On January 22, 2008, Overthinking it went live with five posts. The first of these began,
About 60% of the content of any given blog consists of links to other, more interesting blogs.
Today we celebrate our fourth anniversary. We’ve changed our focus, added podcasts, had a laugh or two at our own expense. Most importantly, we’ve built a community of writers, readers, listeners, commenters—overthinkers all—and made one of the most interesting bands of misfits on the internet, and together we’ve proved that original statement wrong.
The new design we’re launching today is a work in progress, but its aim is clear: To streamline, de-clutter, and focus our attention on the articles, comments, podcasts, and whatever surprises might be on their way. There are a few neat HTML5/CSS3 and responsive tricks, but they should fade into the background and simply make it easier to get to the new stuff.
We also want to make it easier to find the old stuff. With four years of daily posting (nearly 1500 articles live, as I write this), we’ve got quite a backlog. Click “Articles” in the menu bar, and you’ll get category navigation (customized based on what page you’re on). Start typing in the search field, and you’ll be able to pick from our most popular tags as you search.
There’s at least one more big surprise in store, and in preparation, we’ve opened up registration for your own individual user account on OTI. You should see the link at the top of the screen.
We’ll need to spend a little time working out any bugs we may have introduced. I hope you’ll contact us or leave a comment below.
Here’s to four more years. Thanks, everybody.
WHY IS IT DIFFERENT?!?!?!
;-)
Everything that is different is wrong!
You may wink, but… I’m honestly really upset about this. It’s completely unreadable! Why the bright white background and gigantic text? Why the irritating sliding menus and invasive social-media links? Why can’t I disable them? More importantly, WHY is it no longer possible to get the full text—or at least a significant portion of it—of all articles, in a single list, on the formatted site instead of the unformatted RSS feed?
If I register and log in, can I disable the cuts? Is there a way to tone things down at all? Having to open every article in its own tab drives me crazy; if anything, it’s far less streamlined and uncluttered than the old “posts” view. Now, if I want to read a full article, I have to view it complete with giant headers, giant tag list, giant list of related posts, and giant comment section at the end, and I’m forced back to the top at the end of every article if all I want to do is read them in order in one window. It is not any easier to find the old stuff! In fact, it’s now much, much harder and more frustrating to take in content—old and new—linearly, which sort of defeats the purpose of having a blog format in the first place.
Also, I have accessibility issues—light sensitivity and frequent migraines—and trying to look at the big bright white site hurts. I can fix that (and the overwrought menus and the like) with CSS hacks, if I have to. But the cut problem, not so much. I’ve loved OTI for years, but if I can’t find some way around this I may just have to reread via archive.org.
yeah and make the random article button clickable so it makes a random article not just takes us to some old one thats been read before already. and no registration.
This kinda makes the site look like something from the mid-2000s
Are we getting fora? Tell me we’re getting fora.
This redesign actually makes io9 look spiffy by comparison. So at least that’s impressive.
Well, I got off to a great start by somehow screwing up the registration process. Awesome.
I know this is probably a totally trivial thing, but I think my favorite part about the new design is that the little image by comments for accounts without a Gravatar have Otis as their thought bubbles. That’s just incredibly awesome.
And now it’s fixed, because Wrather is made of awesome.
And I just realized I say “awesome” far too much.
Me too! But I realized it a while ago.
Never apologize for being awesome.
If after 4 years the only update was pink highlighting it would have been enough.
But yeah the redesign is way cool, good sense of flow and energy to it.
The new design ain’t too bad, Remind me of the escapist redesign, but you pull it better than them :D
Two other things I like:
1) How the title of the article appears in the box up top when you scroll down far enough, but disappears as soon as you can read it on the page itself. I’ve totally wasted at least two whole minutes going back and forth between title-in-box and title-on-screen each time I’ve been on the site since the change.
2) The site keeps me logged in.
If we’re open to suggestions, it’d be wonderful if the ‘Overthinking It’ title was a clickable link to take us back out to the main page.
Love the changes.
The title when we’re scrolled down, that is. The one at the top is obviously already like that.
Et voila. And try clicking the article title on single article pages.
The website is back up! The comments are dated, but not timed – is this a good or bad thing?
Just an oversight. Fixed now.
Thank goodness no one took my name. :)
I love the New Design! Go Overthinking Team! You’re a big inspiration in that just reaching out and trying to provide something for people who might like it and having it become so popular. (Within it’s niche, of course). I love the site, the podcast, and the community. Hold her steady Newt!
Hey again everybody! Steven Popplestone will now be commenting as UsernameTed (my common internet Alias and OTI Username). My only gripe so far after Registering is that the password is a bloody beast! Is there a reason they couldn’t have been something more memorable, or let us put in our own password? I’m not trying to complain, it’s not a promblem at all, just something to think about I guess. If you want to.
you can change your password if you click on “edit” your profile and scroll down a bit. on unrelated note, i should probably give Alias a chance afterall…
Thanks for the info!
OTI – why did you change your layout. I’m quite peeved. The new one stinks and hides a lot of what is going on behind the scenes! The reason I liked the old layout is because there were articles posted everywhere that I could click on if it caught my eye. Now my eye needs something else to catch it. Gr.