I meant to post about this earlier but I've had the busiest day ever, was making the new unite fully work from 6 -> 10:30 am, then work all day, then MTG night in the evening. I'm pretty dead now, but before I retire to bed I wanted to share with you guys this if you've not seen it already.


Unitefingerboarding 4.0. Not just me changing a few pictures, or editing the skin a little bit, I coded the website entirely from scratch, host it through paid hosting now, and have changed a LOT. I wanted to make the site more like a web magazine than just a quickfire news site, and I think I've done what I started out to do. Hopefully you guys will enjoy it, and look forward to what's to come!

I'll be updating the mobile version of the site over the next week, along with adding a comments section to posts and fiddling with back-end fun like adding an RSS feed, making a sitemap to submit to google webmaster tools, making a funny 404 page, etc.

Otherwise, keep checking the site as it'll be updated every day as per usual. And a huge thanks to all of you who support unite and have done over the years! <3

Still not use to it but I like it Hopefully I get used to it haha.

Really cool layout, but kinda difficult to navigate imo.
I'll get the hang of it soon enough

so nice kerry

Whoa...looks unreal Kerry! I have a hard time finding the words to describe how awesome I think the end result and the work you have put into this already is!! (high fives)

Super stoked on the level youre taking this man..  

I love the new Unite, you can tell how much work was put into this

A bit hard to navigate around the review section, since it's not just a list of links to the review, but I'll get used to it.

So awesome. THANKYOU!

          

Looks rad! I'd say make the banner at the top link back to the homepage though! I tried to click it to get back and it didn't work hahah

I LUV IT

Very well designed, like a magazine.
Need to use the site to find what is needed

Good job Kerry !

Very clean, love 4.0!

<3 looks amazing!

Looks fresh man! Nice job

Looks awesome Kezzaaaa!

for everyone saying it's hard to navigate, I'll change a few things later today from suggestions:
-titles of posts on the home page and post lists pages will now be links as well as the 'read more' link.
-title banner will be a link home.

other than that.. with the menu that scrolls with you and a search box at the bottom of the page that's lightning fast.. I don't see how it's hard to navigate around personally so I'm intrigued as to what you mean I agree the review archive in one sense isn't as easy to find stuff in, but it looked really bad before. AND there's now a search box, old unite didn't have that just type in 'blosom' and the blosom review will come up. simple.

thanks for all the awesome feedback otherwise though! stoked you guys like it soo much, it's definitely something I'm proud of. I'm off to write today's posts now

Clean and fresh. Just saw the video roundup and the new style of writing and I gotta say I like it a lot more than before! The video roundup is a neat idea and implemented real well. Gotta say though, it would be better if the first couple videos are a tad bigger. Just a suggestion. Also, I found that you no longer link the channel of the sites on the page and that kinda sucks. I suggest adding it again. On the visual side such as images and fonts, I personally think it is a nice selection of fonts that you have used and the top stories are soooo good. The way you made the top posts is mindblowingly good! Just a suggestion once again, It would be a good idea to put the video roundups daily onto the top posts so people have an easy access to it anywhere in the site.

Overall I would say that the new Unite 4.0 is a really good one however I think it can still be improved. Awesome work Kerry!

thanks for the feedback, I'll try address all your points as a list.
-the first videos are only 50px smaller than videos on the old unite used to be, and tbh it wouldn't work fi I made them any bigger without breaking the page layout and going wider than 1000px. So, that cant be done, sorry. I will link the channels from now on, didn't realise people liked that soo much but yea I'll do that in the future

-glad you like the top stories and overall look of it! the top stories is one of my favourite parts too.

-top stories is however not supposed to be updated daily and the videos will almost definitely never live there. That's not what the top stories are for. If people want to see the latest videos they can just go to the home page - you cant have a link to everything everywhere on every page, that'd just be cluttered. so sorry but I completely disagree and wont be doing that bit.

I'll keep this thread updated with my tweaking progress throughout the day

Sorry Kerry, but I don't really like the new Unite.

The letter sizing is too big (or can I change that somewhere?), I mean like it is so big, and you don't write (a lot) with paragraphs.
So it becomes a little bit hard to read.

And when I go to the homepage, I hate having to click on every link to read it.
Maybe make it expandable (?) or just like the old lay out. (that it is already full on the screen)

I also think it would be better if it is sorted by day, like the old unite.
I hope you understand this one, sorry if it's not really clear.

Also, when I go to more posts, it looks really unclear, too much and big text on a small surface.
And I need to click on everything if I want to read it.

The last one is about the video rewind.
First I just looked at the name first. (yeah maybe that is bad of me, but I don't watch at everyone's vid, only if I know them.)
But now I need to click on it, then scan the text for the names.
Then I will skip it, or watch the video.
After I have watched the video, I will read the text, but now the text is also about the other video I don't want to watch, So that is pretty annoying.

For the rest it looks good.
I really like this part:


So yeah, you did a good job.
I just say my thoughts, I hope you will think about this or something

^sorry you don't like it dude, but I wanted to move away from it being just a 'blog' per se. Or at least in the traditional sense of one anyway. The text isn't THAT big, honestly, I've tried it on mobile and on tiny screens and I personally think it looks fine, certainly not unreadable at least. You can change that in your browser I believe, maybe it's already set above normal and you need to set it back? if it is set to normal I wouldn't fiddle with it though

I've already taken in some ideas for video roundup - I'm going to put the names of the people who's videos are there in bold as well as leaving their channel links at the bottom, I'll do that from now on. That should be a happy medium!

But basically if you want something like the old unite, sorry, but that's not what I want to do any more. Thanks for your feedback though, at least one bit of it was something I'll be able to take on board - and even if you stop reading unite because you don't like the new format, thanks for your support over the years as I know you've been reading for ages

------------------------

Earlier I added a few tweaks, there's now navigation at the bottom of every page, post titles as links as well as the 'read more' bit, and the main banner linking back to the home page. Hope you guys enjoy those little changes as they were all suggested by readers

No problem, maybe it is just that I need to get adjusted to the NEW Unite, but this was just my first look etc.

And I won't stop reading Unite just because of this!

loving the new unite Kerry, sure I need to get used to it but I find everything flows together better than the old unite but one question, the picture on the banner, please tell me you didn't actually grind that ?

love the new setup kerry! everything looks really smooth and professional, definitely will improve my daily reading. thanks for the hard work, it really paid off

I'm having mixed feelings about the new Unite. There are good and bad things about both the previous and current Unite sites so I'll just note my personal opinions here. They're just my own feelings though so don't ignore the many voices of praise.

What I miss from the old blog:
· Being able to read pretty much everything on one page - Sure I might skip a few video posts but at least I can view everything on the same page.
· More prominent post dates - When you view the page(s) of news posts, you can't see the date of when something was posted. Derpy people like me might not realise straight away whether they have already read a post or not. Currently, you only see a small date/time at the end of a post and you need to click into the post to see it.

What I like about the new site:
· Nice top story picture links on the top
· New formats of posts
· Video Roundups

Suggestions:
· Categorising/tagging posts could make it easier to find certain types of posts or being able to see straight away whether it is a type of post of interest to the reader. This also goes for the reviews as it would be good to be able to sort/filter them to see just decks or wheels, etc.

Other than this, I do like the idea of a transition into a web magazine style Unite.

Really like the new layout it's really sick, the only thing i'd change is how big the header image is, sometimes it's hard to tell if you've opened a link or not.

Other than that, I really like it!