Update: More! Gimme More!
Things should be running normally now!
If you come across other technical issues, post a comment to let us know. Please state your operating system (Windows Vista, XP, Mac Leopard, OSX, etc) and browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc) in your comment — it helps with troubleshooting.
Click below for the original post on the change and previous updates.
Update March 5th:
- Removed widget which was slowing down load time.
- Some posts between indexes 2 and 3 have been ‘eaten’ due to problems with coding. Here’s what’s not on the index pages.
Sorry for the inconvenience — thanks for your patience.
Updates March 3rd:
- Danielle is in Vegas for the MOM2BE show and won’t be home until Thursday, so not much may be worked on between now and then.
- Yes, we know pages 3+ have ten repeat posts, and that page 9 is areplica of 8 — we’re trying to fix. Please scroll past what youalready read for now … sorry, we know it’s a pain!
- If you’re on a PC and having trouble with pages popping up or textin layers over each other, try clearing your cache — it’s worked formany readers so far.
Updated:
- Removed list of posts at the bottom of the page.
- Added …Back to go to the previous page.
- Added scrollbar to link lists on left sidebar.
- Category clicks now arranged by links instead of full posts.
- Made ‘popular sections’ pull down on top menu.
- Archives moved to top right of page.
Still working on:
Trying to add back links opening in a new window. Trying to figure out why Back and More links open in new windows for certain readers. Some pull down categories not displaying correctly. Some pages displaying text in layers over each other.
Originally posted February 28th: Thanks to Tracey over at Mamapop and Sweetney, I hacked a little code to make reading the Celebrity Baby Blog a lot easier. Ten posts load on the first page and then at the bottom, you can click More…to go to the next page, which are at 15-20 per page right now. So farI’ve coded 9 pages and will continue throughout the next few days, butat some point, you will get a ‘Not Found’ message.
Reducing the number of posts per page speeds up the page load timeand should increase your enjoyment of the site. To those who don’t wantto have to keep clicking to go to the next page, I’m really sorry, butit’s either clicking to go to the next page or waiting for the page toload – someone is going to complain either way.
If you missed the post on our change from 4 to 3 columns, click here.
- Posted on Mar 5, 08 at 9:00AM
- Permalink
- 32 Comments
February 28th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Just a quickie – I just tried it out and it’s working fine for me.
It makes accessing the news a lot quicker and the page is loading a lot faster too.
Thanks Danielle!
February 28th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Now THIS is what I’ve been waiting to see on this site! Nice work.
February 28th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
I’m having trouble, but I’m not sure if it’s the site or just my computer. Once I click on a page to read the comments I can’t get back to the main page. I have to completely click off of the site and re-enter. Is anyone else having that problem?
Sarah’s note: I just tried and I get back using either the back arrow or clicking ‘home’ in the top left corner. Is the page freezing for you?
February 28th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
No, the page isn’t freezing. I just can’t click to get back to the previous page, when I do that it takes me completely out of the website. I’ll trying using the home button to see if that works. Thanks.
February 28th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Okay, clicking on the Home button is working for me. Thanks.
February 28th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Wow, that’s so much better. And probably better for you, too – you should get more page views by having fewer posts on the front page, because it forces people to either click through the “more” link, or check more often so they don’t miss anything.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
It used to be when I clicked on a post it would open in a new window, but it isn’t doing that any more. Is there a reason for this? I liked that feature.
Sarah’s note: I’m not sure if that will come back, or what Danielle’s plan is, but for now ctrl+click on a PC or apple key+click on a MAC will get you the new window you like.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
I’m so glad you guys did this! I love the next button. I never knew how to get too further when I wanted to look at older posts.
Ty cbb
Sarah’s note: Use the pull down menus halfway down on the left side OR at the very bottom of the site.
You can chose the specific category you want to look at, a specific day you missed, or by week or month.
February 28th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
That’s awesome! It loads MUCH more quickly now.
February 28th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Karen- I noticed that as well! I honestly thought it was just my computer at first. I’m glad to know that it apparently ISN’T my computer and that I’m not the only one!
February 29th, 2008 at 4:35 am
I don’t really like having to click more, but the loading faster is good!
Karen and CelebBabyLover if you use FireFoc or IE7 you can also click your scrollbutton on your mouse on the link and it opens in a new tab.
