Hell Yeah Bitch! .com

Ok, we have a new design, which I hope everyone likes. We also have a crappy logo that I know no one likes. Here’s how I plan to fix this:

Logo Submissions.

The basic rules: Basically, I’m, looking for a design that has our name, and if you are artistic enough and so inclined, a picture / logo design in it. Size should be constrained to roughly 500 pixels width and 100 pixels tall. I say roughly, because thats what I mean…try to stay in that neighborhood, but you don’t have to. It should also be said that I’m not really looking for a “header” That goes all the way across that site because I’m trying to distance us from the “every other blog design” with a crazy header with text underneath it and a footer under that. Also, if you haven’t noticed, the width of the site changes with the width of your window, so a picture might not always work. However, I’ll keep it open by saying if you have a rockin’ idea that revolves around a header, go ahead and submit it anyway.

Of course, any design that is picked will get full billing and maybe a t-shirt or something. (If my bills are all paid first.)

To submit, you can just post a link or display the header image in the comments on this post. After a while, I’ll hold a little vote (assuming we have any submissions) and then I’ll throw out the vote and pick what I want while telling people I got some verbal votes from people you all don’t know that changed the vote in the direction I went.

Sound good? Fire up Photoshop (You paid for your copy right? Sure you did.) and make us a logo!

Editor’s Note: If you can’t host the pic on your own, please just email your submissions to me: mike at hellyeahbitch.com. Also, if you suck at photoshop like me, but you have an idea written comments about an idea will also be welcomed.

Follow Up:
I cyber-doodled a little thing that might be able to be incorporated into a logo by someone better than me.
It looks like this, and you can download the psd file here.

On behalf of all of us at Hell Yeah Bitch! .com, (its a little known fact we have a staff of 100s of people…yes, we are underachievers.) want to wish you a happy new year. We’ve been through a lot of growth this year and several design changes (Sorry about that.), and we hope that we will continue to grow in the new year. Keep reading and keep (or start) commenting, we’ll do the best we can to make sure we keep throwing new crap up here. Most of it should be worthy of reading.

…and I promise, less design changes in 2006.

Thanks.

Consider this a “public beta”. I have opened the door to the HYB testing site for the new few days to allow those that care to take a look at a new design I’m working on for Hell Yeah Bitch! .com. Since the last redesign was so universally hated, I hope this one goes over better. It has a chance, considering it looks absolutely nothing like that last one. I tried to get away from the usual “blog” look, hopefully I got it right.

To get to the beta site, take a left at the Burger King and head to: testing.hellyeahbitch.com Take a look a leave a comment here (For those of you reading this post on the beta site, leave a comment on this post by using the absolute link here.)

The only thing I don’t like about this design is the logo looks horrible now. Suggestions? If you are good at Photoshop or GIMP please throw together a quick logo idea for us. I would love to think our readership will will shower me with some great ones and we can do a vote on which is the best. However, my hopes are not high. Email all submissions to mike at hellyeahbitch.com

Thanks guys. Ok, now let me have it!

If anyone was wondering why posts by yours truly were at a premimum for most of last week, there was a good reason: I was really busy last week. I was putting the finishing touches on the rebuilt from the ground up website I’ve been working on for some time, while making 1,000,000 calls to everyone about how I was moving soon. Oh yeah, I also moved this weekend, so that took up monster time as well. All in all though, my new apartment is getting closer to livable and I do have internet access…though will all the open and available wireless networks, I don’t need my own access.

The fact of the matter is I think I’m getting settled and postings should be getting back to normal from my end. And to all that have emailed me or been trying to get a hold of me: I’m sorry for taking so long, and yes, “I got that thing you sent me.”

From what I’ve been hearing on and off-line, pretty much everyone hates the new design.

It will be changed.

But first, let me explain what I was going for. What I wanted to do with the site was make it cleaner and dare I say it, more professional. Lately we’ve been seeing some good linking from some fairly big sites and I felt the old design looked a little too “this is my blog, I live somewhere hip and talk about how much I love Coldplay”-ish. So I wanted something a bit harder.

Here are the main complaints I’ve heard thus far:
1. Its ugly.
2. Its better when you can read most of the articles in full on the front page.
3. People don’t understand the picture on the right.

Here are my answers:
1. Ok. I see your point. But I’ve always been searching for something between too flashy and too straight and narrow. I want it to have a feel like a on-line magazine, but its tough when you have serious content limitations. Seriously, I’m open to suggestions.

2. The reason I went with the summary of the articles on the front page was simple. It was just easier to manage. When I had the full articles on there before that left column got long fast and made the right column look really stubby. Maybe a compromise of longer summaries? Or is everyone rock hard and having 5 full articles on the front page at all times?

3. The picture on the right is just that. I wanted something where any of the writers here could post of a picture with a caption. Sometimes I run articles that are really just pictures, this way I could still show them but not have it take up a whole article space.

