Evolution, not revolution

You may have noticed something different around here. If you haven’t, that’s probably fine!

The Muddymoles – for better or worse – has had a distinctive look for many years, based around our Mole logo. I’m quite attached to it but the internet never stands still.

In fact, the Moles web design has been largely unchanged since 2015. That’s an age in internet years. If you thought a dog year was the equivalent of 7 calendar years, 10 internet years is about a millennia.

Since then, not only has technology moved on, so has fashion. And in that light, the site was starting to feel quite cluttered, especially on mobile devices where two thirds of our visitors come from.

Plus, I was starting to hate the menu structure.

Starting today, the visual design has evolved into something a bit more modern – bigger fonts and generally a lot less clutter.

It’s a work in progress, particularly around performance and optimisation – stuff regular users won’t really notice but makes a big difference under the hood. The menu headings have changed a little and will continue to do so; they are not in their final form yet.

Finally, a lot of old articles and posts need fixing for broken links, ropey photos and so on. That will take time.

But on the whole, I think this achieves what I was hoping.

A cleaner design, easier reading, better photos (particularly on tablet or desktop) and the centering of the Moles as a community. I particularly like our list of Moles, with more to add there.

Evolution, not revolution. If you haven’t noticed, that’s probably fine!