152 comments

Meet the New Mr. Money Mustache

mmmAs anyone viewing this on the main website already knows, MMM has a new face. To be accurate, it is more like a new face, head, skeleton, body, and nervous system. But the personality remains mostly the same. Since this is a big event for any website owner, and since quite a few readers are also writers themselves, I thought I would share some quick details on the Why and How behind all of this. But first a note for long-time readers.

Two Modes for Two Different Groups

Right under the title image, you should see the option to select between two different views: Fancy Magazine, and Classic Blog. People who show up here for the first time (about 28% of all visitors) will get the Fancy Magazine view – it contains a selection of introductory posts and information that is useful for new people to get acquainted, and if we’re lucky, sucked in. If you switch to Classic Blog, the fancy stuff goes away and you just get a reverse-chronological list of recent posts, just like the old blog had. Then you can make that your permanent MMM page by bookmarking https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/blog/

Hosting: the Raw Power

We make things fairly difficult for ourselves around here: as the number of Mustachians has grown, the main site has had to contend with almost 100,000 page views per day. Web optimization experts tell you that in this situation you should shrink or eliminate images, break things up into shorter pages, and show less on the main page. I have preferred to keep the site richer and compensate with more server horsepower (because I like reading and scrolling, but I hate clicking ‘next page’).

On top of this, the Forum section gets even more views than the main blog, and its massive database of 250,000 posts is proving to be a challenge to all but the biggest CPUs.

To accommodate this, we have moved through the 2,4,and 8 core packages at Digital Ocean over the past year, which provides exceptional computing power for the price.  But last week, we made a major switch to a new web hosting company called Weberz, because of even faster servers and a connection on the inside of the company. We now have our very own dedicated machine with these specs:

Dual Intel Xeon 5506 3.2GHZ CPUs
24GB DDR3 Ram
Mirror Raided 1TB Hard Drives
1000GB Bandwidth
CentOS Linux 6.4 64-Bit

For those not familiar with Computerese, this is a relatively speedy setup for a single website at the time of writing, and we are pleased to put it to the test (so far, even this thing is not immune to slowdowns in times of heavy traffic, but optimization is ongoing).

Other Tricks: We have very good caching in use, which means the server does not have to re-generate every page each time somebody requests it. We have also experimented with content distribution networks (CDNs), but I found that even the best ones, configured by the most sagely experts, broke too many website features to justify the capacity improvement. So we are content with the Brute Force method for now.

The Human Brains

For the past year, the technical side of this site has been managed by an excellent IT guy named Kevin Worthington. He has worked day and night to help us prevent (and recover from) major downtime. The incidents that have affected us have been mostly things outside our control – overall outages at Digital Ocean and our former DNS provider PowerDNS, for example. Kevin does work like this on a freelance basis and I encourage any site owners in need of technical help to get in touch with him. (I’ll remove that last sentence if he ends up overloaded with much-deserved business). The site also benefits greatly every day from the help of Mrs. Money Mustache, and many individual readers who send in helpful tips via email.

 The Trendy New Design

Sometime in late 2013, we got in touch with a talented site designer named Jamie Varon, who runs Shatterboxx. With great patience for my lazy but demanding nature regarding the look of this site, she worked closely with Mrs. MM to get this thing to look the way you see it right now. My goals were Manly, Natural, Badass, and with Minimal Bullshit, and I think she nailed that concept very well.

There was also a lot of technical work involved, which was handled well by Paul Suntup from Zel Creative. The fabric of this new graphic design is stretched across the state-of-the-art Thesis Framework for WordPress. Compared to my old free theme (called ‘Skeptical’), Thesis is reportedly more efficient and customizable, and works better with the search engines. Time will tell, but I’m looking forward to seeing how this new experiment pans out.

This project was months in the making, and since we just went live today, there are many things still being worked on and updated to work with Thesis. Most notable is that the “All Posts Since the Beginning of Time” feature is not yet working properly, but I’ll also need to update many of the old pictures, categorize more posts so they show up in the right lists, and perform many other tweaks*.

Just like moving to a new house, a change like this is a lot of work, but it should be well worth it as we get going on the next stage of our shared mission of converting the world to a Badass Utopia.

In the comments section, let us know if you notice anything else being broken and we’ll work to get it fixed.

