fastandloud.com puts on its big girl panties and tries out the MassiveLoud theme!

Posted by: fff In: Uncategorized

“On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.”  – Thomas Jefferson

If you haven’t noticed already, we’re using a cleaner, sexier new layout. But don’t be fooled by the new dress, we’re gonna bring it to you Faster and Louder than EVAH!

We wanna give you the grand tour, but we need a moment to reflect on where we’ve been.

fast&loud original recipe

1. Original recipe was Day one – ground zero. Fast&Loud.com and fff are born.
2. 1942 Report font with headphone, bomb, skull, text balloon, and dollar sign are the beginnings of what remains the fast&loud logo.
3. Icons that F*ing GLOWED! on mouse-over for the page navigation.
4. Pictures to replace the text for categories via Photoshop slices = JOY Migraine.
5. Introduced the Fast&Loud Store with CafePress integration.
6. CancerIsNuts in memory of John B and God Save New Orleans money to America’s Second Harvest.
7.Totally bastardized the Wordpress Default theme.

fast&loud v1 and v2

1. v1 rings in a whole new attitude on blogging and a new slogan.

2. Like Davak always says “content is king”.

3. Same font for logo and lightning bolts from actual pictures of fff’s left arm tat.

4. Waaaaay cleaner code hack on the Wordpress Default theme.

5. IE and Firefox still fighting over that one damn pixel that centers the header and footer (if you’ve ever coded – you know what I mean).

6. v2 added RSS and search in the header and a “Social” website submission bar (before there was a Sociable plugin).

fast&loud Tweaker

1. Tweaker was based on the lofty idea that fast&loud.com should be more like an CMS or aggregator for various authors and topics (kinda like Harmony Central or GearWire) – but those guys already had so much, content, money, and time that poor little fff and crew couldn’t keep up.

2. Same font for logo and we brought back the headphone, bomb, skull, balloon, dollar pics.

3. A friend of mine always says: “Your just putting lipstick on a pig.” And as it pertains to coding, fairly often it’s true. We decided (with great sorrow I might add) to move away from the Wordpress Default theme. We upped our game and started hacking on the 3-column Cleaker theme from Adam Walker Cleveland.

4. Unfortunately, it moved us away from the original intent of the site and the motivation to keep it updated.

And so here we are…mid-2008 trying hard to return fast&loud.com to it’s roots. We are a blog and proud of it. Our goal is to simplify things as much as possible. We’ve removed a lot of the redundancy and clutter. We’ve kept the Store, CancerisNuts, and God Save New Orleans. Check them out if you get a chance. Expect to see a few more changes over the coming weeks as we are still lifting up the rugs to see what might scurry out.

And without further ado…I give to you:

fast&loud MassiveLoud

1. Faster and cleaner code including: smaller CSS, smaller JS, smaller HTML

2. SEO analysis and implementation. Thank God for Joost De Valk!

3. 1942 Report font and ghosted headphone, bomb, skull, balloon, dollar sign for the logo.

4. Thumbnails per post and simple navigation.

5. Easier subscription methods via RSS, Email, or Twitter.

6. Better interaction with readers. Expect to see way more comments from fff.

Check out the site and let us know what you think – good or bad. We hope you dig it.

fff