I’m moving back to the old design for now, but the hated newer design will still be up at: hellyeahbitch.com/ugly Obviously, I need help so any suggestions are welcome. Don’t expect anything new for a week or so though, I’m already stressed out about me moving this week and today I found out my bills are shooting up higher than I thought, so assuming I don’t kill someone or shave my head and join the Peace Corps, something new will be done in a few weeks most likely. Maybe around the new year.

Seriously though, if you guys didn’t (or did) like the new design, I’m going to need comments to fix it.

I was just wondering because I’m not so sure about it. I might just be because its been a few weeks since I made a change to the site (if you don’t count to slight comment display change) and I tend to get a little antsy at times with this site, if you haven’t noticed. My real reasons for souring a bit on the header are:
1. Its cool that it can update and its random, but its not like anyone really ever changes it. Hell I rarely do it.
2. Its kinda big isn’t it? And with the top story all the way across the top, I feel we could use that real-estate up there a bit more so it doesn’t just look like a site with a big header and text underneath, until you scroll down and see the rest.

I would like to implement some sort of rotating / random picture element up there still, or maybe a picture on the side that is changed like a front page on AOL or a news paper. But then again, maybe I’m just being crazy and you all silently love it.

So I just thought I would lay it out there, see what you all think.

Maybe I’m just slow, but I’ve just discovered Gravatars today. If you are slower than me, a Gravatar, which is short for Global Avatar, is a system that allows you to sign up and then have a picture of your choosing show up on any site that supports Gravatars. i.e. You can comment on any site and if they support gravatars, you picture will show up there. Kind of a neat idea right? So should Hell Yeah Bitch! .com implement it? Do we care? Is it worth it for the posts that actually get comments? Normally I would say no. We aren’t known for implementing every little hip things site (blogs) have out there…hell we still don’t do traditional trackbacks (and we won’t). Maybe we should be more open to the fad-ish type addons like this. Would it spurn a sense of community here or would it just be a waste of 30 minutes on a Tuesday night?

Link: Gravatar.com

Yes, we, like probably every other site in the world, and giving Google Analytics a try this morning. For those not cool enough to be in the hip internet news circle, Google Analytics is Google’s new service that give site owners details on the traffic coming to their site. Normally this isn’t something I would jump on to try out, but since moving to DreamHost we lost the use of some of my favorite site data tracking packages. Maybe Google Analytics will be what I’m looking for. Sure, its a little “big brother”-ish, and I’m sure if Microsoft tried to do this people would flip out, (though I’m sure I would still have tried it out.) but if I’m not into in in a few months, I’ll just remove the javascript. Plus, its not like we are running a top secret website over here.

They say I’ll have some type of report ready in 12 hours, so I’ll be sure to report back on the results and if Google sends me a letter on how they “own me” with a written version of a evil laugh since they have the data on how many people come to my site today.

Yeah, its different. Not a lot different, but different all the same. Spurred by a comment that our site looked too much like every other blog, I tried to give the front page a slight stir. (You can always tell I’m playing with the site design, when the post count drops for a few days.)

Changes: (for those too dumb to figure it out on your own…they know who they are.)
- The newest article now gets a little more emphasis.
- The next 4 articles are dynamically pulled and listed down the left side.
- At the bottom the page we also have a little list with the next 5 articles.
- We have new graphics for the Header Changer and the Flickr Page (The Flickr page logo dynamically shows the newest pic in the group)
- Our “Greatest Hits” are in a section called “The Essential Hell Yeah Bitch…”, I plan to add more to that later (Nominations?)
- Recently commented has stayed…it just got fatter.

If anything is breaking or looking funky in that browser you made for yourself just to prove you can do it and no one else will ever use, let me know and I’ll fix it. And, although I know no one ever does this, if you have any other suggestion on the design of this site, let me know in the comments.

Now that Hell Yeah Bitch! .com is one of the huge throng of sites that are hosted on Dreamhost, I decided to go all out and enter us in the “Dreamhost Site of the Month”. All was good, untill I was reviewing the comments and I noticed that someone wrote: “Your sidebar is wonky.” I thought our sidebar was about as unwonky as a sidebar could get, but oh well each to their own.

That is until I looked at the site in Internet Explorer. Somehow I missed the fact that the sidebar was in fact wonky if you are visiting via IE. Damn, a little html add fixed it well enough, but it pissed me off for a few reasons. 1. Our sidebar was wonky, I didn’t realize it, and it cost us a higher rating on a contest that no one really knows or cares about. 2. I pride myself on making sites that are the same in Firefox, Safari and IE. This one wasn’t. 3. All the 39% of the people that come here via IE didn’t bother to tell me that the sidebar was wonky! Come on people, you can’t really think I wanted the sidebar to look like that can you!? Damn!

Anyway, the sidebar has been de-wonkified and I have officially typed “wonky” more than I ever thought I would in my life.