 

* Looking at this thing on my big computer instead of my phone, for example, the fonts and the banner were far too large, and most readers seemed to agree. You can adjust this on most browsers by holding <CTRL> then pressing the <-> or <+> keys or rolling the mouse wheel. But it would be nice for things to be a bit more compact by default.

 

Update: later this evening, Mrs. MM found the secret stash of stylesheets and we started messing with things using the Thesis theme’s amazing”live preview” feature. We are working our way through and shrinking things down.

All design suggestions welcome!

 

  • BeatTheSeasons April 28, 2014, 11:29 am

    What a relief – I thought for a moment you’d sold the site!

    Reply
    • CarSafetyGuy April 28, 2014, 8:16 pm

      That was my fear too. Fortunately, it’s a new design, and a sharp one.

      Reply
  • Dave April 28, 2014, 11:33 am

    Looks great!

    Reply
  • Oh Yonghao April 28, 2014, 11:33 am

    Absolutely love the new look. Feels much cleaner, and I completely support the decision to not break each blog post into multiple pages.

    Reply
    • Janel April 28, 2014, 11:56 am

      Echo that. Totally love the new look. I think it’s improved the usability of the site and increased the ability to understand upfront when you visit the first time what it’s all about. And totally agree on the no multiple pages thing, too – it’s also a pet peeve of mine as well.

      Reply
  • EL April 28, 2014, 11:35 am

    Great site design Mr. Money Mustache. All the big sites seem to love Thesis. Good luck on all the changes. I will contact your IT Guy to see if he has a mustache as well, if not I can’t trust him. Every dude should have a Mustache.

    Reply
    • kiwano April 29, 2014, 10:36 am

      Especially dudes who work with resins, organic solvents, fine grinding, acidic vapours or aerosols, etc. on a regular basis. Proper respirator seals are for wusses.

      Reply
  • bobwerner April 28, 2014, 11:39 am

    I remember several years ago when my email provider made some minor changes to their web page. It messed with my head for weeks. I finally realized I just didn’t need email that much and now rarely use it. Was it the change itself or just a “mile marker” bell in my head reminding me that time is passing?

    So yep, your redesign is shocking to my system and blew my comfort zone apart. Funny how humans react?
    I’m sure it was lots of work and everyone is very appreciative of all those mentioned and their effort.

    Thanks for ringing the bell in my head with the bold redesign. Will remember the old look fondly and probably check in occasionally. (ps. I smell a book coming soon!)

    Reply
  • Bidonet April 28, 2014, 11:44 am

    I am not a big fan of the textured background behind the text. It makes the text a little difficult to read at some point. Maybe it’s the font, the color or just me getting old.

    Reply
    • Mr. Money Mustache April 28, 2014, 11:46 am

      I think I’m with you on that one, Bidonet. I really like the non-white color, but the chunks of paper roughness seem a little contrived behind the article text.

      They still work for me in the boxes on the front page, since that thing has been sitting out in the sun/wind/rain for a few years.

      Reply
      • Bidonet April 28, 2014, 12:51 pm

        I agree with you on the boxes on the front page or the sidebar on this page. A Lighter background would be better for the main articles. However, I love the general feel.

        Reply
    • Norman Frank April 28, 2014, 5:31 pm

      Also remember that 20% of the male population has some form of color blindness (we are now color challenged…), while essentially 0% of the female population is color blind. I have a terrible time with background colors, textures, etc. Best for me is black on white. Lately sites are using a light blue on something that is so difficult for me to read that I don’t even bother to try to read them anymore. Mrs. MMM can see lots of colors that I and others can’t see. Please keep that in mind for any future revisions. Thanks.

      Reply
    • Dan Schroeder April 28, 2014, 6:01 pm

      Hope you’ll also lighten the background color behind the text, to increase the contrast. My aging eyes are straining!

      I’d also vote for a somewhat narrower layout.

      Reply
  • Mike April 28, 2014, 11:50 am

    All very good problems to have! Congratulations on your well-deserved success and on the new design!

    Reply
  • Eoin April 28, 2014, 12:09 pm

    As someone who works in hosting, I’m slightly frightened by the specs of that dedicated server. Thats a very old machine (modern machines are cheaper, more power effective, and more powerful), dual 1tb drives makes no sense in this day and age, especially for a blog.
    It’s the sort of thing that should be around 60$ a month, not 184 if you are paying the retail price.

