theFreshScent v3 – Weeee’re Baaaack
September 15th, 2008 by Alex
Our entire team is both happy and relieved to say the following…
Welcome to theFreshScent v3!
It’s been a long time in the making, some might say too long, but hey… we’re not perfect.
Instead, we’ve taken the time to completely re-design, re-think and re-execute theFreshScent. From the bottom to the top, we’ve got a new editorial team that’s going to deliver the freshest news, reviews, videos and everything else on this green planet of ours.
So what’s changed after all this down time? Let’s go over it…
The Entire Damn Site
As you can tell, we’ve undergone a slight facelift. The site is now fluid, up to 1280 pixels, to accomdate for larger browsers. We’ve switched from a 2-column to a 3-column design and revamped our color scheme.
The goal was to create a site that’s got good readability, but still retains the tFS style. No animated weed .gifs around here, just clean design and plenty of stuff to keep you busy.
The Footer
Our footer now has the most commented articles on tFS, the most recent comments on tFS, and links to our social footprint – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc…
Safe For Work / Not Safe For Work
Take a look below the header, on the right hand side, and you’ll see two small-ish buttons: SFW and NSFW. Short for ‘Safe For Work’ and ‘Not Safe For Work’ – this feature removes all the post images from the main column of the site.
Listen, we know there are plenty of people not cool with the contents of this site, especially bosses, but this is our way of getting you past the PC filter. Switch to ‘SFW’ whenever you need to fly below the radar. This feature remembers your setting from page to page, so don’t worry about it browsing around.
The Dailys
This one’s simple, but still fun. Each and every day we’ll put up a fresh set of links for you to check out; one to an article, one to a picture and one to a video.
We plan on making it a good mix… sometimes funny, sometimes thought-provoking, but always interesting.
tFS Quarterly
This is a new experiment of ours. There is plenty of stuff we just can’t get onto the site – whether it’s more subjective pieces, content with unique styling, behind-the-scenes stories or even special deals.
So, we’ve decided to create a quarterly PDF magazine. This will be an outlet for tFS staff to create articles and other types of content that don’t quite fit into the blog mold.
Want to check out the first issue? Sign up on your right and we’ll send it as soon as it’s finished.
Collapsable 2nd Column
Don’t want to see The Dailys? Already signed up for the tFS Quarterly? All good.
Click the arrow next to the title of each module in the 2nd column and it collapses. This brings the content up that you want to see and removes the items you might be bored of.
In case you haven’t noticed, we’re going for a trend, choice for our readers.
Special Features
Right now, our main special feature is theFreshForums. Our other new experiment – a lightweight approach to improving the way our readers can interact with each other (and us).
No more being stuck to the comments on this site. Now, you can take conversations over to theFreshForums, or start totally new ones. Who knows. It’s not a revolutionary feature, but it’s part of our natural progression from being a one-trick pony to creating the online community for intelligent smokers everywhere.
There isn’t much over there just yet, but that part falls on your shoulders, so get busy.
We like Twitter. It’s 140 characters of goodness. It’s also a way for us to post links, comments or other bite-sized pieces of information that don’t quite make it onto the main site.
Check out our module to the right and you’ll always see our tweet stream. Or, go to our twitter page and add us as a friend. We don’t do any spammy bullshit, so no worries on that front.
The Rest…
A lot of the other changes have happened where you can’t see them… behind the scenes. We’ve got a whole new, and bigger, team of writers and we plan on pumping out much, much more content.
This is still a work in progress for us, but we’re ridiculously excited to finally re-launch the site. It’s been a long journey, and everyone here is looking forward to making this place the freshest site on the internet.
Questions, insights, comments or marriage proposals, let us know what you think and we’ll keep improving this thing.
See you on the green side…
Update: We are aware that some images from previous posts appear to be missing. It will be taken care of soon.
