Well folks, it’s been a long day (and night) for all of us. But mostly for me. I can only imagine what people did when they finally gave up on refreshing their browsers, and went outside to enjoy… the wind. I’m sure lots of you went to a bar. Now we’re back on and ready for you to tell us what you think. It’s not all completely operational right now, but why don’t you hop in the drivers seat and see how this jalopy performs at high speed with 6,000 passengers?
Think of the site like a Ferrari, only a crashed Ferrari that is currently being held together by duct tape. We will have a new 100% operational Ferrari for you soon, but we need a little more time to tool the one in the shed. Can you please let us know if you encounter any errors on the site and what you think?
We know the design is vastly different from our old site, so we are very curious as to what you think. Please dish out all hatred and praise.
We have a lot of people to thank that helped with the redesign, so thank you right now, but we aren’t done thanking you yet.
Popularity: 26% [?]
Tagged as: admin, Charlottesville, media, redesign, Site
Pretty cool, guys… I’m liking the redesign.
I like!
there’s that bird again. hello, scott. i’m your father… doctor evil.
We are still working on a fair number of things like:
about sections
admin tab (so you can write stuff again)
Scott is not his name! That is waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy too dull. The site looks great. Get some sleep Thor.
his name is steve.
:O Beautiful! Well done! The layout is pleasing to the eye, and the colors inspire me to drink more red wines.
hehehe! (kidding!) (maybe!)
I must admit that I miss the coffee beans a bit, but not at the expense of the reds. I’m amazed at how quickly (and completely) the cVillain has consumed me. I find myself returning constantly, hourly, or even more frequently, to catch up, to get the low down, to satiate my curiosities, and placate that inexplicable need to know everyone’s business.
you guys call him whatever the hell you want. i’m calling him scott.
hmm…ok…..I’m going to call him Mr. Happy Pants.
Good morning, sunshines! Welcome to your new home.
Aghh….change it back, change it back!
Are those…bullets??! Baghh!!!
I am liking it and can see myself whiling away some serious time……..
red is very urgent, specially with little “clique clique” up there scowling at me. But I do like the design on a first impression.
Dunno nothing about the guts, but whomeveer handled the visual end of things is very angry, and should seek therapy. Just my kind of people. However, red will incite the flames. Per
I am glad Scowly made an appearance (sc-owl?), I had wondered what happened to him.
Can we post pictures inline now? or are we limited to linkage still?
/Street’s a farker! Or perhaps that’s just a whale of a tale.
//you’re a scowl.
i’ll go with scowly. don’t forget to bring a scowl!
I dunno, kinda reminds me of a Klammy Incision.
Cecil
Whew. Looks awesome guys.
It would, Caroline. I like scowly, or maybe prowly.
The site looks great. Kudos. What’s CvilleMUSE gonna be?
red on red (or is that red on brown, can’t tell), is very hard to discern for approximately 10% of the male population (including this studly, manly, example of manhood). Just sayin’.
(what? You mean the Skin’s colors aren’t brown and gold?)
(diggin’ it, but just sayin’)
I like scowly.
What’s “cville muse” gonna be? Huh? Huh?
/@15 don’t forget to bring a scowl, indeed! good advice for any critic.
Scowl. No! It is so negative. Can you not tell he is happy?! You people are supposed to be creative. I expected more of you guys.
Oy, you make an amazing point. I believe someone else made a very similar point. Whoever she was, she was a genius.
I kinda liked the “Internal Server Error” variation of the site better. Freed up a lot of my spare time. I have a pet to bury, so forgive me if I wait to get excited about this. But it looks good so far. But very red.
sorry Kurt
@22 Tongue in cheek negative, Lu. Relax. Its kinda the tone of the whole site. Why you gottta be so, well.. negative. Shouting “no”, and such….
But you’re right, creative people are mostly just happy and bubbly. I have never heard of creative person being in any way negative about anything. I think I just ruptured my sarcasm gland.
Oh, and your name suggestion was what again? Oh, I see.
Not picking a fight, just sayin.