    Reply
    • nm_dude April 28, 2014, 5:51 pm

      Eoin: You hit the spot: His computer toy is HIS Douchemobile! The nice thing, though, is that it’s not $30,000 of douche-ness.

      Reply
  • Andy April 28, 2014, 12:09 pm

    So slow it’s unreal, took around 20 seconds to fully load. You should ask for your money back! PS. love your blog

    Reply
    • Mr. Money Mustache April 28, 2014, 12:20 pm

      Great.. I post this and site traffic hits a new high (probably because of people peeking around the new design), making a mockery of the new speed. We’ll keep working on it.

      UPDATE 1 hour later: I fixed one major thing – the All Posts List was manually searching the database every time it was accessed. This was using up the whole server. Seems better now, let’s see how the afternoon goes.

      Then around 4PM Pacific time, Rob from Weberz fixed a bug that was preventing caching from working. Things became really fast after that, and they have been great since.

      If you are reading through comments sequentially, this update was written more recently than many of the comments on slowness below.

      Reply
      • tom April 28, 2014, 12:27 pm

        Sorry to pile on. I have been a long time reader, and it took well over 2 min to load this page. I tried classic view and after 3 min of waiting gave up.

        Reply
      • Alex April 28, 2014, 12:57 pm

        Also finding the new site a bit slow. I hope you don’t mind, but here are a couple of (unsolicited) quick tips for extra speed, in ascending order of effort:

        – Optimise images. Check out the Linux tools jpegoptim and optipng. Within a second or two, you can reduce the size of logo.png by 10%, wood_light.jpg by 4%, phone.png by 20% etc *losslessly* (i.e. no change in quality). Quick and, as images are some of your largest files, will help a lot.
        – Set ‘Expires’ and/or ‘Cache-Control max-age’ headers on your CSS, JS and images – you’re already using version numbers on CSS/JS so you could set these to a year.
        – Combine CSS and JS each into a single file, again reducing the number of HTTP requests dramatically (currently over 50 just to load a single page, you could easily halve this). There are Wordpress plugins and various tools to do this automatically.
        – Consider serving static assets (CSS/JS/images) from a separate server optimised for this purpose (nginx is good at this).

        Good luck and keep up the great work!

        Reply
      • Joanna April 28, 2014, 5:31 pm

        Just thought I’d let you know – page loaded v quickly just now – like the new site btw

        Reply
      • Kenneth April 29, 2014, 7:57 am

        It is Tuesday morning, April 29, 8:56 AM CDT, and the whole site is very snappy today. It was NOT snappy yesterday as you know, I did not voice a complaint, because you are so awesome and I knew you would tune it up, MMM. It is humming like a well-oiled machine now!

        Reply
      • John Dwyer April 29, 2014, 9:37 pm

        I’m a web programmer. I know how these things go. Great progress though and I like the new design. I’ve been reading the blog for about 2 months before the relaunch.

        Reply
  • Brendan Long April 28, 2014, 12:17 pm

    I actually like the larger text (on my desktop). Sometimes less information density is actually better, since it’s more comfortable to read.

    Reply
  • wij April 28, 2014, 12:18 pm

    Definitely a manly look. I’m looking forward to the page of all posts getting back online, as I am reading everything from the start. Edit: It’s up now and delivering pages must faster!

    Only comment — I like the fonts but prefer authentic italic I see in some locations (such as datestamps on comments) to the faked slant-italic I’m seeing in the body of posts when people use italics or emphasis. I bet a slight tweak to the cascading style sheets can take care of that.

    Reply
  • John McCarthy April 28, 2014, 12:20 pm

    The recent comments section on the main fancy page could be in a smaller font so that more of the comment is viewable to the reader. More likely to click through if you can get a sense of what the comment is about.

    Reply
  • Topher April 28, 2014, 12:31 pm

    Reply
  • Joseph April 28, 2014, 12:31 pm

    I am loving the new design! I especially like the featured article pane (though it might scroll too fast for some readers).

