Welcome to “Shall Not Be Questioned.” It is our new brand. A few moments ago, I loaded up Snowflakes in Hell for the last time, did an ‘/etc/init.d/apache2 reload’ and we shan’t be looking back. I wanted a name that directly related to our topic, to where we live, and what we talk about. So, what about the newness?
- Well, as you can see there are ads. I’ve tried to make them relatively unobtrusive. Currently most of them are placeholders, because we are just starting selling ads. They should fill up once I get approved by AdSense, and once we start selling on blogads.
- Comments are now threaded, and you can edit comments for a brief, fixed period of time, or delete them.
- Obviously the look and feel is different. I wanted kind of an old document look, so I tried to achieve that.
- Otherwise, as you can see, the content is the same as Snowflakes in Hell. This quite literally was just a rebranding.
I hope you’ll all keep coming by. I will continue to tweak the look and feel as time wears on. If you have me on your blogroll, the old domain will work fine, but the new domain name is pagunblog.com. Shorter to type. Even I got sick of typing snowflakesinhell.com all the time. Now on to fix a few issues.
UPDATE on Ads:
You should be able to get a pretty good idea of where the ads will be going once I start getting the approvals I need. The index pages are more heavily loaded with ads, because most of them aren’t’ being used by regular readers. But we have the 728×90 leader board banner, the 300×250 side banner, and between the post and comments section a 300×250 banner. I also put some Amazon recommendations on the sidebar. We don’t get cash for those, but we get some Amazon credit every once in a while if people click through and then buy anything (even if it’s not what I recommended). The index pages are populated with 300×250 ads between posts that have more than 200 words. All are available for sale through blogads. When ads are not being sold, they will default to Google ads, or the top will be Lucky Gunner. We should receive money from these ads through sales, or through the affiliate relationship through Google and LG.
Your big money making ads are the leaderboard 728×90 and 300×250. From advice from a friend, and through my own research, I have found this to be the case. So I have opted for fewer, higher revenue ads, rather than many lower revenue ones. I will try to keep them tasteful, but I won’t have full control.
First!
E-mail notification of comments is still working too… one more thing I don’t have to fix :)
as of the two minute warning, the emails I got (as replies to this post) still had your old outgoing.
From: Snowflakes In Hell
Yes.. that plugin, for some reason, has the title set manually rather than just using the blog title. I have fixed this. Thanks for pointing it out.
Looking good! Comments’ Edit works fine too.
One suggestion: A bit more contrast in the color scheme please?
Not too much, just a couple bumps lighter on the parchment, and a couple bumps darker on the text.
Otherwise, diggin it. New mission statement somewhere?
That was my first reaction as well.
I don’t mind the “parchment” look, but it should be barely-noticeable – just enough tone to make the point.
Contrast is good! for readability.
(Proof by counter-example: Almost every forum on Earth.)
Oh and your feed link isn’t popping up googles autosubscribe widget for some reason (meaning google isn’t recognizing it as a feed).
Congratulations!
Loving the new look. Bear in mind I discovered you’d made the change by hitting ‘back’ on my browser and not refresh. Imagine my surprise when the different looking and URL’d website was in fact the same site I was at hours earlier.
Keep up the good work, this blog is a daily visit.
What, no ‘sudo’ on that command? You logged in as root?
Anyway, great look and feel.
Changing branding is a challenge, though I think your position in the gun-blog community is pretty solid. That position is as important as getting the domain/server setup right.
I like the new look and feel. I especially love the font you are using for the headlines. Very cool and very 1776ish. I’ll update you in my blog roll this morning. Good luck with the changeover.
Love the new look. Great job!
Dammit, I had questions!
(Blogroll updated…)
Congratulations on the new look. It will take a while to get used to but I’m sure it will grow on me.
I think having the comments link at the top of the article is not as efficient as having it at the bottom – usually I like to see what people have said after I read the article, and having to scroll back up to the top is a little bit annoying.
I make no other comments – I will wait and absorb the change before saying anything.
Have to agree here – it is one of the problem I have with Google Reader as well, that to do anything with the article I have to go to the top. Which is fine, if it’s a short article.
Still would like to see a comment/article link at the bottom
x3
After scrolling down the article, I wanted to click the comment link on the next post instead of this one.
Also, methinks the date buttons should match the sidebar headers. The blue looks somewhat out of place. Header graphic could probably be a bit shorter too, so it doesn’t fill half the window for those of us not browsing full-screen.
But other than all that, it looks great.
I have fixed this issue. There is now a comment count at the top, and one at the bottom.
