Squidblog

You probably knew that by now.

Here are some visual roundups of the new themes, for those of you who don’t have time to play with your lenses today and see for yourself.

We’re getting loads of terrific feedback and working to debug and clean up whatever small style issues you run into.

A few quick items of important housekeeping.

SquidThemes…

• Don’t work in IE6. Nothing will look broken; this just means the lens will look like the “Default” max theme in that browser.
• Don’t work for our Squidoo-powered “front door” projects. Meaning, if you have a SquidWho lens, it will always have the SquidWho style, and you can’t edit it over to Paintball or Highlighter or any of the other new themes.
• The Answer Deck is also a “front door” — as such, Answer Deck lenses can’t use themes. If you’d like to remove your lens from the Answer Deck, shoot Kimberly a note.
• We removed the “Discovery Tool” from the lens intros, in the Workshop. This was a relevance engine we experimented with about a year ago, and it never posted great numbers, and the feedback (both human and statistical) was that it wasn’t worth the bloat on your lenses. So it’s gone now.
• Oh, and our other projects like SquidWho and HeyMonkeyBrain and SquidLit got facelifts! Plus more. Check em out.

Get ‘em while they’re hot! Kimberly has snuck into the Critique Me forum for a little feedback on some up-and-coming lenses. This is a special opportunity to get honest feedback on your lens from a Squidoo staffer.

If you think your lens is ready for a critique, and:

1. you’ve read and applied the tips here
2. your lens isn’t on a SquidDon’t topic
3. you’ve given a useful critique of at least three other lenses

…then post your (single) lens in the Critique Me forum. Be sure to pick the one you want most to improve, and make sure you’re ready to work. Kimberly’s handing out big picture tips that you can apply to all your lenses, so you definitely don’t want to miss this opportunity!

It’s true.

Squidthemes are coming your way.

Tomorrow we will be releasing new look-and-feel skins or “themes” for your lenses. They’ll work much like Gmail themes do, where each theme uses the same basic page structure but gives you the option to choose from nifty new style choices.

We’re starting off light and easy with just a handful of themes and will be adding more over time. In the first release you can expect to see themes named:

• Highlighter
• EasyStreet
• MomentofZen
• PurplePeopleEater
• The Professor
• Paintball
• GoneCamping
• Default theme *

* The brilliantly named “Default theme” (hah) is in fact our new Max lens style, as I previewed to you earlier. All lenses will start out with this new Default theme. From there you can switch over to whatever color themes you like.

My personal favorite? Check out the Highlighter. It’s pure and cool and to the point and very slightly geeky.

We’ll let you know tomorrow when themes are live!

Changes can be scary. This one shouldn’t be. In fact, it’s quite fun and opens a lot of doors.

In a few days we’re releasing a new design for “maxed” lenses. Here’s what a max lens looks like right now. Here’s what that same lens will look like with the new design.

This is a preliminary look that I wanted to share so you could get used to the feel and overall Gestalt of the new style before we switch over. There’s not really a whole lot of “new” on this lens, just elements shuffled around and cleaned up a little.

I’m sure you’ll notice small changes like the new Connect icons at top that will help people login using Facebook, Google or Twitter. You’ll see that we’ve moved the social sharing chiclets up to the top of the page. And there’s a minimized style for the lensmaster sidebar Toolbox (this version shows what a lensmaster sees when looking at his own lens. Surfers won’t see that toolbox, of course) A lot of the module styles have been updated along with this (wait til you see the new Guestbook design!), but most aren’t shown on this example.

The day we release this new max design, we’re also releasing a pretty neat surprise for you. It has to do with the look and feel of your lenses. And giving you more choices…

Last, a heads up. Some day soon, probably a few weeks after we’ve released the new max design, have learned how it tracks and tweaked it based on feedback, we’re going to be bringing our old “Min” design out of the dark ages. It’s a few years old by this point, and for coding and debugging and style reasons, it’s time to update it. “Min” will match the new max for a while. And then max will go back to being the fun experimental choice for lensmasters who like to reap the benefits of new stuff on their lenses. Min will stabilize as the baseline again.

If none of that made sense, the only thing you need to know is: your lens will look a little different in a few days. Nothing will break, and there’s nothing you need to do.

And if that gives you the blues, we’ve got some greens and purples and pinks on the way, too.

Out of all the charities on Squidoo, only a few will become Giants. What does that mean? There is a program on Squidoo called the Giant Squids. Membership is elite; members are hand-picked, and the first qualification is to have 50 really great lenses. Most of the Giant Squids on Squidoo have been here for years, and many since the early beta days. A few lensmasters building lenses for charity have achieved this status, and as a result, their lenses get more eyeballs and donors than most others.

Today we’re interviewing lensmaster, Giant Squid Mentor, and Giant Squid Organizer RMS for more details on how a charity like you can become a Giant.

Squidoo: Robin, what are three things charities can do to improve their lenses and visibility as charities?

RMS: Although it might not be a quick thing to do, creating 50 lenses and becoming a Giant Squid lensmaster will help to increase lensrank and visibility of the charity’s lenses. All Giant Squid lenses automatically receive a gold star and have the chance to earn a purple star, which will give the lens an additional boost in ranking and a better chance to be seen.

If becoming a Giant isn’t feasible for the charity organization, it would be a good idea to create at least one “Giant quality” lens, which means a lens that uses many different types of modules, lots of interesting pictures, contains no generic titles, makes good use of sub-titles, and generally contains enough interesting content to hold a readers attention.

Squidoo: Do you have any favorite charity lenses that do this well?

RMS: Epic Farms is a small non-profit striving to share the BIG picture. They make good use of humor to keep a reader interested, and also make excellent use of many different Squidoo modules to interest to the lens. All in all, I think it is a very well done charity lens.

Squidoo: What’s one very cool thing you’d love to see on a Charity lens?

RMS: I think it would be cool to see a video representing the charity in action.

There you have it, the short and sweet on creating a great charity lens. Just as RMS said, becoming a Giant Squid lensmaster isn’t always quick, but the perks are priceless. Not only will you have a whopping 50 quality lenses pushing traffic and potential donors towards your organization, you’ll enjoy new lensmaking tools, ranking benefits, and the camaraderie of a group of lensbuilding experts.

If you’re interested in making this a goal for your charity, contact RMS at her Giant Squid Mentor lens. It all starts with a single lens, and since you already have an “about us” lens, that leaves only 49 to go!

Make it a great day for charities on Squidoo!