt).

  Once again, congratulations on a great re-launch and thanks for all of your efforts since 2005!

• 15 Tompa // Jul 17, 2008 at 8:58 pm

  Great work mate!

• 16 swade // Jul 17, 2008 at 9:11 pm

  Noted, Ken. I’ll put it on the list of css tweaks still to come.

  Thanks for the thoughts.

• 17 MarkS // Jul 17, 2008 at 9:12 pm

  Swade, thanks for all the work on this! (I wish I had a Mac, but) the site looks great on my home-made PC with Firefox. Love the featured video by the way!

  

• 18 James (in DC) // Jul 17, 2008 at 10:18 pm

  Overall, I like it. A lot. My very first glance was a bit disconcerting, but I’ve poked around the site a bit and I really love the way you have organized the information. I will likely spend quite a bit of time learning about models and topics that I never considered learning about before (I was strictly a news-of-the-day reader, and this is and was the best Saab site out there for Saab news, bar none).

  Here’s the bad news: it may be just me, but I am experiencing very slow page load times. The main page is fine, but clicking through to any of the other pages or articles takes quite awhile, and I got timed out a few times. Again, maybe this is just me. I’m also here in the U.S., so it could just be a geographical thing. And perhaps temporary.

  In any case, keep up the good and hard work. I continue to appreciate it immensely. And Saab should too, even though they don’t — I’ve already begun working on the wife to purchase a 9-3X in 2010 or so…which wasn’t hard since she is the original Saab nut in our family.

• 19 swade // Jul 17, 2008 at 10:25 pm

  James,

  I’m getting the slow load occasionally, too. Probably about 30% of the time. The changeover to the new theme has coincided with an upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress, so there may be some issues. I’m trying a caching plugin to see if that helps and will also get a techie friend of mine to look into it tomorrow, should the issue persist.

• 20 James (in DC) // Jul 17, 2008 at 10:30 pm

  And then suddenly…everything was fine! Maybe the problem resolved itself or perhaps you just got the cacheing working. Either way, it’s speedy! Thanks!

• 21 Wim // Jul 17, 2008 at 10:47 pm

  Hey,

  I’ve been following this website since quite some time now, and ik like it every day more!
  This lay-out is nice to see!
  Keep up the good work, and thanks for sharing all this news about our beloved cars with us.

• 22 fridolin // Jul 17, 2008 at 10:49 pm

  Great! Swade you are the best – thank you. I really hope Saab or GM-people will read TS all the time. I am an old Saabfreak. I bought my first Saab 99 in 1972 and I was always a true Saabdriver and I hope Saab will survive for the next century! All the best.

• 23 Mike C. // Jul 17, 2008 at 11:08 pm

  Swade: I just finished viewing the “convertible-section” and your new format, LOVE IT. The new layout is refreshing and classed up in a big way. I once again want to say thank you for this thing you do. It has kept my spirit strong for Saab. This is very important to me. For what I drive, I like it to have “a history” and it does. A good one at that.
  What you do takes a great amount of time and energy, It is NEVER TAKEN FRON GRANTED.

• 24 Greg Abbott // Jul 17, 2008 at 11:56 pm

  Very nice. Double plus good.

• 25 Kroum // Jul 18, 2008 at 12:36 am

  Site looks great, mate! Congrats on a job well done and I look forward to many happy comments on good Saab news in the future.

• 26 Eme // Jul 18, 2008 at 1:06 am

  I was sceptical at first, but now I love it!

• 27 Edward K // Jul 18, 2008 at 1:57 am

  You’ve done a great job Swade,
  ones in a while you need something new, nice site

  edward

• 28 PGAero // Jul 18, 2008 at 2:54 am

  Swade,
  Great new look. Thanks for all your hard work and time put into this site.

  ~Peter

• 29 TimJ // Jul 18, 2008 at 3:56 am

  I like it. But I don’t want to click to read. I just want to scroll

• 30 Wulf // Jul 18, 2008 at 6:11 am

  I haven’t had a chance to check out all the new features but it is looking great so far. Very nice first impression.