February 29th, 2008 at 6:56 am
I like it a lot, but would prefer 15 posts. Also the don’t miss these articles take a LOT of space, could that just be somewhere you click on, like a post title so that you only get the full list if you need it? If there are only 10 posts, it takes up half the page.
Thanks for always trying to make improvements CBB!
Sarah’s note: Thanks for the feedback. For now, only the first page has 10 and all other pages have 20 posts, so hopefully it’s a happy medium for now.
Re: the ‘don’t miss these articles,’ that’s a different part of the template than the current days posts – it’s been at the very bottom of the site of about a year, and lists the posts from the ‘news’ categories, but hardly anyone sees it because barely anyone went all the way to the bottom before! Sorry it’s taking up so much of the page now. It’s not anything new, but with the shortened page it just makes it that much more obvious. It’s definitely something we’ll look at and take feedback into consideration on as we continue making changes.
February 29th, 2008 at 8:53 am
Hi CBB staff!
First, it great that you guys are improving CBB. I do love the larger pictures and the three panel set up is brilliant. I have to agree with Starlet. 10 posts are too few. Maybe 15 or so would be better. Also, the Don’t miss articles do take up a lot of room. It starts at half the page for me too and the dates go back about 12 days of posts. The last date on my page was 02/16 and it’s now 02/29. I lost track after about a 150 posts. I thought there was an archive link for each week to review it. I just think having over 150 Don’t miss post is a bit much. I’d rather have more of the current days post than a long list of post I’ve already seen.
But thanks for all the effort. It just confirms why CBB is so great–the dedication in creating a high quality site.
Sarah’s note: Danielle removed it, so hopefully things look better now?
February 29th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Currently when you click More at bottom of first page, it opens the second page in a separate browser. I would find it cleaner if it brings up the next batch of posts on same browser page.
Sarah’s note: It’s still in the same window for me, but I’m on a MAC. Can you let us know what operating system and browser you’re using?
February 29th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Why did you add the scroll bar for “Recent Posts” and “Recent Comments”? I agree with it for the rest of the links on the left but please not for the Recent Comments, I use this feature a lot.
Sarah’s note: This way everything on the left ‘matches.’ If you really like reading recent comments, we also have a second widgit for them. Look at the upper right of the page just below the search box – that’s our comment archive, which holds the last 100 comments made. You can also get there directly using this link.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Hey, I know this has been said before, but every time I click ANYTHING, including Home and Next, it’s opening up into a new window… I do think that it would be better if it opened in the same window.
Sarah’s note: Please tell us what your operating system is (Vista, Mac Leopard, OSX, etc) and your browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc). This will help us troubleshoot.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I would also like to see more posts on the first page, for example right now there are only 7 celeb posts on it. And for me what always takes a lot of loading are the ads. So now everytime I go to a new page I have to load those again.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
It’s opening up a new window for me to. I have Vista. I was just coming to post a comment about it as well. It’s definitely nice to have a new page open up in the same window.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Thanks Sarah, I didn’t know about the comment archive.
February 29th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
I have Windows XP, and use Internet Explorer…..and I’m getting a second page when I click more as well. My thing is, I don’t want my browser bar filled with pages from CBB when I haven’t been able to keep updated. I rather liked the long, scrolling page much more.
February 29th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
love the new layout. really like the scoll bars added to subjects on the left side of page so its not a huge long list of things. but i never use those so its just a visual thing to me. also the new layout seems to solve a problem i was having, or its just a happy coincidence. i could not view this site on my husbands computer, it worked fine on mine and we use the same browser and everything. but now i am able view it on his. we use mozilla/firefox and it told me that it was an issue with flash and that they had no solution for it. great job guys keep it up.
~Nessa
February 29th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Hi CBB staff~
Wow! The first page looks absolutely great & it loaded up so fast! I’m glad you took off the Don’t miss posts on the bottom. The layout is very organized & sooo easy to follow.
I use both Mozilla and Internet Explorer. So I tried it on both browsers. The way the site came up was consistent.
I know Danielle was working hard on this so…BRAVO.
February 29th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Hi, Okay, love the 3 columns, love the More button….however the More button opens a new window which isn’t very good.
I am using IE 6, Windows XP.
Sarah’s note: Okay, new question: Are any MAC people having the new window opening problem? Danielle and I are both on MACs and we aren’t getting it, so I wonder if it’s a PC thing.