/Scowly ‘08. Yes We Can!
redesign looks good, simple and bold. should be interesting to observe the effect of the angry colors on the comments though…
Sorry to hear about your pet, doof. I hope it wasn’t the one in your email handle.
Sux.
i didn’t realize scowly had hit the campaign trail already.
scowly in ‘08: “what the fuck are you looking at?”
First impression: I like it. (Although my employer brands everything with red type, so it’s a little disconcerting (yuck, work) and oddly seductive (I am not goofing off, I’m on the intranet). Hmmm
Scowly is good name Yo but I prefer Nemesis
Hipster,
I am so sorry. He was a fine doggie.
@19 Goebbler
I don’t know if you’re trying to be funny, but do us a favor and lay off Caroline (please)
ooooo, shiny!
i like it. it’s very red, but i like it.
doof - i’m so sorry to hear about your pet.
Sure! New site, new start.
Looks great Thor - good job all.
B yo, I didn’t mention ONE because I have too many in mind. I decisions.
Sorry to hear about your loss doof. Hopefully he’s partying with Roy Scheider up above now.
As for the redesign, I like everything but the red. Too intense. I’d also like to see the recent comments moved to the top spot on the side.
Ditto on what Tim said about the redesign.
Colors make me angry! Esteban smash!
(Seriously, nice redesign).
Heaven needs a bigger boat tonight. Roy Scheider, you’ll be missed, by someone.
i think the red is awesome. i also think that going from green to red is a bit of a shock and that once everybody adjusts, you will all agree with me.
tim, i’ve seen you at kickball. you calling the website “too intense” is like me calling gobbler an asshole. it’s meaningless.
And I, Claudius.
Bust ‘em out, Lu. Let’s hear 5.
Nemisis is a good one.
I’m not really that invested in the bird name, Im just back in my cube being creative, by which I mean negative.
/Scowly ‘08! A Vote for Change (ing the tasting policy at Enoteca)!
i like it too, especially the happily navigated tabs at the top. i’m okay with the red. we need more spice!
doof, sorry about your dog.
i spent yesterday driving to and from richmond. lesson learned: my car tries really hard to be an airplane under such conditions. this is bad, because i’m not heavy enough to weigh it down sufficiently. and now we have wildfires across the state! and speaking of flaming things, hillary’s coming to speak to sabato’s class today!
/hiding
Valentine’s Day coloring or is this red the “new black”
Nice redesign overall… but some comments/suggestions
The everpresent blogroll and recent comments on the right takes up a lot of real estate, and red on the right really distracts my scanning.
Perhaps change the username font color away from red in that area? It’s a bit hard to snap-differentiate between the article title and the usernames. Same thing with Article Title and number of comments- they should probably be different colors. The black color of tags after articles makes them hard to notice (they don’t look like links).
The tag cloud is “Charlottesville” dominated. Having a 22pt Charlottesville and everything else in singe digit font size distorts the whole cloud and makes it a lot less useful. We know lots of stuff is about Charlottesville, how about move that term (in a reduced size) next to “Tags”, putting the largest category in a special place and restoring balance. Also, maybe different clouds for each category?
I like the categories, but maybe move Food over next to All Articles? Food, Drink, Events seems a more natural order (even if the present order better matches the average Charlottesvillain’s priorities!)
I realize that some of the redundancy in allfeeds is based on limited development of the rest of the Spicy Bear Network, but some syntactic clutter can be reduced. In a list of recent comments there shouldn’t be a need to repeat “Comment on” for each entry. Perhaps you can even further reduce repeats by nesting consecutive comments on the same article under only one article title?
Recent comments on the SBN
_________________________
welcome to our redesign
(street)
(parlie)
Wind Beats Power
(street)
Sunday Morning Observations
(gobbler)
welcome to our redesign
(street)
(tommy d)
(lu sid)
(thor)
Might as well make the comment number directable in full archives
And red text on red (as someone else mentioned)? I have some difficulty in reading that.
And that owl (I’ll call him waHOO) on the telephone wire at the top is begging for a little animation!
Overall though, it looks very pro.
Red is the new Yaeger!
WaHOO is a terrible name. The worst.
