Comments on: A WordPress theme for news

By: April 5, 2009: It’s a Duesey at Inside CoPress

April 5, 2009: It’s a Duesey at Inside CoPress — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 02:46:31 +0000

[...] to the presence of Andrew Spittle and with knowledge of his recent project, much of the hosting discussion revolved around using his prowess to develop a WordPress news theme [...]

By: Diversions » An update on the Wordpress theme

Diversions » An update on the Wordpress theme — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 21:34:37 +0000

[...] Browse « A WordPress theme for news [...]

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:08:44 +0000

Right. Not necessarily an “iPhone app for the desktop”, but something that fits the desktop environment better than a browser. There’s a lot of additional functionality you might be able to build (including an application that taps into that social stream, or one that mimics the reading experience of a newspapers, i.e. a compilation of what someone thinks are the top stories of the day).

By: Miles

Miles — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:54:04 +0000

In general, I like the design. I’m not 100% sure I love the left-nav bar though.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:40:33 +0000

@Joey Agreed. The photo wasn’t meant to be all the way down there. My article page prototype (see update above) shows how it would be more likely to look.

@Daniel Apologies for Seesmic being broken. I thought it was working, but apparently not. You make some great points. I think the “News Feed” idea would be a great one and is most likely something that can be done with Facebook Connect. I’ll definitely look into this.

Voting on stories is definitely part of the plan. It’s one of the things that I’m saving for until I actually have it into WordPress as a standalone theme. I’m also thinking of incorporating the top stories (decided by votes instead of page views) into the popular posts section. Pageviews just seems to be a poor way of determining the best stories.

I’m interested in the idea of a desktop client. What kind of features do you see this bringing that wouldn’t be on the web? Are you thinking of something akin to an iPhone app but for a desktop?

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:28:29 +0000

Seesmic is broken, I think. I left you a pretty gorgeous, albeit unfocused, comment and the machine ate it. Might want to get that fixed

The short of what I was saying is that you need to be more radical in your design. I like what you’re thinking, especially in terms of no advertising on the homepage, but it’s too much like a traditional newspaper website in my opinion.

A couple more ideas. It would be sweet to have a “News Feed” that gave me the most recent comments, forum questions, etc. of my friends. I think this is one of the things that would push me personally back to using the website instead of an RSS reader. What if there was also a desktop client that allowed me to keep tabs on site activity during the day?

Second idea: make it more interactive. Videos posted on the homepage, ability to vote stories/comments/images up, and other ways of playing with the news are all a plus.

By: Joey Baker

Joey Baker — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:20:27 +0000

Love the idea here Andrew. One comment immediately comes to mind: why are you burying photos on the story page? Visual elements will draw people in, I’d make the photo much more prominent.