    I did notice some weird formatting tags on the Wealth Advice that Should be Obvious article. Specifically the [box style="rounded"] portions

    Reply
  • Scott April 28, 2014, 12:36 pm

    Small tweak and maybe I missed it but I don’t see the Blogroll that used to be at the bottom of each page. Excellent intro to JCollins, Lacking Ambition, Mad Fientist, Raptitude, etc…

    Reply
    • MBo April 29, 2014, 10:38 am

      Agree with Scott, I was a regular user of your Blogroll and found a few I really liked through it. Please add a tab for Blogroll and keep adding to it as you find more Badasses on the internet.

      Reply
  • Jacob April 28, 2014, 12:36 pm

    Agreed, text feels a little large in the body of the posts, but I love the comment boxes. Overall, great way to get people to the good stuff even quicker. Bravo!

    Reply
  • Ammon April 28, 2014, 12:40 pm

    Hey MMM,

    Heh–my day job is basically the same as what Kevin Worthington has done for you, and I’ve been wondering what’s been going on with your DNS. Maybe I should start freelancing in my spare time.

    I’m ambivalent on the new design (I usually read the posts in feedly, and hit up the forum), but it doesn’t bug me. That says a lot, since I hate change :)

    I can’t help but think your server is a bit overpowered (and therefore overpriced). 250k posts is…actually pretty small as far as databases go. 350k pageviews/day doesn’t sound unreasonable for those CPUs if you don’t have *any* page cacheing, but you *do*. Page cacheing shouldn’t take up too much RAM, and the web server part of things should be pretty lightweight as well. Unless there’s some serious real-time analytics going on, I really wonder what’s taking up all those resources.

    Reply
  • 9 O'Clock Shadow April 28, 2014, 12:46 pm

    I like the new wild west themed colours and shapes. My wandering sleep deprived mind came up with this scenario…

    Walking into the MMM Saloon with my posse and proclaimed loudly: “I’ll have a round of $7 dollar Beers and the $20 Nacho Plate please.”

    The games of Risk between early retirement bloggers abruptly stop. Eyebrows are raised.

    “I’ll pay for it on my Credit Card. There’s room. I made the minimum payment.”

    Jacob from ERE drops the game pieces in his hand and clenches his fist. Stands up, walks over, and punches me in the face. Massive brawl begins. MMM comes in and shoots a Nail Gun in the air to restore the peace.

    Amusing to me, sure. But the greater lesson is that early retirement will allow more time for restorative sleep. Keep up the excellent writing. Or abruptly stop and recycle the same excellent posts. I’ll still come back.

    Reply
    • Jessa April 28, 2014, 5:30 pm

      Hahahaha. Thanks for the visual.

      Reply
  • Brian April 28, 2014, 12:50 pm

    I feel like I’m using dial up again. Are you cutting costs on upload speeds? I like the new design (css intensive) but looks like there are still some issues to fix (on my browser your latest posts last line is covered up by links). tools.pingdom.com is a great place to upload performance.

    Reply
  • brandino29 April 28, 2014, 12:59 pm

    Change is always hard at first but I hate it when people throw little fits when it happens so I try very hard to accept the change as progress and move on. With that said, I definitely got caught off guard and my immediate reaction was “aaaaawww man!” But progress is good, so let’s move on.

    As for actual feedback, the site is uber-slow today, hopefully that’s just due to increased traffic with the reno. It also initially loaded way too large, I’ve made it smaller (control + scroll out) but I still feel that the MMM ribbon at the top is too tall. You have to scroll about 3/4 of a page to get down to see the posts (on the homepage) or more than the first couple lines of a post once you click on it.

    Reply
  • Andy April 28, 2014, 1:15 pm

    I like the new look, but the banner at the top seems too big vertically, and I’d prefer to have sans serif fonts for reading articles on the web. However I normally read everything via your RSS feed anyway.

    Reply
    • Bidonet April 28, 2014, 1:59 pm

      I agree with you on the top banner being too big. The current header takes more than 500 pixels. It takes about half the page of a 1920 x 1080 resolution. I would cut it at least in half on height.

      Shitty MS Paint Example: http://imgur.com/p8J1PPm.jpg

      Reply
      • Reyals April 28, 2014, 11:20 pm

        Well, if you’re looking for feedback, here’s my $0.02. The main criticism I have is that although it’s a nice looking banner, it takes up half the browser in a 1920×1080 window. Adding in the additional 1/4 page of new reader info (don’t get me wrong, this needs to be here!), and you can just barely see the actual page. However, I also notice that there’s oodles of space to the left and right of the logo, which seems like a place where you could move the links and shrink the logo slightly vertically. Are you consciously going for the big empty space on either side of the logo? Personally, I think that being able to see the entire featured post without having to scroll down would be a big improvement. Then again, I’m not the one running a highly successful blog, so what do I know?

