As we continue to grow in numbers and in content, it became quite obvious that the current layout was unable to sustain the desired level of content without getting severely clustered. The staff had to take a step back and try to look at the site through the eyes of a new user and ask, “Do I know where to look when I come to this site?” and the answer was no. I felt it was very obvious that the site had reached a point that unless you already knew what you were looking for, it was getting a bit tough to navigate the site due to the clutter.

So, we took out the hedge trimmers and we cut away as much clutter as we could to bring you a new content delivery system that brought you the content you wanted without the clutter confusing the issue. I'm sure you realize the importance of advertising revenue to keep the bills paid, but I also wanted to reduce the amount of ads on the site as I felt it had reached a fairly high number even though they were well worked in to the over all site layout.

It's important to stress that the primary importance of this upgrade was to change the way we bring you the content, rather than a major change in functionality and coding. The v3 upgrade was a huge layout and backend coding upgrade, whereas this release primarily consists of layout changes although we do have some new goodies as well that I’m sure you will enjoy. A HUGE shoutout to Nick, Jamie and Adam for their collaborative effort on this release, they all worked really hard to get this launched.

Let's start from the top…

New Search:

The first thing you will notice is the refined search function, which no longer consists of a category dropdown. This was done for two reasons:

1) Most people do not use the category filtering, they simply enter their search phrase and then sort through the results for the category they want.

2) In order to perform a search by category, it requires 4 clicks. First you must click on the text field to enter your keywords, then you must click on the category dropdown, then click on the category you want, and finally, click on the Search button.

With the new search, we've changed the way your results are displayed to make the search quick and very easy to narrow down by category. Simply search the keyword(s) you want and you will be presented with a results page that not only shows you the most relevant results to your search, but it will show you which categories contain relevant results. If you don’t see what you’re looking for and want to narrow it down, simply click on the category you want and it will filter the results automatically and you can click on the "All" link to return to global results at any time. This reduces the search by category process by 1 click overall, making your searches faster and more effective.

Overall Layout Change:

Next up you'll see that we've removed the box-like content segments and created an improved, more open layout, with fully half the ads gone and things like news and other barely looked at content taken off the main page. The primary focus of the main page is now tutorials, and they are now the dominant content, starting right at the top of the fold where they belong. We've created a new menu tab that will let you quickly switch to tutorials, news, reviews, interviews and Published tutorial content rather than trying to pack bits of each all on the main page. As you continue to surf, you will be able to access these area from anywhere on the site without having to go back to the main page. In the past, you had to access the main page to get to the news, or go to the forums. Now you just click news and all the latest headlines are there and ready to go!

Fonts:

Also improved is the general font size on the site. Every font has been increased by at least 1 point and many are 2+ points larger. The site is now easier to read and navigate for those of you that complained about having to squint to read some of the smaller text.

Date Filtering:

Taken from the Digg concept, we’ve added some nifty on-the-fly date filtering allowing you to view tutorials in the last 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, a year, or everything. So for those of you that wanted to see more than just the tutorials from the past 24 hours, you can now go as far back as you like!

Webmaster Tutorial Editing:

Next on the list is something I am VERY excited to bring to you guys that submit tutorials… you can now EDIT your own tutorials! Simply visit the relevant source site page for the tutorials you’ve submitted while logged in, and you will see a red EDIT link next to the title. You can click this link to change the title, link and avatar of your tutorial. So now you can avoid getting your site disabled by editing your own tutorials when you change URLs!

Category Listing System:

The category listing has also completely changed. Rather than having a huge clunky menu system that was taking up an absurd amount of space, we've implemented a very easy to use dropdown system that lets you quickly access the complete category list, your favortite categories, popular categories and the published categories.

Speed Tweaks:

In terms of overall speed, the site is now faster than ever with optimized queries throughout the site and we’ve reduced the overall page size by almost half! So you'll be surfing the site faster than ever!

Featured Tutorial:

We’ve also changed the format of the featured site and featured tutorial system. We wanted to fix this to show a tutorial only, and represent the tutorial at the top of the directory listing on the main page. So now you'll notice that the first tutorial on the homepage has the featured tag and this will change on a weekly basis and can be purchased as always, contact me for details.

Bug Reporting!

