We’ve been talking about redesigning the site for a long time, I’ve finally had time to do this. The new design can be viewed by clicking here I know most readers don’t like change and are happy with the site as is. There are two main reasons we want to make this change:
- The current wordpress theme we are using is no longer being updated. This causes issues with updating wordpress and implementing newer versions of PHP as well. I think this has also caused Google to somewhat hate us as we no longer receive much Google traffic compared to past years.
- I want to make some content easier to access.
With this new redesign the main thing I wanted to keep the same was for the newest posts to be easily accessible on the home page. The other common complaint we get is from readers that are only interested in bank bonus/credit card posts – that’s why below the newest posts we’ve also added the newest posts from those categories. There are some things I’d still like to change (on the homepage it would be nice to have the category next to the author name and also have ‘read more’ after the teaser text), but it’s at the stage where I’d like to get some reader feedback.
Try to keep the feedback constructive. Share what you like/dislike and things that could be improved upon. Try to get an open mind and don’t worry too much about things like ad placement as that will be adjusted anyway. The new design can be viewed by clicking here. It’s similar to the site redesign we abandoned in 2018 that you might have seen before.
Changes we’ve made based on your feedback:
- Comments are now sorted by newest first by default. You can still see the oldest comments first by clicking ‘oldest’.
Here is a mock up of what legacy/dark mode might look like: https://twitter.com/Drofcredit/status/1256377760643026944
Can’t send a reply to a specific user name like previously.
Previously I could type @name and get a drop down list of name(s) that matched ‘name’ or as much of ‘name’ as I typed, now I sometimes get nothing, one hit, or multiple hits on guest_1234567 with no translation of ‘name’ to guest_1234567 so don’t know who to pick for my reply. Also sometimes get a mixed list of guest_1234567 and names.
That’s a plugin issue unfortunately and not something we can fix. Hopefully future updates will fix it.
Yeah, the multiples confuse me as well. I haven’t noticed any change, though.
@Chuck William Charles Figured out how to send a reply to a specific user using those multiple ambiguous hits on guest_1234567: the _1234567 part is that user’s previous comment number(s) in that DoC post.
So picking any of them addresses my reply to that user unless the same user name was used by different commenters in the post. In that case, noting in advance my target’s comment number let’s me select the correct guest_1234567 number to click.
William Charles I don’t if this means anything, but I keep getting a notification about unresponsive page “pagead2.googlesyndication.com” on DoC pages.
Maybe try clearing cache/cookies?
It went away on its own. It didn’t actually prevent me from browsing or anything, kind of odd. Just thought I’d mention it – not sure if it was symptomatic of anything with your server, or just between me and Google.
Are you using any sort of ad blocker? Can you send a screenshot?
William Charles, there is an idea I just thought of. I was going through some old emails and came across the “Payments Workshop” comments.
I clicked on 1 of the emails and saw “Posted by Chuck on April 30, 2020” on the top. I know this post originally came out years ago. Instead of showing it like this can you show it as “Posted by Chuck on DATE POST CAME OUT and last updated on April 30, 2020”?
I think this (or some variation of this) would be useful. I usually look at the comments and find the first comment to know when it was initially posted, but I think it would be useful to have that clearer at the top of the post somehow.
We could probably do originally posted on and last updated, but won’t be able to list every time it was updated. Would that help?
Yes, I think you missed that I wrote “last updated” in my suggestion. Putting every time it was updated in the title would make it way too long.
Yeah should be able to do that in the future
The new design is fine with me.
One thing I’d really like on this site would be a forum section, where people could ask questions such as “What is the best credit card in my situation?” or “have anyone else had trouble with Swagbucks (or whatever) posting?” The forum section could be pretty limited, with limitations on what could be posted (only bank/ credit card deals, say) and/or only topics that don’t already have a post on the main part of the site.
Can you modify the daily email embedded links? They don’t always open up the article or go to the location in the email.
Yes making changes to that is on the to do list
I think all of our emails could use a lot of aesthetic help 🙂
One thing at a time lol
Thank you! I think it’s mainly on mobile where I see those problems…
Also a problem on laptops. On my laptop the emailed link to anybody’s post doesn’t open to that person’s post, Have to hunt high and low to find their post, if I’m lucky it’s nearby.
I usually use CTRL F. Your post is a classic example. The email link ended up taking me to the bottom of the page. Had to use ctrl-f to find it. I am using a laptop too.
Please put dates next to the byline for each post, not just for updates (when that occasionally happens) to the original post.
Hey DoC. For bank bonuses, would you be willing to add a line regarding out of state/out of region DP attempts? e.g. if Bank A only allows people from TN to apply, have a line that states briefly if there’s any success from out of area/state applicants and link to the datapoints. thanks!
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/banks-allowdont-allow-state-checking-applications/
Not common enough to be in the at a glance section
Cool, thx William Charles , never used that link before.
Any way of maybe identifying the banks with current/regular bonus offers, e.g. an asterix after name?
Also, could you encourage people more to tag you when they do eventually have a successfull DP on applying OOS in a state-restricted bank post? Maybe sth. like a last general line in your ‘Verdict’ section about “lmk to keep my above link updated”?
See for example Andigo CU: original bonus post 07/19 as IL-only, three DoC updates since. Multiple DPs on OOS working in comments, not reflected in your above link though. Had posted to Chuck here about it as a sidenote to using ‘recent comments’, and Eric commented about having missed it too until now:
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/site-redesign-share-your-constructive-feedback/#comment-969994
Otoh, just saw this comment
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/il-only-andigo-credit-union-500-checking-bonus/#comment-964240 while working on my last post.
Having people tag you with a DP and you responding and not updating the ‘which banks allow’ list obv makes my above post kind of obsolete.
And just to be very clear: I do love DoC’s content and if this is the only thing that doesn’t get worked out, I will still love your website… 🙂
Don’t really want to draw too much attention to them as that seems to kill the deals. Usually I find out when a bank is available OOS.
I like this idea though I don’t think it is common enough to Merritt. I can only think of one right now. If there are more perhaps a separate post/list could be made
The site is great. Navigating to find what I need is usually very easy. Except for one thing that I can never find. The running post about the ways/methods to close bank accounts is impossible to search for. For every bank bonus, or on the list of best bank bonuses, can you please pin that link to it?
I second this!
In the meantime,we can individually add a bookmark to the post.
My only issue is with the nested comments/replies. It seems that comments/replies on both the current and the redesigned site will only nest (indent) 4 deep, and any additional comments/replies stay at that 4th indentation level. I know that more nesting/indentation will just keep squishing the text vertically, but on a comment with a ton of replies it is nearly impossible to follow the threads of comments and replies.
Nested comment 1
Nested comment 2
Nested comment 3
Nested comment 4
reply to nested comment 4 (no further nesting/indentation)(looks like a reply to nested comment 3)
I agree with this. A lot of times it is hard to decipher what comment a reply is to.
William Charles, is there any way to add something like “in reply to comment #970190 ” to each comment? That would solve the issue.
I can allow additional nesting, don’t think your solution is possible but I can check.
More nesting
6 deep seems enough
Yeah, that is good.
I’m so glad you add the dark mode, but it would be better if the font in dark mode are white with the dark background.