        Reply
    • Scott April 29, 2014, 1:32 am

      I agree with Andy and Bidonet.

      The top banner is too big.

      Bidonet’s example is right on the money.

      Reply
      • insourcelife April 29, 2014, 1:49 pm

        After looking at the site on my phone and on a screen with 1280 x 1024 resolution I have to agree – the top banner is way big. I think that it maybe OK as is on the homepage but way too much space is wasted when reading a post. Of course all issues disappear when reading in Feedly, so I’ll just continue doing that.

        Reply
      • faye April 30, 2014, 3:42 pm

        I totally agree. I love browsing on this site but seriously, the top banner is MASSIVE. I have a facepunchingly-large screen and even then the banner takes up most of the window even when I am full screen.

        The site would be far more user-friendly if the banner had less height. The width is fine, but the height is ridiculous. It’s annoying to have to scroll so much.

        Reply
    • theFIREstarter May 7, 2014, 1:17 am

      There are several comments all asking for a sans serif font. I am pretty sure the old website was using a serif font so why all of a sudden are people complaining?

      Reply
      • Ryan Platte May 7, 2014, 8:07 am

        I suspect that a remark welcoming “all design suggestions” does indeed invite a less-filtered design discussion than might be had otherwise!

        Reply
  • Chris April 28, 2014, 1:21 pm

    THANK YOU – for NOT breaking articles into multiple pages. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

    Reply
  • Sean April 28, 2014, 1:28 pm

    It would seem that the “contact” form is no longer functional. Not that I was going to use it – just looking around, doing my part to increase your site traffic.

    Reply
    • Mrs. Money Mustache April 28, 2014, 2:06 pm

      Thanks. We are aware of that and MMM is not in any hurry to fix it. ;)

      Reply
  • becky April 28, 2014, 1:53 pm

    “visit forum” link on the main page does not work.

    Reply
  • Joel April 28, 2014, 1:55 pm

    As the creator of the old site’s banner, I’ll miss the surreal feeling of seeing my design work at the top of my favorite blog, but I love the new look and feel. Change is good. Keep doing what you’re doing. Onward!

    Reply
  • Brent April 28, 2014, 2:03 pm

    Great design!

    I especially love the way the comments section is laid out, with replies to comments having staggered colors and being overlaid the comment being replied to. On the old site, it was sometimes hard to keep track of replies to popular (or controversial) comments and the new design definitely fixed that issue. Well done!

    My only note would be that the wood grain wallpaper, while quite lovely, is only so many pixels wide and the extents after the wallpaper are a flat, texture-less brown color. If you make it so that the wallpaper repeats itself horizontally (as it does vertically), it would be much nicer, in my opinion.

    Keep up the amazing work!

    Reply
  • Christopher April 28, 2014, 2:24 pm

    “converting the world to a Badass Utopia.” If everyone was frugal, would it be impossible to achieve financial independence? Because investing would become obsolete due to the fact that there wouldn’t be consumerism anymore?

    Reply
  • Chris April 28, 2014, 2:24 pm

    I feel very manly right now. Must be the all-wood background. ;-)

    Reply
  • Frugal in DC April 28, 2014, 2:37 pm

    Hmm, that’s a lot of wood paneling. Not sure about the guy in the top hat. How about a green earth-friendly-vibe background instead? Might be easier on the eyes too. And instead of the top hat, maybe a cartoonish drawing of MMM riding a bike with a superhero-type MMM logo?

    I guess I’m not a Fancy Magazine type. I’ll stick with the classic site.

    Reply
  • Bruno April 28, 2014, 2:47 pm

    I don’t like the new blog layout – very hard to read, while the font is way too large – it will cost you viewers in the long run. The ‘alegreyaregular’,​serif font not a good font for a text heavy blog.
    A lot of comments don’t get displayed anymore, http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/13/mr-money-mustache-vs-the-internet-retirement-police/ should have 247, but only ~ 130 get displayed, there is no link to additional comments.

    You also overpay for hosting. I usually recommend those guys: http://www.webnx.com (not related in any way). When I had servers there I was happy, happy, happy.