Not liking the new look at all. Welcome to the Brown Blog.
Blogroll updated. Nice look.
Looks good. Like the title.
Eck!
Good job, I do kinda miss the old setup though – it was the first blog i started to read once i got into guns.
I spent a couple of minutes trying to figure out what a “pag un” was… maybe you’d want to camelcase it for a while ?
PaGunBlog.com is easier on the eyes…
My wife tought at first is was PayGunBlog… Which, since you have ads, maybe it is :)
No I didn’t, I thought it was “pagun blog” as in pagan religion. :)
I’ll be happy to have the pagans with poor typing skills market cornered if they’ll click on ads :)
I liked the old name and layout. The uniqueness of it was pretty cool.
I like the new look! But like some others have mentioned, I prefer a comment link at the bottom of the post.
Blogroll updated!
Enough folks have made a suggestion about the comment thing, I think I’ll accommodate. I need to add an edit button too for when I’m logged in, so I can easily edit a post. The lack of that in this theme is driving me nuts.
I will also look at making the text a little darker.
If you make the text a little larger the darker will take care of itself.
Larger, please.
I love the typeface for the blog titles, and the brown color scheme generally. Having the blue bar for the date/time is a little jarring, though.
The font is actually the same size as it on Snowflakes in Hell. It’s 12 point Times. It is possible in pretty much all modern browsers to enlarge the font on a web site. 12 point Times is pretty standard though, so I’d be reluctant to make it that much larger.
thank you, the text is definitely easier to read with a bit more contrast.
Congratulations on the change. Nice look and feel.
I have darkened the text, and also added a comment link at the bottom as well as the top.
Give yourself a week of rest from blog designing and then see if any other real changes are needed. Don’t start running on circles about it. It looks damned good.
Don’t worry. I need to get back to finding a job. This has distracted me from that task for a week. Went through about 4 different themes. Ran one to near launch and then decided I hated it. I’m glad the feedback is for the most part positive.
Ye Olde Font is going to get real old, real quick. Why make what you are saying harder to read?
Only the titles are in the old style font. The rest of the text is standard Times New Roman. The title font is called “IM Fell English.” I don’t find it to be particularly difficult to read.
Nicely done!
Just a suggestion: how about a small link at the top to the Pa. Constitution, the source of the title.
And–good luck with this new site!
Eventually my “About the Name Change” will become “About Article I Section 21,” which will include a link. But for now I want to keep it that way so people don’t think they typed in the wrong URL, or that my domain was hijacked by Somali pirates who were really into the PA constitution.
Glad Tam mentioned the blogroll. I’ll need to do that, too.
I appreciate it. Blogrolls aren’t as valuable as they once were, which is why I never update mine. But it can help Google figure its shit out. I can see the Google bot crawling, but it hasn’t yet transferred the Google-Fu from snowflakesinhell.com to pagunrights.com. I’m guessing Google holds back a bit to make sure when you say “301 permanently redirected” you mean it.
Funny, you say “help Google figure its shit out” in a cute way that sounds like hope it will ever actually happen.
I’m nervous about what Google is going to do to me. I mean, I know what the answer should be, which is not much. But I fear if I have something misconfigured, that perhaps I’ll lose all my Page Rank.
I like it.
Congrats, you’re part of the “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED” crowd with your new header (just kidding)!
I think its a bit more mature than the blue and white theme. Ads are a good idea as well, gotta pay them bills somehow.
The irony that the title was SNBIish was not lost on me :)
You just wanted to be alphabetized right above “Sharp As A Marble”.
(NTTAWWT)
;)
The “Recommended” blogroll sorts randomly, and draws from my list of links that I set to a certain category. In any given blogroll, it’s usually the people that come early in the alphabet that benefit most. In that sense Alphecca is a great name for a blog. I experienced the same thing when I used to run MUDs as a hobby. Ancient Anguish was always popular. It was good, but it didn’t hurt that it came first on most MUD lists.
I wanted a way to give everyone a chance in the mix, but also not have my blogroll be 8000 miles long such that people will just ignore it.
Like it! As someone else said, very 1776!
Congratulations on the new site! I like that you still use some blue here and there on the revamp, as it associates with the old look, and eases the transition.
Is “ShallNotBeQuestioned” .com, .net, .tk(?) taken? If I refer to SNBQ, people will want to search for that, not pagunblog.
Respectfully, does it makes sense, to change the name, but have a third name as the URL? Should your masthead read:
“PA Gun Blog: Shall Not be Questioned”…Or would that be a little much? Free advice; you get what you pay for!