I vote for hooter!
(not necessarily as the owl’s name, but just in general)
Anything HOO is terrible…. especially at basketball.
The site is great, but I think it’s time to get back to the content.
@14/b yo - perhaps you are correct, it DOES sound a bit too much like Mr. Splashy Pants.
/no, you’re a scowl.
————————–
hmm…the perturbed-looking owl reminds me of The Goodfeathers, which were a parody of Scorsese’s Goodfellas. I believe their names were Pesto, Bobby & and…Squid? Squit? Of course, they were pidgeons, not owls.(are we sure the critter in question is in fact an owl?) Either that or I’ll call it Bubo, named after the mechanical owl from Clash of the Titans. Oops, was I rambling? My apologies, that happens frequently after a large lunch. Perhaps it’s my way of attempting to stave off the inevitable food coma. Anyhoo, I hope you all have a glorious day.
Red! Red! I see Red! There’s no substitute for red!
~The Nuge
So. We gonna post some articles today, or just fiddle with the ferrari in the garage? Is it simply redesign day?
That’s cool.
cecil scowly. the scowliest owl/bird. (His turds are octogonal)? Or is he a she?
Who’s got a Ferrari?
its sooooooo sleek and clean..but i like it!
Or you could call the “bird” Parlie.
One more option - Artemis Fowl?
No, not Parlie. Reminds me of a jerk I know with the same name.
me too.
palie vous ferrari?
@51 - can we post directly yet?
i don’t know if anyone else peeped this, but when hillary walked into cabell she was carrying a starbucks cup (boo, drink local) and wearing the most HIDEOUS electric blue suit i’ve ever seen. my tendencies to smite her notwithstanding, it was kind of trainwreckily awesome.
Sorry, I meant “give” parlie the “bird”
(no hard feelings…)
Hillary is sponsored by Starbucks. Its like NASCAR. Zoooom!
Actually it would be pretty cool if all politicians were required to wear suits with all the logos of their corporate benefactors displayed in proportionate sizes to the amount of, well, benefacting. Or even better…
“We just thought the GE, GM, Alcoa, Starbuck’s, Lockheed Martin, Blackwater bill was runnin a lil hot through congress in turn three, so we up and decided to pit early an’ cool ‘er down with some earmarks for some sorta freeway exchange in Montanna”.
or, just cut through the corporate front and list the real fiscal benefactors:
e.g.,
“the Cheney Cheney Cheney House of Saud Cheney Cheney bill …”
h-d, so sorry to hear about your doggie
Lys, I am happy you are aliove, were you on the fivish coming in from NY?
whoah, Thor’s totally talking like Charlie Brown’s parents…
So is 2O4 apparently.
De-boug the site, there soeems to be a boug!
two, are you okay?
oooo ooo oooo o o
a boug. a boug. There seems to be a boug!
(it’s all in yoiur miind)
once upon a time…
So which ferrari are in we now, then?
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/6097/ferlt7.jpg
So which ferrari are we in now, then?
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/6097/ferlt7.jpg
omfg, yo’s posting snuff pics!
(ferrari’ista from a young age)
huh?
Don’t like it, sorry. Colors are too harsh. Layout too angular and blocky. Kind of unpleasant for me. My opinion may not matter here because lots of regulars said they like it. But my opinion will matter tomorrow because I’m gonna VOTE! (The rest of you should too, or don’t complain about who gets elected.)
Thanks for the feedback brutus. We went back and forth about the colors going to something more neutral. It’s hard to make something everyone likes.
Just to let you know, I voted for more neutral colors.
77: amen on the vote/complain issue. when i moved here years ago i made sure i was registered, got a friend to drive me to vote and then listened to every other person in the bar tell me i had “stolen” a vote from gore by voting for a. a third party and b. the person i thought would make a better president.
i looked at the 12 people standing there admonishing me and pointed out that i was one vote that was obviously outweighed by the twelve of them.
they each, in turn, told me the reasons NONE of them had voted.
(groans)
/but my vote made gore lose.(groans and rolls eyes).
68: is a boug a crossbreed of a bog and bug?
