Squidoo Workshop Makeover and 3 New Themes
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This week, the Squidoo team announced there were going to be some changes made to the look of lenses and upgrades to the workshop. They rolled out the new designs on Thursday. The makeover stripped off some extraneous and under-utilized tools, and made the lenses more content focused, making the content areas of the lens more prominent. Some of the features that are now gone are the Favorites button and the Fan Club, also Squidcasts went bye-bye, and they stripped some of the available HTML codes out of the author bio area, so that it is no longer possible to put graphics and affiliate ads in the space below your bio, or add your Google analytics codes, etc to that space. Also gone is the lensroll option. They added a Twitter button and the Facebook “Like” button is now a Facebook “share” button. Most of the changes have been met with pretty positive responses, though a lot of people are really not happy about losing that bio space. I’m not happy about that myself, because I hadn’t had a chance to use it yet, but I knew it was there and had plans to. Oh well, change happens, and we all must adapt accordingly I suppose.
Personally, I didn’t have many fans or friends, because I’m still pretty new, and haven’t had much time to connect with a lot of people, so I never had any use for the Squidcasts, but I’m sad to see the fan clubs go, because that was a good way to find people’s lenses to check out. I’ll miss the favorites, too, because that’s how I bookmarked lenses I wanted to return to. Many people voiced the exact same concerns I have, but the consensus seems to be that overall the changes are good. I guess we’ll just have to bookmark our lenses in our browsers like everything else, but we don’t have to like it! lol Well, actually I’m thinking of making a lens of my favorites, then I’ll have them all there on a lens when I want them, and I can share them with other people. It’s an idea. We’ll see.
Overall, I’m really loving the new look with the bigger content area, it’s makes everything pop. They say they’re going to be working on some more social oriented features to replace those that have gone away, in the hopes they will work better than the features that they felt just weren’t doing what they were intended to do. I hope they can find a way to make it easier to connect to people, maybe by adding a “friend request” system, like they have on sites like Redgage and Gather. I’m really happy with the new themes we’ve got to play with, too.
Algae – This one is really pretty and great for crafty, arty, home decor type lenses..or any general lens, really. I used it on this lens Vintage Paris Travel Posters. I LOVE this one..it’s my new fav!
Blueprint – Really cool for How-To and technical lenses
Big Squid – Designed to call serious attention to the lens title — see how the eyeball looks right at the title?
Technorati Tags: Squidoo, Workshop, Makeover, new features, no more Favorites, no more Fan Club, no more Squidcasts, HTML, Redgage, Gather, Algae, newThemes,
