Coconut dog food tastes better

Welcome to the coconut side. Perhaps the biggest part of this new flavour is not the design but the functions that come with it. The most noticeable is the community side of Diary of a website. I feel that it’s about time Diary of a website stretched it’s legs a bit and to create this I am going to use the forum and 2 flickr groups, webspirationickr (webspiration @ flickr) and colourspiration (colourspiration @ flickr) – let nobody say I can’t make up odd names.

From the design point of view I am going to write more about that later as the logo has changed greatly in this and I’ve got plans on making the logo now part of the flavours so expect this to change every-time with the good old coffee bean keeping you in Diary of a website land.

Webspiration

I work in web design and as a result I see a lot online and offline that inspires me. Webspiration is about looking at the online side of this and the idea is to find anything from forms online to entire websites that inspires. It may be the smallest detail or it may be the larger picture. So long as it’s inspiring it is webspiration. You don’t even have to do through the flickr group, just post in the forum and everyone can still see the webspiration you’ve found.

To give this more than just my own personal choices I wanted to create a way that others could show me more webspiration – hey I love to be inspired so what a great way. Webspiration comes with a flickr group that anyone can join – I’d love everyone and anyone to join as well that’s double the number and all that. Every week a post will be made from something webspiration that week. I may do more than once a week but don’t want to promise. Other people are also encouraged to join in and can use the webspiration flickr group to create their own posts.

The forum also is a great way to let me and others know about webspiration. All you have to do is sign up and start the webspiration ball rolling. Webspiration can be anything from a mouse roll over or border to a web portal or blog. If it’s online and it’s inspiraing it’s webspiration. Don’t worry about how to define it’s inspiring or not, the simple rule is ‘do you like it’ if you do then it’s good enough for webspiration. If you join on the forum you can always join in the discussion and debate that may arise from nominated webspirations. Don’t agree just join in and show some of your own webspiration. Critique of design is always a great participation sport.

Colourspiration

Probably one of the most posted about topics on Diary of a website is about colour. From how it effects you mood to seasonal colour schemes, I think I’m a little colour obsessed. I wanted to link in the outside part of inspiration which for me is usually in the form of colours. Colourspiration does this through the same way webspiration does.

Colourspiration has it’s own flickr group also, but just one week postings aren’t being applied here, it’s more about being able to get inspired daily by colour and about celebrating colours. You don’t have to join the flickr group again though as you can post colourspiration just like webspiration through the Diary of a website forum. It also has a quick view on most pages on Diary of a website, along with webspiration. Colourspiration can be about the colour schemes, colour in a photograph, so long as it’s colour it’s potentially colourspiration. It’s somewhere using flickr that everyone can join as a group and start posting colours.

Diary of a website forum

I thought carefully about adding a forum to this site. There always seemed more reasons against than for adding one. However, with time the reasons for it became more prominent. They fall into wanting to develop several re-occuring themes that I have explored in this blog. These namely are design inspiration and colour. A few flavours ago webspiration came about in answer to half of this and this worked well. It went with the last flavour but it’s back again after going off and having a little think.

The forum is something I thought very hard about adding and in-fact until the last flavour had decided to not even do. On top of wanting to use it for colourspiration and webspiration, I wanted to start up again blog club and this time open it up to non-9rules members.

Other things are in the forum also and here is a summary of the categories that exist currently, I’ve got plans for a bit more on top of this.

- Diary of a website : Site information, updates and discussion
- Colours : colours, hues, colour moods, schemes
- Colourspiration
- Blog club : fortnightly 9rules blog club
- Ask a web designer : opinions, help, talk about design.
- Webspiration : inspiration from anything online
- Coffee break : grab yourself a coffee and just talk.

As it’s a forum it’s open to anyone to join in and start talking, I hope there will be something for everyone to enjoy. If there is anything you’d like to talk about that isn’t there then you can always do a request through the Diary of a website category. You can also use this for Diary of a website requests for features, articles or anything else. It can’t hurt to ask and it actually doesn’t in the Diary of a website forum.

Blog club open access – the second coming

To do this and allow people to know what is happening in blog club and get talking, I needed something more than just a post and comments. I wanted to create a place where just like with book clubs, blog club could happen. The rules are still the same for it and the format hasn’t changed, I just felt that opening it up outside of the 9rules community was a great idea. Blog club is still for now, only about the 9rules blogs and communities – this may change as blog club isn’t and never was about solely what I want to do, as people join they get a say in the future of blog club. I am going to launch blog club in the new year once the seasonal busy is over so will post more about this on the rejuvenation of blog club.

Clicking fodder

I used to in past flavours post my del.icio.us bookmarks for all to see and click at will on. I also have been doing some click pimping through the espresso section of this site. There are though sites that I use again and again that just putting them as one link doesn’t seem to justify them. I wanted to create something more for those and hence Resources was born. This is a simple link system in loose categories that you can view the latest at the side bar or you can click to see a page of the resources in category order. Resources is a minor part of the site, but I think it’s in keeping with what goes on around here and hope people get something from these Resources. Currently this is just a set of side links but the page for this will come over the next week as smaller updates are rolled out across this site.

The me test – do I like coconut?

I am as usual probably my own worst critique. However, with this one I think I am happier and can’t decide if that is just because I don’t have to eat my own dog food anymore. On the whole there is a good basis I think with a few tweaks I am slowly rolling out. I didn’t want this design to hang around like tinsel stuck to blue tack from hanging it up. In the end the flavour was brought out a lot quicker than it was planned and it wasn’t actually planned to be christmas eve either – more of a new year plan was the aim. The main reason for this was the fact of the dog food tasting and that I noticed the last flavour was effecting my posting rate (nice side note of something I have learned as to what actually makes me blog on a site). To put pay to this I felt rolling out the coconuts was about time.

Whilst there won’t be any major dah dah’s planned over the next few weeks it’s more tweaking that will occur. The forum hasn’t got a style to blend into the site, I am not sure it will as the flavours change so often (then again I may go along the changing forum flavour every time to reflect this – haven’t see theme switcher for bbpress though so when work that one out it’s possible knowing me). There are a lot of bits such as resources, webspiration and colourspiration that will build up over time so they will be constantly adding to from now on. If you all add then hey it’s going to get a whole not more inspired over at those flickr groups. Flickr have also recently increased their sizes of free accounts so even if you don’t have a pro the extra size of space should let you join in. You can even just post through the forum for these.

The litmus test – do you like coconut?

Coconut feels sort of a crucial flavour for me, I am not sure why but I do have a few thoughts as to why. One thing that struck out to me clearly was that very few people have even been using the last flavours – well since Vanilla anyways. By a long gap Vanilla was the one flavour that seems to have gone down well and more than one person has said it was how they thought this site should be. I found that odd initially but it’s made more and more sense as I’ve been working on this one. There is a hint of vanilla in some ways about this design as it’s about getting back to what this site was always about – the content. Only time and you of course will tell if this one is now your Vanilla substitute. I’d like people to try this new flavour even if they have a vanilla addiction – just try it you are under no 3 year contract with coconut – coconut is try before you stick basis only.

That is about it for a mammoth post for a semi-mammoth flavour. It’s got a fair bit to it and I hope everyone is firstly awake after this post and secondly enjoys it. Any comments would be gratefully received and I guess that is about it for this new flavour introduction. If you have any issues with the new flavour not sticking the theme switcher has been known to be grumpy on flavour changes so just set it on the page you are seeing in the flavour before and it should be set from then on. You can also clear your cookies – it’s a rare instance this will be needed so just covering instances here (got to cover your instances ;)).