If you find a bug, please report it in the v4 support thread at http://www.pixel2life.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=35574

That's about it gang, so check it out and please let us know what you think. We hope you enjoy the new changes and that you find the new content areas much easier to navigate and use.

Enjoy!
Dan

Enjoy!

Looks 100% better in IE6

second user reply, yay!

I'll have to explore before I can properly comment

Looks awesome ! Whens version 5? LOL

Wow neat. Nice job guys!

Well done to the development team.. looks awesome Great job

wow , fantastic job

Very nice everyone, I was shocked to see it when I loaded the site. But I love it, will the forum skin be changing?

Looks great, awesome job everyone

Looks great, good show

That is awesome! I love the look of it, its not all 1 colour anymore like the last version, its got a very slick 2.0 feel to it, great job to everyone that helped devlop it!

http://digg.com/design/Pixel2life_upgrades...l_search_portal Digg It

Very nice, I love it. Well done guys (and girls)!!

What a nice surprise I awoke to Enjoy!

P2L's been my home page for some time. I just got home from work ready to kick my feet up on the P2L forums to see the front page completely different... I was like... O.... mi.... gosh! You guys said you weren't doing anything like this for ages!!

Wow...

Although, after looking through the site, I'm beginning to think that I'd rather have the old site design back... but that's just me lol - there's too much white!!! If the Tutorials / News / Reviews etc. menu bar was Ajax-based I would have fallen in love with the whole thing at first site... LOL not to worry

Awesome job on everything guys Well done!

Edit: Would also be pretty cool to see some of the site's header features in the forum skin as well... and maybe some cool new buttons to click LOL!

Making it Ajax base would have the non-JS peple freaking out

The forum will be done too, just working on what to do

Dan

Looking very nice I think. The removal of the category selection for searching is a much more elegant solution for searching and results in less clicks which is always a major deal. Without a doubt a plus for usability!

Personally I haven't been bothered by the fonts and can't say I notice much difference.

The new front page layout is in my mind far easier to follow, I found the old one a touch too much umm... not sure but always took me a few seconds to figure out what I was looking for. The new layout is far easier to follow.

Very nice job by all the people who obviously put a lot of effort in to get this to such a high level of quality. Well done peoples.

Lol... awesome! Hey did you get my PM Faken?


Busy?

I liked v4 better
But i think i will get used to the new site.

And.. want to gratz the P2L team and thank them for this site.
You made me a programmer

Very nice.

But, since you used the same colors and didn't change the menus / buttons I'm calling it v 3.989732498759234 instead of v4.

Yup thats the word best to describe the old one. I love the new one

Time for a Wikipedia update, me thinks! LOL!

You know what....I like it!

Nice work!

edit: I updated your Wikipedia page quickly, it's still very messy (should really be organised into old and new now) but I haven't got time to sort it out properly right now

Looks excellent. Good job to the entire team.

It looks good but i think a lot of new people will find it harder to use than the last version.

The tutorials on the left and the ads on the right arent separated very well, so its hard to really focus on one of the columns (it might just be me but my eyes try to read both sides at the same time ).

If you kept the old design, or maybe kept the same style of the old design (different colored sidebars etc) and kept the v4 features it would be better.

Honestly? I don't like it, The grey doesn't work with me atall.. You should have kept to the normal colour scheme just organize it a bit more.. But I suppose it's only first viewing and I will get to like it! You could say p2l's new layout is like Big Brother.. at first it sucks.. then the more and more you view it or in this case go on the site, the more you begin to like it!

You should create some kind of iGoogle think but call it iP2L and make it so that the viewer can organize the page in how the wnt it to be.. Some people might not want to have the top tutorials listed at the very top and might have fetishes for something a bit different.. I rarely view the top 10 tutorials and mainly zoom straight to the forums or check out the php catorgory.. So maybe we could have some self adjustments to the site which would make it easier for us..

Also, for the next version, you should do a competition where members of P2L get to send in their submissions for the GUI and the winner gets a free months advertisement or something of the type.

Will0wz

One thing I would say is you need to change the way you display categories on the search page and sub categories. I would definately give them their own column so they are displayed vertically, the horizontal method you have right now Is very hard to read or scan through quickly to pick a category I think.

Awesome work guys! It looks a lot better and organized!

/Agreed.

