Welcome to MotoringFile 1.3

Sections: Uncategorized Jul 7th, 2004 50 Comments

Note: If you feel that the new design isn't loading correctly I'd recommed refreshing, clearing the cache, or quiting and then restarting the broswer (in that order). The site should be working in all modern browsers so if you see a problem let us know.

Today we're officially launching MotoringFile v1.3. It's our third, and by far biggest, design change since MotoringFile (formerly Bridger.us/MINI) launched its weblog/news format. We've updated the header images (all 50 of them plus many new ones), the top navigation, and the “How To Guide” section. Beyond this, there are also some fairly major back-end changes that have been done to reduce bandwidth and make the site faster. And if that's not enough we'll also be making some alterations to the comment section of each article and improving archive navigation in the coming weeks.

It's worth noting that with this change we've eliminated the top images used for navigation and replaced them with text. What that means is the navigation you see just below the header at the top is actually text and not an image as it had been. This was done to decrease our daily bandwidth and to give us more flexibility for the future. Believe it or not, those six little GIFs (4K each) were adding over 300MB of bandwidth a day alone! This change means that the navigation text might not look as smooth as it used to for those of you using Windows (80% of our readers). However on a Mac (15% of our readers) it will look the same, if not better.

Another area that we've also made some changes to is our available advertising throughout the site. If you're interested in learning more about the new advertising opportunities with MotoringFile, check out our Advertising page.

We'd also like to take this time to update you on the latest site stats. We're happy to report that MotoringFile is now topping 5,000 unique visitors on days of heavy traffic. And our visitors are not only checking out the front page, but also diving deep into our huge archives. We often see daily over 15,000 pages served and well over 150,000 hits. The amazing thing is our stats just seem to never stop going up, increasing 15-20% every month! In fact, we've had almost 12,000,000 hits since our March 1st launch as MotoringFile and for the month of June we had well over 100,000 unique visitors.

So a big MotoringFile thank you to everyone who has visited, contributed and just generally has made this site what it is today.

Written By: MF Staff

petsounds

Okay, I just went through this long diatribe about how the new version has some horrible design choices, and then I tried it out in Safari and realized the problem. The site is totally broken in the Mozilla browser, which is my primary browser.

On Safari it looks nice. Not a big fan of the drop shadows on the side, but in general I dig your design.

My only real criticism would be that the gray on the sides makes for some eye strain and “buzzing” when reading article text. I don't remember this being there before.
http://www.motoringfile.com/ Gabe

Our testing showed it worked fine, if not better than on Safari. What are you using exactly?
Elmor Fudwel

Interesting issue petsounds. I opened in Safari and got quite a surprise. Opening in Camino gave me the look that you've referenced.

In Safari, I have a grey grid background similiar to those seen on blog sites. And the features column is centered down the homepage.

Camino looks more familiar with the new enhancements and the noted drop shadows on the left and right with the text featured on a white background in the middle.
petsounds

Hmm..well whatever HTML you changed in the last 10 minutes fixed the problem. Before I was seeing a dotted gray background with all the text at 100% browser width and graphics floating in space.

I'm using Mozilla 1.7 (final) on a Mac OS 10.3.4.
http://www.gbmini.net Ian Cull

On my MSIE 6.0, the right hand links etc starts BELOW the left hand text area. This is with a full screen display so it is not a column width issue (1280×1024 display)
http://www.motoringfile.com/ Gabe

Thanks Ian – thought that was fixed. Time to fire up Virtual PC again…
Brian

Ok.. On Firebird 9.1 NOW its working perfect.. a few mins ago it was all messed up, i was also getting a dotted gray background with all the text at 100% browser width. On IE 6 im NOT seeing any text Ads, or TITLES on the right hand side of the page.
http://www.motoringfile.com/ Gabe

Thanks Brian – we're working on it. Gotta love IE :)
Brian

Your welcome.. i'll keep an eye out.
ChrisW

I'm using Safari and things are completely messed up for me too. Not good…
http://www.motoringfile.com/ Gabe

For all those on IE6 on the PC hang in there – we hope to have it all fixed in about 20 minutes.

All other browsers should be working perfectly at this point. If you're experiencing issues with browsers other than IE I'd recommend refreshing, clearing the cache, clearing the history, or quiting and then restarting the broswer (in that order).