60: i actually told my friends tonight when we were talking politics and wine that hilary had a starbucks because i read it here! and then at the grocer’s US has hilary’s own account of her ten worst outfits.(i can’t believe the crap people eat up in this country).
doof, sorry to hear about your pet. truly.
and as for the bird- scowl is alright, but i get more of an oriel feel from it than an owl. scoriel?
oh- and i, too, am intrigued by the cvilleMUSE link…
Sea liver- as an avid birder, scrabble player, and (former) Baltimore fan, I need to tell you that the word you want is oriole.
An oriel is a protruding bay window. That would make a much worse mascot.
I, too, am curious in regards to the CvilleMUSE link, being a poet and an aspiring writer.
oka, scoriole.
okay (geez, i just woke up). and i wish there was en edit feature…
@41: B yo, I fear rejection, okay I only fear doctors and spiders so here you go:
Merlot
Droll (which means amusing/comic)
Jinx
Hero
Depred (clearly feeding the owing companies ego)
They just don’t sound as good here as they did in my head. Of course that is the case with a lot of things. Nothing seems good enough for the little guy.
Also, I would like to make note of the red issue. I think maybe alternative colors of red could work. Although, I must say some smart girl may have already mentioned the coloring…
Oh! I hate mistakes. This is why should not work and post! I meant the “owning company’s ego”.
I’m not getting the email notices for new posts anymore (and yes, I am already registered). Is anyone else not getting them?
Tim, you gotta re-register through feedburner (see email thingy on side). You can also subscribe to the RSS at:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/cvillain
Thanks. We’re gonna do a more detailed post about the changes soon. Stay tuned.
I did that a long time ago, then did it again last night, but it still doesn’t work.
Oh my god. Thor answered a question about the redesign.
How much are you paying for his retainer Tim?
You guys are so goofy. I’ve been on a 3 day bender this time. It was way worse than fluvanna county hand driers. Trust me. I’m back in full force, but we are still finalizing a few things on the design.
So then what happened to block quotes?
I don’t know how to put this yo, but….I’m kind of a big deal. People know me. I have many leather bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.
How do you search this thing? My Google “site:” trick isn’t working so well.
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acvillain.com+fluvanna+hand+driers
I guess your rich mahogany trumps my rich corinthian leather.
I have no idea! I’ll ask about it.
P.S. I have many leather-bound books.
Don’t lie Thor. You have no books.
thor/liltih - so should we still submit posts to you? And if that’s the case, you may want to put your email addresses on the About Us page along with some more explicit instructions beyond just registering (because while I may be the only idiot who can’t remember them, I have my doubts). That being said, I imagine you’ve both been so swamped with the redesign that you’d like a little well deserved villain hiatus at this point, so I’ll stop nagging.
We are working on setting up the write post stuff for you. Give us a day or two!
That’s all I needed to hear! Thanks for all the hard work you’ve been putting into the site.
On a completely unrelated subject, I met a few of the members of Cirque du Soleil today. One of them egged me on, until I danced the macarena with him, and then tickled me after persuading me to raise my arms up! Devious miscreant! He’s lucky I had no wombat poo to fling. They also gave me an official Cirque du Soleil clown nose, but I gave that to my friends’ 6 year-old daughter.
I’m new to the site. I only checked it out a couple times before the redesign, but I have to say I like the new layout. It’s easy to navigate and the colors aren’t too bad.
I saw the circus was in town too ,Street…….their characters didn’t give me the willies like typical clowns
I’ve never seen Cirque perform, as I always feel like it’s a bunch of gymnists who didn’t make the cut for the olympics years ago and are now overglorified street performers in tons of makeup. While I’ve been told the shows are amazing, I find them just a notch less depressing than the would-be olympic hopefuls staffing Disney on Ice. shudder
Actually, many of them are Olympic gold medalists who were specially recruited. These are people who were very talented and succesful athletes, but now they are past their prime and can’t compete at that level anymore. And performing in Cirque incredibly prestigous, not a step down. Great article about this: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/theater/186496_olycirque.html
A better article, and the one I actually originally meant to link to: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/2005-07-07-cirque-athletes_x.htm
We crossed the mall when the mimes on stilts were out advertising, my hubby behind the wheel wryly said I could so easily hit you right now as he was waiting at the stop sign (I think he might have mime on stilt ptsd or something he is otherwise quite cheery). Meanhwile the mime must have been quite edpt at reading lips and gave him a truly scary psycho grin from up high, and I am happy my three year old was not around, because he would have been traumatised for life.