But I love the SNBQ, as it is provocative, so Pennsylvania, and so RKBA!
ShallNotBeQuestioned.com points here. The reason he opted for PAGunBlog.com is to have an easy-to-remember URL for folks. So, either way, you’ll get here.
I have shallnotbequestioned.com registered, and it points here. I did not use it as the main domain, because it’s rather long. snbq.com is taken by a squatter.
I like the IM Fell English Roman for titles. As for ads, I use Firefox’s Adblock add-on …
You’re missing my pin up girl on the sidebar then :) Though, she’s just a placeholder until I get approved by Adsense.
“If you have me on your blogroll, the old domain will work fine, but the new domain name is pagbunblog.com.”
No it’s not. I hate to be argumentative, but it looks like you fat-fingered your own url there.
Looks good, guys. Cool new name and I really like the theme. Keep up the great work!
I like the new look.
Very nice! As somebody who actually liked the old format I gotta say the new curtains look great. Since I read the Pa Constitution years ago I always liked, “shall not be questioned.”
As an aside, I’ve lurked at snowflakes enjoying your content for years and only about a month ago bothered to look at where you are… I live near Doylestown! I think I remarked to Mrs BBB, “hey! one of my favorite bloggers lives right here in Bucks County!”
Small world, indeed.
You should come to our Bucks County Friends dinner next fall, then. We actually filled a table, plus a few extra seats with readers from this blog this year. It made for the best dinner I’ve ever attended – very social, some bidding entertainment when Adam Z. went all out for the gun toaster, and a good time for everyone.
Sometimes we hold Philly-area blogger/reader gatherings, and watch out for those if you want to come out. We’ve had a really good time with some of those.
Sounds nifty. Did I miss a post with the details on that or is it found elsewhere? I have a talent for hearing about after action reports where I typically exclaim, “darn – I could have gone to that!” well after the event comes and goes.
Yeah, we posted about it. But no biggie. If it’s something that interests you, I’ll take note of your email and let you know when we have tickets ready for next year’s event. I’ll also let you know if we plan another blogger/reader gathering in this area.
Sebastian and Bitter, All the best on the new endeavor. I prefer the Snowflakes look, the color and artwork, but perhaps this one is more in line with your politics, that Constitution/Bill of Rights look and script.
Anyway I wish you good luck. I would have been here sooner but I only just now saw it on Fat White Man’s blog.
Is the gun orgs section of the blogroll random order?
Alphabetical for that. I only do random on the rotating recommended roll so everyone gets seen, and I don’t have a blogroll that stretches all the way down to the seventh level of hell. I may need that space for ads eventually :)
Well, *this* is certainly different!
Look is fine, but takes much longer to finish loading the page than it used to.
I’m dependent on more external sources to load advertising. Unfortuantely that can’t be helped. I tried to mitigate this by removing slower loading elements like GoStats.
I don’t like threaded comments (it’s more difficult to just refresh and read what new things have been said), but I’ve come to live with that on other websites. Other than that, I like the new look.
I especially like how you took the name of your blog from one of the State Constitution’s articles that parallels the Second Amendment: it’s a good reminder that the Second Amendment isn’t a “collective” right, and nor is it just about militias. Indeed, it’s why Vermont has “Constitutional Carry”. And it’s also why we, as individuals, are so passionate about this right.
Is this the Pagun Blog ? Where are all the Pagun rituals I only see u 2nd Amendment folks and some post about pumpkin carving. :)
(Sorry couldn’t resist, mst flks on the intrweb cnt spell thse days anywy)
Keep up the great quality of the content!
Meh. I came to Snowflakes for the content, not the flashy graphics.
I find myself over the past few days not bothering with the site. Whereas in the past I would refresh it a few times a day. Now even when I do come, the look distract from the story, particularly the font for the headlines. I can’t get into it, so I don’t bother.
I understand what you are trying to do, and from a pretty graphical site you’ve done well, but you’ve put nice wallpaper over the content. I’m not saying the content has gotten worse, I’m just so distracted I don’t pay attention to it.
It maybe because I have some dyslexia ant the lettering/background combo doesn’t work. Whatever the case, good luck, unlikely I’ll be coming by near as often, if at all.
There’s RSS so you can enjoy it without the flashy graphics. As for the content, nothing has changed on that front.
With the threaded comments, would it be possible for the comment emails to carry the link to the comment itself rather than the comment form?
I’ll have to check. That’s driving me nuts too.
Walls of the City does it, maybe you can ask Linoge how?