BTW I'm splitting my time between Mozilla and Safari while writing this and it renders fine with both.
Vanwall
Still one of the best looking site, boys, keep up the great work!
```
    BCNU,
  Rob in Dago
```
petsounds

Agreed, Vanwall. Probably the best-designed auto enthusiast site I've seen.
Kurt

Safari seems to be working great… I do alot of HTML myself and we should all thank the designers for even considering to optimize the webpage so that it works for everyone, alot of designers don't care that much (especially if its non-IE issues)
ejkd

When I first open it (using Safari,OS 10.3.4) evrything is “greyed”. With your suggestion Gabe of emptying the cache…now is working. I agree with others now the design is even better though I have no compalint from the previous ones.
ChrisW

Working great for me too in Safari now.
RB

Safari is good.

Interesting new look.!?

like the new bar across the top of news archive and so on…RB
Luke

Hey Gabe,

Your IE6 Issues are caused buy the xml declaration at the top of the html.

Take it out to put IE6 back into standards rending mode and things will work better.
Charlie

Gabe,

Firebird, Camino, Safari…. What the hell are you guys talking about?

I'm accessing your website through Earthlink.net and now there's a 1 1/2 inch border in gray on each side of the screen……..it doesn't fill the screen anymore.

This is an “improvement”? Charlie
http://www.matthewgifford.com/ Matt

Charlie, the site is just as wide as it was before. 750 pixels.
http://www.motoringfile.com/ Gabe

Charlie – Firebird, Camino, Safari are web browsers like Internet Explorer.
Charlie

Don't know what happened then, cause there's now “borders” pon each edge of the screen.

The display properties says it's set at 1024×768 pixels with color at 16bit.

Is there something to change under “Internet Options” in the control panel?
http://www.matthewgifford.com/ Matt

The site never expanded to fit the size of the window. It always stayed at 750 pixels wide.
http://www.matthewgifford.com/ Matt

The site should now be rendering correctly in IE 6 for Windows.
spanky

With my 2005 MCS on order this site has become the first place I visit when I get to work in the morning and last site I check at night. I just can't get enough MINI!!

The new design looks great. Keep up the excellent work!!

-m
James

Wow..what a shocker. When I first opened Mozilla everything was stretched out in a vertical format. I re-loaded, now everything's fine. Drop shadows are a realy classy touch.

Great job everyone! I really do love this site – James.
http://www.motoringfile.com/ Gabe

btw if anyone is wondering where the “home” link has gone (it was on the logo) it's now the entire header. So if you click on the header image you'll always get back to the front page.
paco

No wonder you get so many hits, you're running the BEST MINI news/rumors ressource on the web! :)

– paco
Jason

Oh thank god!!! I thought you had fallen off your rocker with all your hoopla until I CLEARED THE CACHE (Safari).

Everything's better now; very nice design.

As always, I have a lot of respect for your site, both on content and design.
Thank you for all your hard work!
http://users.adelphia.net/~rocketboy/index.html Rocketboy

It's a-ok in Opera 7, and regarding the size, I just increase the zoom to 130%, and it fills up my scrren nicely.

Other stats you may, or may not be intrested in: Over 50% of my referrers come from here, with over 28% from the main page, and just under 13% from your repost of my Nomad vs MINI entry, and the rest from various other pages, and not just from pages that I have a comment on. So not only are you a great resource for the MINI community at large, I'm sure I'm not the only blogger who gives you a double thanks for the traffic.
http://www.gbmini.net Ian Cull

The right hand column is now fine in MSIE 6.0 too; thanks for the work!
http://www.kimmelshue.com Chris K.

Looks great in Firefox v0.9.1 on XP (yeah, yeah – I'm ONE of those people). IE 6.0.2800 (SP1) renders the site fine as well.

I Like the tweaks to the site Gabe. Keep up the good work. Now, where's my 2005 MCS (on order)?
http://www.motoringfile.com/ Gabe

Nothing wrong with being one of those people :)

Thanks everyone for the feedback – very helpful! It looks like the only real issue we had at the time of launch was with IE6 and as Matt said that's now been fixed.
http://www.vtec.net neal@vtec.net

Perhaps posting a full size screen capture of what we should be seeing would be helpful.

Thanks!

Neal
http://www.motoringfile.com/ Gabe

This is how it should look as rendered in FireFox, a Mozilla browser:

[LINK]

And this is taken from a PC running IE6:

[LINK]

And finally this is from Safari on OSX (10.3.4):

[LINK]

We've also tested in Opera and it renders fine there as well. If you're still having an issue I'd recommend clearing your cache – especially Safari users.
Deborah

Gabe & Matt,

The site looks wonderful & keeps getting better. Kudos to both of you! You might consider something different to add to paying/donating users names (like Roadfly did) — you guys really deserve more compensation (or should I say REcompensation) for doing such a great job. Or have you thought of selling Motoringfile.com stickers? I'd love one for Sebby, especially since this site is my #1 MINI info source.