• 31 wilfried // Jul 18, 2008 at 7:03 am

  The great it looks, TS2.0 leaves me puzzled about the comment I’ve made …

• 32 Jeff // Jul 18, 2008 at 7:11 am

  I hate it. I really really hate it. I almost don’t want to come here anymore.

  I don’t want to sound like a jerk, because I’m sure a lot of work went into this, but I really hate this layout. It’s just AWESOME that I’m the only one, too.

  I don’t like having to scroll over the whole page to look for new stuff, I don’t like the tiny, truncated stories, I don’t like how squished the posts look…I find it really hard to read, and that’s the number one “don’t” for any website for me.

• 33 DanC // Jul 18, 2008 at 7:17 am

  New design looks pretty good!

  Am I missing how to move to the next/previous blog posts from an individual page? I know there’s a newer post but I don’t see any navigation to get to it without jumping back up through the home page. The old design showed links to immediate prior and next posts — that’s a feature I use on a lot of blogs I read and used to use here.

• 34 wilfried // Jul 18, 2008 at 7:23 am

  Jeff is a bit right. In the light of true funcionalist/scandinavian design, the former general lay-out was far clearer and more straighforward. More saabish, if you wish.

  But in detail there are nice features, i.e. the way the avatar is separated from the comment text by open space, while the text itself is now straight aligned. Good design.

  Still I’m puzzled, what did TS20 with my green-caddy-link or my appreciation for etiennes sounds ?
  Am I Kafka amidst a league of Trolls ? There is something spooky about this makeover … .

• 35 swade // Jul 18, 2008 at 7:26 am

  DanC – it’s on the list of things to do.

  Jeff, sorry about that but you can’t please 100% of the people…… TimJ, ditto.

  Wilfried, there were one or two issues with comments earlier on. Nobody (except one guy) is on a blacklist so if you’ve lost some comments it may have been a result of the issues I had right after changeover. 2-don and I both have comments that went to the wrong post, for example. That’s all fixed now. You have comments about Etienne’s sounds in the LaMans post. I just went to check.

• 36 wilfried // Jul 18, 2008 at 7:29 am

  Maybe Jeff & I are turning into grumpy old men. Like the true saabist (aka 900-lovers) who wish back a saabtime without GM … Oh, in those days … .

  Swade have you been taken over by GM now, without telling us? And is TS2.0 the reason GM has to sell Hummer etc ?

• 37 swade // Jul 18, 2008 at 7:34 am

  Wilfried, if that’d happened I wouldn’t be getting in the shower now to go to my exceedingly boring 9-to-5. GM need their money for the sludge lawsuit, I’d imagine.

• 38 Swade // Jul 18, 2008 at 8:51 am

  Please note that this is still day 1 with the new layout and there’s much tweaking that remains. Some still won’t be pleased, but that’s OK. I can only try. I have a to-do list building that includes the following (in no particular order):

  1) Make the comments the same width as the main post area so that on shorter posts they sit right under the post rather than at the bottom of the right sidebar.

  2) Sort out the “Get Recent Comments” plugin so that it looks right and includes people’s comments in post order with an excerpt of the comment (like on the old site) Get Recent Comments seems to be incompatible with Version 2.6 of Wordpress so I’ll have to wait and see if it gets updated. Currently, it’s causing error where people’s comments get placed into the wrong post.

  3) Add navigation buttons that for next and previous posts on individual post pages

  4) Add a list of the last 15 posts to the right sidebar

  5) I’ll even look into putting full posts on the front page, but they will most likely still be truncated for longer posts. The previous setup was just too big on the front page and it wasn’t unusual to have the first post going longer than the sidebar.

  6) I’ll probably get rid of the “more from this category” and “more from this author” sections at the top of the right sidebar. I have author links in the left and a category drop-down on the right so these seem a little too much.

  7) please add your thoughts and requests.

• 39 turbin // Jul 18, 2008 at 8:59 am

  Good list Swade.

• 40 wilfried // Jul 18, 2008 at 9:10 am

  I can’t comment on that to-do list as I am not familiar with the technical aspects of setting up a blog or a webpage etc..
  Redesigning the blog must take Swade a lot of work, even so much he hasn’t shared with us the many new picts of the 9-4X (as seen on saabhistory, who surely had them from GM/saab media).

