It has been two years since we had a massive redesign – which is remarkable, given the fact that I have a history of changing website designs every few months or so. And while the previous design was good to us, we needed a change – especially since our site hasn’t been entirely friendly to mobile users.
Today, we get to finally reveal it. It has been in development since November: initially as Photoshop mockups, before coding them as HTML templates, then to a WordPress theme. In some cases, I decided to scrap old designs and start from scratch. And just in time too – we’re going to PAX Australia, so now you can read what we post from any device (desktop, mobile or on a tablet).
I should highly stress that this is the first time I’ve coded a responsive web design, so ultimately there will be bugs somewhere. If you do spot one, send it to me personally (my contact details are on the About page) or to our Twitter account. We have already spotted some bugs – but they’re relatively minor bugs. You can track the progress on our new Version History page.
As well, not everything is using the new design. We have some old code – namely the feature pieces we have published last year. We’re going back and converting them to conform with our new templates so that you can also read them on a mobile phone or tablet, something that you couldn’t do in the old design.
Also, do note: TechGeek will only be supporting the latest and the first-previous versions of all major browsers. This means, for Internet Explorer users, we’re only supporting Internet Explorer 9 and Internet Explorer 10 (so those on IE6/7/8, we’re not supporting you guys any more). This also applies to other browsers as well. The main reason is because we use HTML5 now.
Euphoria
Because I’m the one who usually designs and code up the website, I have a habit – some may call it a really bad habit – of naming the designs. I don’t know why or how it became a thing, but I’ve stuck to it ever since. Recent designs have been named after songs – sort of based on WordPress naming each major version after a Jazz musician.
Previous names have been Exogenesis (Muse) and Lights (Ellie Goulding). This one is Euphoria – and it is obvious where this name came from.
Usually, the name is decided by some random event. However, this name is really fitting to what has happened to us in the past year or two – especially after winning the first Best Independent Media award at the IT Journalism Awards (or known as the Lizzies, don’t ask me how it got its name), meeting some of the tech bloggers and journalists whose work I’ve read, and making progress on the site.
A name change
Another change we have made is how we spell our name. The main reason was because everyone was spelling it differently (some dropped the “.com.au”, while others spelt it in all caps or in camel case). It also became a confusing and slightly hilarious issue when the Lizzies – the IT Journalism Awards – spelt our name two different ways on the nomination announcement, and used another variation on the certificate when we won the Best Independent Media award.
Also, as pointed out by Ausdroid’s Jason Murray so many times, it does sound like we’re screaming the TechGeek bit (what’s even sadder, I had to go through my Twitter archive to look for that tweet).
@terencehuynh @cjschris It must make online introductions difficult too? “What company are you from?” ‘TECHGEEK’ “Okay, no need to shout!”
— Jason Murray (@JM77) July 11, 2012
We’ve decided to make it a bit easier for everyone by changing how we spell our name. We’re now just TechGeek. In camel case, and no longer with the “.com.au” bit.
Just don’t get us confused with the people who own the .com domain – while we dream of getting that domain name, that is not us.