    Another problem:
    – the ‘square bracket box’ code doesn’t work anymore, [box] and [/box], live example on http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/13/mr-money-mustache-vs-the-internet-retirement-police/ – just search for box on that page.
    – contact form as mentioned above

    Reply
  • Mysticaltyger April 28, 2014, 2:57 pm

    That picture with only half of Mr. Money Mustache’s face and only one eye showing is an occult symbol of the “All-Seeing-Eye”. It represents the Orwellian world of constant surveillance that we now live under, amongst other things. You see this symbol in various forms a lot in pop music and art in songs such as “Eye in the Sky” by the Alan Parson’s Project and “Private Eyes” by Hall & Oats, and many, many others. Please consider showing the whole of Mr. Money Mustache’s face!

    Reply
  • Paul April 28, 2014, 3:05 pm

    Don’t give up on CDNs until you try Amazon CloudFront + WP Total Cache.

    Site looks great. I like the bigger font.

    Reply
  • arnna April 28, 2014, 3:07 pm

    Well, I think the new design looks good and your designer has done a great job.

    Reply
  • Jarrod April 28, 2014, 3:10 pm

    “…for a single website at the time of writing…” Spoiler for more websites to come?????

    Reply
    • Jarrod April 29, 2014, 2:48 pm

      That would also explain away all the whiny comments about overpaying for hardware that can power much bigger projects…. I smell something coming….

      Reply
    • Joel April 29, 2014, 3:43 pm

      I could be wrong, but I think what MMM means is that, at time of writing (ie. in 2014), it’s a speedy set up for one website, but to someone reading this post 10 years from now, it might NOT seem like as much power.

      Reply
  • Roy Stacey April 28, 2014, 3:30 pm

    MMMFamily-

    The new site looks quite good. I had no clue such a transformation was afoot, but hey, thanks! Does look more “western” if I can use that undefined term.

    So long as the quality of the content is the same no bullshit approach to rational living, I’ll be here to read, and benefit.

    Congrats on the new site. Although I read the new technical data, I have absolutely no clue as to what any of that means. This is a guy who drives a 21 year old car (with 58K miles on it), reads books, likes vinyl, owns no cell phone, but does enjoy his Apple. NO technological skills here -at all! Age has something to do with those choices, too.
    Best-

    Reply
  • Marcella April 28, 2014, 4:28 pm

    +1 For the ‘please decrease the font size’ camp. It means too much scrolling with the current size and feels like I’m reading a kindergarten book.

    Very glad you have the two options for layout and I also love that you are sticking with the layout that allows readers to just scroll down to the page, avoiding clicking. **That** is one of my biggest hates about websites, being forced to click ‘more’ to expand the page. Yay!

    Reply
  • Keith Brawner April 28, 2014, 5:24 pm

    I second the idea that the font size is too large. Additionally, the website appears untested for my most common use case (one half horizontal screen size, 19″ monitor, 1680×1050 resolution). You should have to scroll sideways for content in such a use case (see http://www.getrichslowly.org/ for an example of correct CSS settings).

    Font type for comments is awkward (see x vs X).

    Aside from that, I’m sad to see that you choose “wood” over “leather”, but happy with the overall effect. I’m surprised to see how many people you employ as a part of making this site…

    Looks good. Keep up the badassery.

    Reply
  • Brandon April 28, 2014, 5:53 pm

    Love the improvement. As I scrolled down I was hoping for a new comment section based on Disqus or Livefyre. This current comment section doesn’t allow for voting and discourages discussion for me.

    Reply
  • Meg Cook April 28, 2014, 6:00 pm

    This Design is AWESOME. Great job Shatterboxx.

    Reply
  • Aaron L April 28, 2014, 6:47 pm

    Somebody make an MMM sticker for my car’s window based off the new website logo! No text.

    Reply
  • Zac April 28, 2014, 7:01 pm

    The new site design is great. It looks fantastic! However…

    Throwing raw horsepower (pronounced: money) is really the old school way of doing it. Buying a ton of hardware just to meet peak hours and allowing it to sit unused during non-peak hours is a waste of hardware and to a small extent, energy. Not to knock anyone’s hard work, but there is certainly a better way of doing this.