He pressed up against their bus after hubbys coment and I was frankly not all too keen on returning to the mall on foot and have to pass these abnormally tall mimes with wings. I can actually now remember the last time I have been so scared. Do I need to see a doctor?
Echo, thanks for joining us! Keep commenting!
What? No schlitz and chips?
i poured out the schlitz, it tastes like shit. now we have cherry moonshine and twinkies stuffed with gorgonzola.
Gross. I thought that after the thumbs down on gorgonzola-stuffed martini olives, we were over the gorgonzola phase? Besides, the twinkie would be too big for my glass.
We have joint-stuffed butts too.
fine, twinkies stuffed with mayonaise.
We have joint-stuffed butts too.
Somehow, I have the feeling that would taste like shit too.
Thanks, parlie. Just so long as my cylindrical food item squirts a thick white substance. That’s all I ask.
Here I am being persnickity (sp?) again, but since I know Lilith works so hard on keeping the Restaurant Index up to date, it would be great to have a link to it either on the top as a tab, or somewhere at the top of both the Drink and Food categories. Otherwise you have to go digging through the archive to find it (unless you get obsessive like I do and give it its own bookmark). In the same vain, it might also be good to have a Week in Review tab so it is easier to find all of those as well, kiind of like an index to your archive. Now I’m just getting out of hand… (and I do like the redesign, so consider all these suggestions for second release, so to speak).
Lys, we are going to feature week in review .. each week, so it will be at the top! I’ll do it tonight!
Rock on, Thor!
CANDIDATE VOTE VOTE%
Barack Obama 5,724 74.57%
Hillary Clinton 1,870 24.36%
Dennis J. Kucinich 41 0.53%
John Edwards 34 0.44%
Bill Richardson 6 0.07%
Joe Biden 1 0.01%
Precincts Reporting:
9 of 9 (100%)
Voter Turnout:
7,676 of 22,671 active voters (33.85%)
7,676 of 24,043 total voters (31.92%)
Last Reported: Feb 12 2008 8:51PM EST
Who was the one person in Charlottesville City that voted for Biden? In 301 - BENJAMIN TONSLER
(District 05).
Hillary lost despite visiting UVA!
Perhaps instead of just lecturing to one classroom and denying entrance to other students interested in hearing her speak (<—-), she should have gotten a larger venue (maybe like Obama did with the Comcast Center at UMD) and accepted everyone.
Your “Older Posts” link is not working. Grrrrrrrr…
u r knot sapharie compatibleistic. so’s ya’ nose/.
actually, it’s not that dramatically different. I still see the wordpress template hiding under the new color. I do like the color. The only wish I have is that the first page had more than a dozen topics on it. First time visitors will get the impression that we’ve only got 12 topics going, when in fact the whole front page could cover only 2 days of posts and discussion. I’d like *more* of the right-column real estate taken up by recent posts, 2 or even 3 times as long. As it is, the list of recent comments can change completely every 5 minutes. Why not let it take 30-60 minutes to change completely? That way it’s still fresh, but we see more variety of topic on the front page. And it gives a chance for topics not to die so quickly merely because they’re buried 3 pages back within 2 days.
Or…a link on the front page to a list of the 50 most popular or the 50 most recent. That way it doesn’t overload the front page.
Or…the option of clicking to see just headers on the front page.
…do we need both “tags” and “swicki”?
wait…I see some new options up top. Let me hit that and see if I’m dumb.
Thank you for doing all this work! Geez! I appreciate hard work more than anything.
awesome. ask and I shall receive Full Archives. It would really be the bomb if there was a choice of archives “by date” and “by popularity”
wow…there’s such love apparent in the work behind this site. thank you again.
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