CSS Drive Blog 
The new CSS Drive
Well, as you can see, CSS Drive has a new look! This is probably the first real redesign since the site went online late 2004. "Better late than never" is my only excuse lol. With this new version of CSS Drive, my three main goals were to better organize the existing sections of the site, (particularly the CSS Gallery), introduce a live News Area (pioneered by Stylegala), and finally, overhaul the cluttered, outdated design with something more spacious and together looking.
The old organization of content on the site, such as that for the CSS gallery, always bugged me. Categories like "business", "entertainment" etc really are quite meaningless to a web designer when he/she is looking to narrow the types of designs to look at for inspiration. There just isn't any practical connection between a type of design and the sites that use them. Due to this, I've rethought the whole category structure, and decided to do away with the old organization by "theme" setup, replacing it with just select showcases of sites based on attributes such as "clean and crisp", "liquid layouts" etc.
The second goal was to add something new to the site, which for now happens to be the news section. I had many ideas floating in my head during the redesign process, but my lazy work ethic has forced my mind to settled on the easiest to implement- a live news area similar to Stylegala. If you're registered on the site, your news will show up instantly as soon as you submit it (update: not yet operational as I work on a few problems), while non registered guests' submissions will go into a queue so I can catch the evil do-ers. Regardless, be sure to read the submission rules before posting a news item to avoid the hammer.
The last goal of course was just to overhaul the old design with something- anything down to blank pages if needed. Trust me, the old look was getting on my nerves as much as the people I was getting "fan mail" about. I didn't have the luxury to spend too much time on the redesign, though I hope you find it overall to be an improvement over the old. A lot of pages on the site uses caching, so small things like number of comments for an etry may not show up immediately. Don't fret hehe. And of course, there are probably plenty of bugs for me to iron out in the CSS and backend, so be kind when you let me know about them.
Well, that's it for now. Have fun with the new look and features!
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Comments (19)
Wow, definitely a lot better than the old design! It's bland and complex at the same time, if that makes sense. I love the header section.
Very nice. I think you should make that gear in the background have a fixed position though.
Great design - I find it easy to navigate. Thanks
I'm sorry but as a professional designer I have to say that the design of this site is pretty horrific. The navigation is especially nasty.
Hi ceephax:
No problem, I appreciate any feedback. Any specific suggestions as far as what I can improve and in the area of navigation as well?
I'm regular visitor and what I really like about it is the way you categorize the gallery. Most other css-inspirational websites don't do this, but I love the lay-out-style categories. They're very useful.
so now we have 2 horrific galleries... cssvault and now cssdrive...
See the similarities? both are just interested in revenues and not so much the commnunity ;)
Hi Steven:
How do you propose I "care" more about the community versus "revenue"? Are you saying the site is run like a cooperation? If so I'm not getting enough shares lol. One thing I've learned is that there's no pleasing everyone, especially the designer community, which is like an exclusive boys club. Once you're "in", you can hardly do wrong, and even your latest horrendous design still gets praises and accolades. I remember seeing a few designs that just turned me off completely, not as a designer, but as someone that matters in this case, the user. I mean, font so small I need a magnifying glass to read the text, columns that disappear if you resize the browser, and so on. Yet the design groupies each take turn praising the design, leaving outsiders thinking "there must be something wrong with me for thinking differently. Yes, that's it."
I'm not defending in any way my lack of good design skills, but I'm very familiar with by now the mobster, elitism, and hypocritical mentality that lurks within the design community. I'm all ears when I get specific criticisms, whether it's the poor workmanship of the logo, the un-intuitiveness of the navigation, problems with the CSS, or that I'm alienating people by somehow bombarding them with pop up ads. But when I get the mobster/ elitism/ hypocritical/ nonsense designer comments that I'm very good at detecting now, I pretty much just say "Oh, one of those", and move on. They don't help me improve as a web designer, since their goal is just to serve the commenter him/herself and to trump the horns of their exclusive "club".
Oh oh, I think I'm in more trouble with the designer crowd hehe.
Some backgrounds need setting methinks.
Perhaps a link (top left) from the forum to CSS Drive. Otherwise navigation seems OK for what I need.
Keep putting up great sites!
Hey I THANK you for this site! Steven R not everyone's CSS offering is going to be able to showcase ALL of the beautiful and cleverly thought out designs... I say the more the merrier. We can all draw the line on when a site goes over the top with ads etc - so far this site has not. This is far from horrific.
OK now georgec please add my site to your list of CSS sites please ;) that would be great!
Thank you,
Jim S.
http://tentonweb.com/
Hmmm Jim that's not quite how the process works. hehe
Thanks George. I did submit my site... probably 2 months ago before you posted your site redesign. How do I go about getting my site posted or added to your gallery? If it is not good enough or for whatever reason cannot be posted that is ok - but if so I would appreciate it if you could please let me know so I won't wonder about it. My site is at http://tentonweb.com/ .
Thank you sir!
Jim Summer
Jacksonville, Florida USA
Hi Jim:
I think I remember reviewing your site at some point. Anyhow, just to let anyone who's interested in on the roughly my review process, basically I visit each site that comes to my inbox, and if visually I like what I see, I then quickly review the source code for CSS, structure etc. That's how a site gets featured. Due to the # of submissions I get, I *never* reply to submissions that are rejected, and I doubt any of the other CSS gallery sites on the web do that. It's just too time consuming. So with the above said, your site when I reviewed it didn't meet my internal requirements at some level. However, the review process is entirely subjective of course (so you shouldn't take it personally), and you're free to submit your site again when it's redesigned for review.
Hope this explains the process,
Thanks a lot George for your candor, I appreciate it.
Jim S.
http://tentonweb.com/
Jacksonville, Florida USA
I think the new redesign looks great except for one thing. I remember on the old site you categorized all the sites based on what their for like organization , business etc. What happened to that? Is there something I'm missing?
I never saw the old one, but Im loving this, good stuff!
I was going to say,
"I don't know what the old one looked like, but this one looks good!"
Then i read the last comment said more or less the same thing.
So now i'll just say,
"Well done! Nice site."
'm regular visitor and what I really like about it is the way you categorize the gallery.They're very useful.
Very nice. I think you should make that gear in the background have a fixed position though.Take care.
