yelvington.com

If you haven't seen the absolutely splendid redesign of the New York Observer's website, you should go there right now. It's so good that it might just lift the Observer out of its position in the marginalia of New York City media.

The site is almost completely based on Drupal, the open-source CMS platform we're using for BlufftonToday.com, SavannahNow.com and community blogging/social networking installations at all the other Morris newspapers.

Moshe Weitzman and Barry Jaspan, the Drupal code wranglers who were instrumental in the implementation, wrote a detailed explanation of how the site hangs together from a technical perspective. These guys are heavy hitters -- Weitzman is not only a core contributor, but lead author of the Organic Groups family of add-on modules.

Here's a bit of very powerful advice from Weitzman that every Web project leader, designer and developer should memorize:

Good wireframes are, IMO, the key to a smooth running, cost controlled project. They are the only way that all parties can agree upon what is to be built. Long functional requirements documents are nearly useless.

We've rolled out a new design for BlufftonToday.com, visually aligning the website more effectively with the printed newspaper and fixing some usability issues that were identified in the site's first year of operation and through formal testing.

The changes include a number of new functions and features, particularly in the social networking area. User profile pages now include buddylist avatars and guestbooks.

Users can be linked through common interests using a free tag system, and blogs support both free tagging and a tag cloud.

Behind the scenes, there are point-and-click tools allowing any staffer to update the homepage without having to know any HTML, which will further the goal of integrating the web into the newsroom.

The new design is fully implemented on the core site, with Spotted, classifieds, etc., to follow in the next few days.

Usually a redesign results in a round of nasty criticism from disturbed users, but this one is getting very positive reviews. One reason: Key users were involved in the process, both in the formal usability tests (before and after changes) and in informal advance showings of the new design.

We all hope our users will decide our sites belong to them. With a participatory website like Bluffton's, it really happens. So it's imperative that users be part of the redesign process.

I haven't been blogging much lately because I've been busy on a project. I can't disclose the details yet, but here are some of the issues:

Participation. It's been clear all along that the Internet is a network, not a broadcast channel or a hierarchy, that everyone can participate, and that eventually everyone will participate. Some things that didn't work 10 years ago are now possible because we have the critical mass online to make them work. Hyperlocal community networking would be just one of those things.

Simplicity. I was looking at some old news site pages on archive.org Wayback Machine the other day. I was struck by how simple, straightforward and focused they were -- sort of like many of the so-called Web 2.0 startups. Most of our newspaper homepages now resemble a NASCAR racer. If we're going to do anything that steps outside the boundaries of our existing brands -- which means anything participative -- we're going to have to use dynamite and start over.

Search. There are only two ways to use the Web, and one of them is horribly broken on newspaper sites.