  Wilfried – “many new pics”, come on…. there was one new pic, which showed nothing new. It was a blurry blow up of a small image that was too vague to get anything from and it was taken from Jalopnik. A bigger and better version is now doing the rounds and I’ll be showing that shortly.

  Hang me on the big stuff, not the little stuff. Please. – SW

• 41 robin m // Jul 18, 2008 at 10:11 am

  Swade, I love the new layout. I’ve been for a stroll around
  One thing I would maybe add is a “return to top of page” button. Just a small idea. Another thought, when you place a link with-in a story that goes outside TS could you get it to open a new window?
  Robin.

• 42 Hsia // Jul 18, 2008 at 12:52 pm

  Very nice! I love it.

• 43 Craig // Jul 18, 2008 at 1:04 pm

  Wow, nice job Mr Wade!

• 44 TimJ // Jul 18, 2008 at 1:30 pm

  I’ve been trying, but I don’t like this. Really don’t. I don’t want expand to read stories.

• 45 Bruce // Jul 18, 2008 at 2:47 pm

  Very nice job, overall Swade–I do like the overall look and you seem to have fixed the main problem I encountered an hour or two ago: When I clicked comments it took me to comments for another item.

  One “old” feature that I like was that after reading an extension or comments, when I hit the return button (the one up on Safari, top left of screen) it took me right back to where I was on the main set of listings. When you have a chance, I wonder if that function can be restored. Thank you for offering to look into the size of the font and the contrast in the comments section. It is a bit of a squint for me and many contemporaries (pensionable if not pensioned!)

  There’s a lot of stuff on TS, it is much more accessible, but the front page is therefore busier and branched rather than linear. We the readers will be on a learning curve for a while, but it’s not too steep. With time you can fold some of the side-bar headings into dropdowns if it might clean up the front page, but as long as the content is there, an extra click or two is not a walkabout.

  The depth of your efforts are visible. I hope you will let it settle in for a while, only fix the real malfunctions sooner rather than later, and let your regulars get used to it. I think there are more gains in the background, e.g., ability to archive stuff actively, than in the front page interface itself. I’m impressed.

  This has been a pretty good launch of a new model. May Saab launch its new models with as few glitches and fix them as quickly!

• 46 wilfried // Jul 18, 2008 at 6:21 pm

  No Swade, there are more pics on gm/saab media that I haven’t seen here before (or I must have overlooked your post on that). 9-4X with some curvy bends etc..
  Your blog is like the Aero-X, every day I come back I’ll like it more. (At first sight – then – I tought “damned, they badge-engineered a vette”, after a few days I was enthusiast and now I still wan’t a small production series, not that I have the cash for it, while the 9-X before was love at the first sight and more a car within my budget & prefered size, if ever produced.

• 47 wilfried // Jul 18, 2008 at 7:11 pm

  Well, I was too fast. That’s the 9-4X concept shown over there. Not pre-production or production.
  It’s wait and see then.
  Meanwhile I’ll start exploring your renewd blog.

  Looks good, tough a bit overcomplicated (a bit iDrived ?) and much hidden things. I.e. did take me some time to find the saab-links.
  Maybe slightly bigger buttons to hit (with gloves on while driving trough the artic) might be he helpful.
  A good readable web-page has apparently a lot in common with a well orientated dashboard with the necessary functional & clear layout.
  But is is OK, the functional Saab ethos is celarly visible, even the small holiday advertising telling me to travel south to Lissabon doesn’t bother me.

  It is like switching from old gen 9-3 to new 9-5. SID has bee replaced by info button on the steering wheel and night panel button moved somewhere else. I think I can live with the TS2.0, just a bit of adopting, adapting & improving and I’m getting used to it.

• 48 Steve 97 9K Aero // Jul 18, 2008 at 9:38 pm

  Very nice. I love it. I have provided donations in the past and I am still willing to help you out with my favorite Saab web site. Please post your paypal link again.