March 1st, 2008 at 12:06 am
love the 3 columns! and love the shorter list of posts per page.
using safari(apple) on my pc:
1st page: good
2nd page: good
3rd page: repeat posts (about 8? +/-) at the top of the page, followed by older posts
that’s as far as i got… will post another comment if i encounter any more issues.
March 1st, 2008 at 12:22 am
4th page: more repeat posts from page 3, followed by continuing older posts
5th page: repeat posts from page 4 (and maybe even page 3?)
in all, it looked as though about half the posts on pages 3, 4 and 5 were from the prior page.
don’t know if this is because you have to index them manually onto the page, or if it is not following instructions the way you want them to be followed… ha ha ha…
Sarah’s note: Yeah, it’s manually because it’s a Typepad hack. Danielle was having trouble with this earlier. Such a headache!
Thanks for letting us know.
March 1st, 2008 at 6:13 am
I was just wondering if you guys had considered putting up a poll to ask whether people like this clicking to new pages thing?
I understand there will always be unhappy people but this new feature really doesn’t make a lot of sense in my opinion. I’m using cable internet and the load time for site *is* somewhat shorter with the the hack but it only has to load again when i move to the next and subsequent pages (and any comment pages). To me these multiple (albeit slightly shorter) wait times are far more annoying than just letting the site load once and then reading everything on one page. I found the site was most efficient in the old format and right-clicking comment pages to load in a new tab/window. Perhaps you’re increasing hits to the sponsored ads with this new system?
Sarah’s note: It was a combination of factors. We’ve been wanting to paginate the site for over a year now. In last year’s reader survey, the main complaint of many readers was that the page took too long to load.
Then there were two camps – those that check the site multiple times a day, and found that they only wanted to load the last ten articles or so because they had already read the rest. Then there were the more casual readers that only check about 3x a week, who found that once they got to the bottom of the page, they had no idea if they had missed other posts previous, because they couldn’t figure out the archiving system.
People also said they wanted to see a wider main column and larger photos on the page, instead of having to click the images individually to increase size. With the width and loading time issues we already had, that was just not possible – for many readers, it would freeze their computer.
Pagination is the next step blogs are moving to, and many are already there (People.com, Us, Just Jared, I’m Not Obsessed, Perez, etc etc). Yes, there is a page view benefit on the business end, but the benefit to most readers is great as well. Most will have a much shorter load time, better readability, and an easier time navigating. I’m sorry this is not happening for you. When this is done and the bugs worked out, we will have been able to eliminate the biggest problems and incorporate the most wanted changes of a large percentage of readers who gave us feedback on our survey.
Perhaps when we are finished reworking the site we may do a poll, as we did on the 4 vs 3 column post, but right now we are still in the middle of fixing bugs, so it’s not the right time to ask for opinions yet. Let us work out the technical issues first, then after readers have a chance to explore the site when it’s working smoothly, perhaps we’ll do a poll.
Thanks for your feedback.
March 1st, 2008 at 9:43 am
I use Windows XP with Internet Explorer. Last night (Friday) I was having the issue when clicking “More” that next page would open in a new window. I make it a habit to clear my history, cookies, etc. when logging off and I don’t have the problem this morning. Either you all fixed the problem or clearing the cookies, history, etc. did it.
I love the new layout!!
March 1st, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Currently, column two is transposed over column one (so, it’s hard to read anything on the left of the page)–it was working great yesterday! Are there any problems with Safari and the new set-up?
Thank you!
March 1st, 2008 at 4:02 pm
i’m on a mac leopard, and this is what it looks like for me.
Sarah’s note: A really cute baby?
March 1st, 2008 at 5:15 pm
bah. this is what i was trying to post. it’s fixed now, though.
March 1st, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I’m also on a Mac and I was having the same problem mian had but mine is also fixed. I have not had any problems with things opening in a new window though.
Oh, and I like the new format. I don’t mind clicking more and the pages do load faster. I also like the 3 columns. I think the site looks more organized with this set up.
Good luck with all the “fixing”!
March 2nd, 2008 at 12:32 am
Love the larger images but agree with those above who would like at least 15 or 20 posts per page instead of 10.
I’m on dial up – which is slow for any site, let alone CBB – so am used to waiting a long time for pages to load. Usually I will stop the page loading, then go down and click “show picture” for posts that I actually want to see and leave all the rest. This is actually pretty quick. Now having only 10 posts per page, though, it takes forever to re-load every new page.
Still, you’re doing an excellent job and I’ll be a regular visitor no matter what you decide to do with the site
It’s the content that counts!