Deb
http://www.drewblue.com Drew

Great job once again, Gabe and Matt! It seems like just yesterday that we were talking about your first million hits. and now that's a regular event.
Michael

Hey if you guys get a chance… A PPC/Palm friendly version of the site would be cool…

I know you guys have stuff this is MUCH more important, but I just wanted to throw that plug in there! :)
http://www.motoringfile.com/ Gabe

Michael – As much as I'd love to have a stripped down version of this site available we just don't have the time develop it right now. We had over 700 hits last month from mobile devices of some kind so there are users out there who are access the site in that way. Of course that's 700 out of 3.6 million :)

The other issue with developing something for these devices is that many of them access the site in different ways through different types of programs. My wife's Nokia 3650 renders this site very differently than my SonyEricsson T616. Because of these issues we're going to hold off a bit until we dive into that realm.
http://www.motoringfile.com/ Gabe

Something I neglected to do is explain some of the reasoning behind the way the site was redesigned beyond the need to reduce bandwidth. (caution – design jargon ahead)…

The top of the site specifically bothered me in it's former state. Obviously we set out to create something that was both good looking and functional. However just as important was to create something that gives us flexibility for the future in terms of design, content and interface.

To put it plainly we wanted to rethink the site and create a base that we could build on in the years to come. What we didn't want to do was create something for the sake of saying it's new and improved. It was important to keep as much as possible the same and change only those pieces of the site that were necessary to achieve our goals.
http://www.gbmini.net Ian Cull

Thanks for the different screenshots – I like the fonts in Safari much more than my MSIE …
joe

Hi,

I've always been impressed with the clean layout, fonts, colors, and navigation with this site. Also, the top navigation is a nice addition.

My only (minor) complaint is the page width doesn't expand, but it gives the style of a printed document.

good work overall!
ChrisW

Browsing in Safari is certainly a pleasurable experience. Fast + good-looking.

Friends don't let friends use IE. :)

P.S. I agree this is one of the best-designed automotive sites. For another great one, check out VWVortex.com. A beautiful site.
http://omor.com/mini/ dc

As always, the site looks nice, and the content is great.

A peeve: the top 5 inches of my screen is wasted

so I need to scroll down too much, too often

Could you compress everything above the first http://www.motoringfile.com/img/post_icon.gif

maybe shrink the height of http://www.motoringfile.com/img/headers2/50.jpg of put the navigation over top of it in strongly contrasting colours & shading.
http://omor.com/mini/ dc

Suggestion: make the blank interior of the searchbox white, not fdark silver, so it looks more like a te4xtbox and less like a strip.e

And add edit preview for comments.
http://revorg.org/mini.html Scott

Gabe, this looks great in SlimBrowser!

One question, however – why do I see Google ads for Ford F150s?
http://www.matthewgifford.com/ Matt

It's probably a side-effect of this meme that Gabe created.
RB

Now that all has settled, browser wise, it's very nice. I did really like that cool grey pattern you had around the last page though…RB
Michael Babischkin

Gabe, just figured I'd throw the plug in there for the PPCs… Just in case you found some extra time on your hands that you didn't know what to do with ;)
http://www.motoringfile.com/ Gabe

RB – yeah I liked it too. But as a whole a think the solid pattern is reflective of the site's new design direction. A bit cleaner as a whole.

dc – the header and the design around it are a strong brand point (if you will) and probably shouldn't be disturbed at this point. Also I'd get some serious wrath if I messed with those headers – people seem to love them!

Joe – the page doesn't expand with width purposely. I've been a part of many site's that do use that technique and I certainly like the ideology behind it – but from a content design point of view that wouldn't work for here. The primary focus of MotoringFile and any good weblog/news site should be readability of the content and information. An expanding content area would allow the text to become much too wide for quick consumption. That's the key reason you see most usability experts design their own weblogs around a 750-800 width.

Granted, in other contexts that's a very valid way to design a site. But in this context it just doesn't serve the needs of the reader.

Add the fact that the site is created to be browsed and read vertically and the fact we're still try to support those running lower resolutions (like 800×600) is the reason we have the page width where it is.

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