It is even worse when they go on to a different line, which can't be helped I know. But vertical would look better.

Well, P2L is my homepage.. and when i loaded it up, it pretty much jumped out and kicked me in the face. I was really sad to see the whole content of the site gone, and a new sleek silver style. However, the functionality of the site has improved a lot. So i'm sure by the end of the week, ill be used to it.

Nice job guys.

Wow I wondered why there was no news. This was a massive surprise.

Iit'll be Techtuts next .

PS. I love it. Great to see you getting P2L ready for the future!

ROFL;

Just now I had a look at the source code and this is what I found commented out ROFL.



I think the developers left something behind

Edit: Thanks NG!

Removed

Woo look asome great job man like it alot.

Great Job!!! I love the update!

Excellent!
Looks great!

I hate to be the troll in this one but I much prefer the previous layout, search drop down was easier and the liquid layout was in general a better design. I also get annoyed at the way the advertisements blend into the search results.

Some nice design tactics on the new profile bar (Write, Manage, Pending..etc..) and I REALLY like the category hover menu (similar principle to DeviantART's but works nicer and is much -much- faster).

- Adam

Really like it! It's a nice change and the beginning of the world domination for P2L lol just joking we are already the best in the world here!

Good job everyone!

(NG you still need to tell me when we go watch a movie loll)

I like it, but I must get used to it...I get lost easily right now.

It isn't W3C Valid, but to be honest hardly any popular websites have valid code.

Overall, I think the P2L Development Team did a fantastic job. Good job guys, it was nice working with you all.

The last day of developing was the most frustrating trying to get the load time down. But we succeeded and we delivered. I am glad, I am just glad.

ugly...

















just kidden looks great guys!

Hoot

One thing I have spotted is that on tutorials written using the publishing system the code box backgrounds aren't wide enough.

It's a lovely new look though.

It's nice. But isn't time for a redesign at the header? the navigation there is really boring
and I really think that the website could be more "enchanced". becouse It's all made of rounded corners

also, it could be more organized. I mean, Look at Deviantart. It's very simple and the content-boxes are well separeted.

Hi Adam,

Can you clarify what you mean? The old layout was not liquid and the ads have not changed at all, we simply removed a bunch of them and left the best performing ones in. Maybe I'm not understanding what you mean.

Thanks
Dan

nice job guys, keep up the great work!

Great job on re-designing the site!

I have to say, I liked the home page a lot better before but the rest of it and all the other non-aesthetic improvements are awesome!

Oh I thought it was liquid, my mistake, sorry. But I liked the way it was... "big" to put it simply. I like the fact that you could go onto the frontpage and see everything without too much navigation.

In saying that I agree with your original post on the fact that it could get confusing for new users to the website to actually get what they wanted without previous experiance, maybe all pixel2life needed was reorganising rather then redesigning?

The previous pixel2life design had a very "personal" feel to it, it felt like I could customise everything on the page. I am not quite sure WHY this was. It's hard to describe, maybe I need to read up some more on design theroy.

About the adverts, I know that the previous design displayed the adverts in a similar way, but it has always been a pet-hate of mine. It feels like you are "tricking" users into clicking the advert -don't get me wrong, I understand the fact that you need to get paid- but nobody likes feeling like they are being decieved. Maybe a simple light grey background behind the advert might do the trick?

Now you have cleaned out pixel2life of all the unnessesary content clutter, it seems that you have upset the balance of Content/Advert and it is a bit overwhelming.

Afterall, this could all be in my head, I've visited pixel2life since you opened in 2004 and this is the first time the layout has had a radical change.

I also think that something should be done with the big whitespace at the bottom of the right column.

Just a quick note, the majority of my comments only apply to the homepage.

I hope nobody takes offence to my comments, I'm just trying to offer some constructive critisism and something different then "Yeah, I like the design!".

Thanks for the reply, I didn't think anybody would even read my comments.
- Adam

I'm sorry to be a Joy kill, but the site looks more cluttered ever. I am a long time Tutorial section user (Not Forum) and i just believe that it's too hard to see and i liked the old version better. I hope there's someway you can put a skin picker up, Or Version picker up.

Edit: I'm sorry there it's hard to Adjust with 4000 Ads on the right of your screen but i stick with my word and i just believe that you may lose alot of people (Including me) For this version.