    As an example, I run a small web forum with 5x the amount of posts on probably a tenth of the hardware you’re using. Granted, its a much smaller user base, but the point still stands. These days, you should have automatic vertical and horizontal scaling. That allows you pay just the right amount for hosting, all the time, while ensuring near 100% uptime. Nothing is more mustachian than that.

    Reply
  • S April 28, 2014, 7:17 pm

    Look great! But I have to say… The ad at the bottom of the main page just suggested I should finance a GMC truck over 84 months (NO money down even!!). That made me chuckle (I know you don’t pick what the ad co!pant displays..)

    Reply
  • Brendan April 28, 2014, 7:19 pm

    Nice job on the new site layout and theme, it looks great!

    I read your blog exclusively on my mobile phone, and would greatly appreciate a mobile-friendly view. I work in web site / app development and most of our clients’ tracking data indicates that mobile views comprise around a third of page views. From that perspective, a mobile-friendly view would also help retain more of that growing segment that browses only on mobile devices.

    A “viewport” meta tag and @media queries can get you pretty far without too much time investment.

    Reply
    • theFIREstarter April 29, 2014, 12:27 am

      Just to offer an opposing view on this… I have read many blogs on my mobile phone and I have never seen a “mobile theme” I like yet. I put in speech marks as most “mobile themes” on wordpress it seems are just the text laid out vertically and all the other bells and whistles removed, save for some crappy text based google ads that get massively in the way and split up the content – Something I am sure MMM will not go down the route of! You also tend to lose any of the character of the blog design this way as well.

      Saying that, if you took time to build a custom mobile design, I am sure that would be pretty cool.

      But personally I think the column width for the actual articles and comments fits pretty much perfectly on my phone anyway, so I don’t see the need for one (this is the same reason why I chose the theme on my own blog, the column for text fits nicely on all devices)

      Reply
      • David B. April 29, 2014, 8:41 am

        Really just needs to be responsive, a specific “mobile site” is falling out of favor due to how many viewport sizes exist on all the new devices, best to just use something like bootstrap and customize for set sizes and make things small viewport friendly.

        Reply
  • DC Jr Mustachian April 28, 2014, 8:51 pm

    Nice job, I like it. All the same great content but now feels modern and slick. The only thing I would add is that I like to read posts in sequential order (since you often reference previous postings) so the “latest post” feature would benefit from having say, links for the last 3 or 5 titles below it, so If I come back after a few weeks, I can pick up reading again right where I left off.

    Reply
  • Brian April 28, 2014, 9:04 pm

    Photos on the comments are cut in half. I’m on an ipad with chrome browser

    Reply
    • HealthyWealthyExpat April 29, 2014, 10:46 am

      Ditto. I’m on an iPad using safari and the avatar thumbnails are cut off on the left hand side.

      Like the new site, though!

      Reply
      • Katherine April 29, 2014, 4:25 pm

        Ditto, and I’m using IE on a Windows Desktop.

        Reply
  • Spoonman April 28, 2014, 9:48 pm

    I love the new look!

    “CentOS Linux 6.4 64-Bit” Yess!!!!!

    I think Kevin Worthington should get the Mustachian of the Year award for all his great work and support!

    Reply
  • MJY April 28, 2014, 9:55 pm

    I don’t see the “How to” links at the top of the page anymore. While long time readers can just search for an article they remember if they want to, I think those “How to” articles are worth having easily access to for new readers. Those were some of the first articles I read when when I found your blog. Just my two cents.

    Keep up the good work.

    Reply
  • Paula April 28, 2014, 10:40 pm

    Love the top hat- very snazzy. It suits, it suits…..

    Reply
  • Sundeep April 28, 2014, 11:23 pm

    Cool new format, I liked the old one, but the new one is cool too.

    Is it just me or is the logo not just half a mustached and top hatted face facing forward, but also a profile of a mustached and top hatted guy looking to the right?

    Reply
  • theFIREstarter April 29, 2014, 12:18 am

    Not sure if you already changed it but I don’t really get the “fonts are too big on a big monitor” arguement. But then again I am “only” on a 28″ monitor which is probably considered to be pathetically small in America right now is it? :)

    I really like the new design, the only slight glitch I can spot was on my phone (LG Nexus with Chrome), the comments column left align seems set a little too far to the left, which is cutting off some of the commenters photos (I think this is the issue Brian has mentioned above)

    Reply

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