• 49 eggsngrits // Jul 18, 2008 at 11:24 pm

  Noice! A new suit of clothes can make one feel better, that’s for sure.

  Looks great!

• 50 sam // Jul 19, 2008 at 4:37 am

  Very nice layout. This place just keeps getting better and better.

• 51 XfreakX // Jul 19, 2008 at 5:04 am

  Very nice Swade, well done !!!!

• 52 Jeff // Jul 20, 2008 at 8:56 am

  I’ve calmed down a little bit…but I still don’t like it.

  I think the super-truncated stories are the one thing that kills it for me. Plus, this.

  Ew.

• 53 swade // Jul 20, 2008 at 9:10 am

  Thanks Jeff. That’s feedback I can use.

  Will work on that CSS issue. I’m starting to use tags more to I should probably keep it to one category only.

• 54 aeronaut // Jul 20, 2008 at 9:44 am

  the new site looks great.

  however somehow it is stuck and the site does not update. the most recent article i can see is the sludge story with zero comments. this article shows 19 comments until i click the link to see that 53 comments are actually posted.

  anyway i am looking forward to seeing the new posts once the bugs are worked out.

  Ps. its the same on both ff3 and ie.

• 55 Quickening // Jul 20, 2008 at 12:25 pm

  Very nice update!

• 56 MJL // Jul 21, 2008 at 1:48 am

  Looks great, Swade. Just went through the featured posts (Saab are Swedish and That Saab Smell)…made me remember why I love this website so much. Thanks for all your hard work; you deserve a prize.

• 57 Crooij // Jul 21, 2008 at 2:46 am

  Great job on your great site. Keep up the good work!

• 58 Ronald // Jul 22, 2008 at 1:42 am

  Beautiful Site swade.

  GOOD NEWS:
  Not sure if its been covered here already or not, but Saab has been chosen as Wheeljack (the quirky, cooky scientist that creates weaponry and technology..) in the Transformers 2 film, according to a “highly credible source” says Saab History and tformers.com.
  Makes sense, since Wheeljack has a wraparound windshield, and white body color. Was a no brainer all along.

  Links:
  http://tformers.com/transformers-saab-aero-x-concept-an-autobot-in-transformers-2/9611/news.html
  http://www.saabhistory.com/2008/04/01/saab-aero-x-debuts-in-transformers-sequel-2009/

  and sorry if I’m tooting an old horn here.

• 59 SaabChicago // Jul 22, 2008 at 6:03 am

  Oil sludge is showing as the most recent article when using IE. Is this the last article published?

• 60 Brian Mills // Jul 22, 2008 at 10:04 pm

  Not seeing a refresh, 59 comments on the new page the end. Was this the last post? Help!
  By the way got another Saab yesterday…07 Combi Aero vented seats and all options besides Nav, bridge spoiler too! Smokebeige metallic, same as the 06 9-3 2T combi I have already.

• 61 VVV // Jul 23, 2008 at 5:14 am

  Beautiful new layout. Congratulations Swade for a job well done! The only thing I’m wondering now is that have there been any new updates since the engine sludge post? If there have, then I can confirm aeronaut’s post about the problem of no new content showing on both IE and Firefox 3.

• 62 No.9 // Jul 23, 2008 at 7:21 am

  I find the new layout attractive and fairly intuitive. Your list of things «to do» will make it even better.

  My only regret is not having pictures expand in a window in front of the post they come from, which you can still scroll through. That was a nice feature instead of the picture opening on a new page altogether.

• 63 ctm // Jul 23, 2008 at 8:01 am

  Found this out today. Like VVV, I also have Oil Slugde as the latest article when viewing this site from work. This happens on any computer, every browser, even on newly installed machines with no cache at all in the browsers. I think the problem is with the DNS. Something has not yet propagated out to all DNS servers, and that prevents people from getting an up to date front page.

  Agreed, ctm. I’m starting to think the problem might be more to do with my server host than with the code on the new template. I’ll be in touch with my host tonight to troubleshoot the issue. – SW

• 64 turbin // Jul 23, 2008 at 8:52 am

  For the record, refreshes Ok for me on IE6 SP2.