Now don’t get excited everyone, I’ve only just started going out with the MSG, as most of you should know it’s this site that’s my baby. Anyway we’re in the process of the first ever proper redesign. The site will still work the same way but it’s going to have a different look and navigation, to make it a bit crisper and easier to use. I saw the MSE Designer’s first drafts today and they’re fantastic. The site colour is going to be mainly light blue, there’s a new little monster to represent consumer revenge and the whole thing looks much more clean.
Rather than the current ‘navigation bar’ on the left and the big logo on the top the new top section will be where you navigate, with tabs of each section (they’re being reorganised too, with credit cards and loans being merged to one section and a new ‘families and health’ section being added). Also each section will now have sub-menus to make it easier to find things.
As the left hand bar is being lost, there’ll be a new ‘browse bar’ on the right, which will have interesting and relevant articles related to whatever is currently being viewed. One of the biggest messages I get from newbies is “how do you even find out what’s on here? There’s so much!” so the browse bar should help that. The site is also going to be fixed at 800 pixels wide, so all browsers can see it and there’ll be a border round it for those looking on bigger resolutions (like MSN or the Guardian does). However the Chat Forum will expand with the browser so more info can come that way.
As it’s all decided now it’s just got to be fully built. These things always take longer than you think, but my hope is sometime late summer it’ll be ready. Fingers crossed!
