The Most Important Wine Blog Is New Again
I think it’s worth noting when the most popular wine blog on the Internet undergoes and launches a re-design. That’s what Alder Yarrow has done at his Vinography.
Redesigning and launch a site as well populated with posts and information isn’t an easy chore. As Alder puts it, "It’s been a long road to get here. Like remodeling a house."
What’s noteworthy is the organization of all this information. There is a subtle balance to be considered between using organization to communicate importance and using organization to communicate aesthetics. One thing that Vinography now does is list only a portion of the copious links it provides. For example, in the "Wine Blogs In English" section Alder lists only 10 blogs on the home page. To see the rest in this section you must click on "View All". This is an improvement from a purely design perspective. But I’m willing to bet there was some significant thought that went into taking all those links off the page. I think he did the right thing.
But what’s interesting is that the blogs that do show up in those initial ten appear to be the ten newest added to that section. In case anyone doesn’t realize this, it’s a real gift to those blogs. Alder’s site gets lots of traffic and here are the newest blogs Alder has found right there in front. This more than anything about the redesign is indicative of the publisher. Well Done Alder.
I like the new design. It’s clean and remarkably easy to navigate. The ads are incorporated well. And the posts, the real meat of any blog, stand out nicely and draw you in.
Cheers to the most important wine blog on the Net!!
I nominate this post at the Least Significant Wine Blog Post of the Year for the 2008 American Wine Blog Awards.
Congrats, Tom, you’re now the frontrunner! 🙂
I disagree. Had The Wine Spectator gone through a redesign, that too would be news. It’s quite an effort to try to redesign the most read wine blog on the internet. And the fact that Alder has chosen to highlight new blogs rather than put them in a list of hundreds where they get lost is also significant.
I know you disagree, Tom, or you wouldn’t have made the post in the first place. And, I was just stating my own opinion.
Alder has always made it easy to find the newest wine blogs – they were always put at the top of his wine blog lists…so, that’s not a change. The change is the hiding of older blogs, not new ones.
I’m sure Alder is loving your comparison of Vinography to Wine Spectator on the Great Importance of the Redesign, but until Marvin does a Treehugger, I think the importance of this Colossal Event is at different ends of the scale.
On Vinography’s typeface and typesetting: not functional. The point size is too small with the wrong leading (too much space between letters and lines).Fermentation has it about right, though I’m not fond of Ariel–would go for Verbana instead.
You can reset the typeface on Vinography to whatever you want…
Tom, thanks for the nod on the redesign, and I’m flattered being called the most important wine blog on the Internet. I hope someday that equates to more than just being the most important stall at the swap meet, which is sort of how I think about it now.
The default typeface HAS gotten a little bit smaller, but I have included the control that WineGuy notes, allowing users to set their own preferred text size.
Also, just in case anyone is worried, I have not removed any links to wine blogs from my home page, they are just hidden by default. Google still sees all of them 🙂
I have to agree with Jack here. So a blog redesigned its site. So what? Where’s the beef?
More importantly, I have to ask if the cult of Alder is justified. Is his really “the most popular wine blog on the internet”? (I’m still looking for the most popular wine blog NOT on the internet. 😉 )
I have to think that more people are reading Eric Asimov’s blog on the NYT’s site, for starters. Where are you getting your stats, Tom?
So let’s look at some numbers. Bring on Alexa. Alexa has its shortcomings, but it’s still an accepted proxy for traffic. We can’t parse out Asimov’s blog — Alexa only measures the nytimes.com domain — so I’m leaving him out for the moment.
Instead, let’s look at Vinography, Gary V’s WineLibrary TV, Good Grape, Dr. Vino, and you, Tom. For starters, Vinography’s rank is 206,093. Not that impressive. Here’s the chart, take a look:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?site0=vinography.com&site1=tv.winelibrary.com&site2=goodgrape.com&site3=drvino.com&site4=fermentation.typepad.com&y=r&z=3&h=300&w=610&range=6m&size=Medium&url=vinography.com
Gary is blowing the rest out of the water. Ok, so let’s take him out:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?site0=vinography.com&site1=goodgrape.com&site2=drvino.com&site3=fermentation.typepad.com&y=r&z=3&h=300&w=610&range=6m&size=Medium&url=vinography.com
Vinography is packed in neck-and-neck with the others, though, in fairness, it is often a smidge above the others. But that’s insignificant. The degree to which Vinography gets singled out for popularity and status is highly questionable.