Baseball

“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.

Culture and Criticism

From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.

Donors Choose and Contests

Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.

Stories, True and Otherwise

Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.

The Vine

The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!

Home » Stories, True and Otherwise

Welcome Back, Reader

Submitted by on April 13, 2010 – 10:36 PM64 Comments

Oh, hello. How’s it going? …Oh, you know. Two trips to the vet in one day, which I could have done without, but everyone’s more or less fine, and Little Joe lost a pound and a half!

And speaking of changes: the redesign! Huzzah! Thanks, Glark!

No doubt you have questions and/or anxieties; feel free to post them in the comments. BUT.

1) Please look around for a few minutes first, or read the whole thread, before you post that you can’t find XYZ. Almost everything is still here; it just looks different. And you’ll see new stuff — most commented-on posts (bottom center); a new link to the Twitter feed (top leftish) — scattered around as well. Click around a bit and see what’s what. If you still can’t find a category or get a link to work, let me know.

2) If something is busted or looks unintentionally jenky, definitely comment. Missing graphics on pre-2010 entries is a problem we’ll all have to learn to live with, layout-wise, but I do need to hear about kookiness in IE, posts showing up more than once on the homepage, tags to nowhere, and so on.

3) Don’t forget that you can tweak the look and feel to some extent on your machines and in your own browsers. The font went a little teeny on me too. Try your “View” menu.

4) It’s going to be just fine.

Coming up: The Vine, the N Candy AA Sweet Sixteen, and the return of The Crushed Film Festival.

Share!
Pin Share


Tags:        

64 Comments »

  • Susan says:

    I’m very impressed. Your last site wasn’t as easy to maneuver as the previous one, but this one was worth waiting for. Kudos!

  • Margaret in CO says:

    “…when Elvis and the gang used this room as a firing range.”
    OMG, that’s crzy. Very Elvis-y. I can practically hear him saying “Aw hell, it’s raining. Let’s just shoot in here. Priscilla won’t mind.”

    I don’t know how you get so much gorgeousness to load so quickly – I’m floored by the new design! (But now I want a big red juicy garden tomato…damn.) Thanks, love it!

  • Isabel says:

    Damn, this is one HOT layout! Serious hats off to Glark, it looks awesome.

  • Jan says:

    Just returned from three days in a course that should be titled “Stuff you already learned the hard way, but your boss doesn’t believe that” and saw the new layout.

    Very, very cool.

    Love the changes.

  • Sandman says:

    I imagine White Collar‘s just dropped off your Watching brief because the season ended, but I did wonder if there had been a DVR Breakup there. I’d love to know what you make of that show, if ever you had time to tell us.

    Yeah: “Hateful Buntsy, RN” – hee!

  • Leigh in CO says:

    I love it too. To me, it is reminiscent of the site before the transition to WordPress; this is gorgeous and slick, but still harkens back to old-school TN. And oh my how speedy!

  • Sarah D. Bunting says:

    @Sandman: No, I finished out the show — I really like it.

  • Jane says:

    It is beautiful indeed. One smallish thing, though? The upper right vertical listing of the most recent columns doesn’t include the individual headline of that feature, Vine issue, whatever, which makes it harder for me to know if that’s one I already read or wish to pursue. Turns out I relied on that bit o’ preview a lot. Could the most recent columns be included in the thumbnails in the lower left section so as to allow for that sampling?

  • Sarah D. Bunting says:

    @Jane: I’m not sure what you mean; those are the headlines as published. Do you mean that you can’t see any of the leader text from the stories in question?

    Regardless, the top-right stories are commented out of the lower section so as not to be redundant, so your best bet is to wait until they make their way to the bottom section. Shouldn’t usually take longer than a few days. I may add a mouseover feature that lets you see the first graf or something, but that’s a ways off. Sorry for any inconvenience!

  • Leigh in CO says:

    Ooo Sarah – your last comment now puts it all together for me! I was trying to figure that last bit out — the relationship between the bottom and the top — and now that you’ve said it, I feel kind of…dumb for not figuring it out on my own. I must have been dazzled by the pretty.

  • Sarah D. Bunting says:

    @Leigh, don’t feel dumb. You should see some of the IM exchanges between me and Glark from this week. “HOW COME THE THING ISN’T IN THE THING WITH THE THING?!” “You checked the wrong box.” “…OH.”

  • Jane says:

    I think I’ve retroactively hallucinated a title feature, then, but yeah, if you get a mouseover going of the lede, that would be great.

  • Pegkitty says:

    Is there a way to go, from one post, to the previous or next post? It used to be that when you opened the post so that comments were visible, at the top of the essay part were clickables to take you to the last or next post.

  • Sarah D. Bunting says:

    That functionality is gone, but you do have the top nav, which can take you to any section, and the side nav, which shows you the most recent stories in each section. So, there are more ways of getting around the site, but that particular one is gone.

Leave a comment!

Please familiarize yourself with the Tomato Nation commenting policy before posting.
It is in the FAQ. Thanks, friend.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>