Does running your own company mean that you have to solely focus on projects with clients? Of course it doesn’t. Today we launch The Car Blog (TCB) to the world and saying we are excited is a major, major understatement.
Mike loves cars. Matthew loves motorcycles. I just love to work on new projects. So as you can see The Car Blog was a perfect extension of all our interests. We have gathered some of the greatest minds in the design world who also share a passion for automobiles. Some of these names you might have heard of: Jason Fried, Carlos Segura, and Didier Hilhorst. Along with them we have gathered other car afficinados to bring you a car site the world (or at least us) has been waiting for.
Why?
There are thousands of car site out there. Even the blog kings themselves, Nick Denton and Jason Calacanis, have them, so what would make us think we would be any different. Well despite the name this isn’t your typical blog. TCB is more of a car magazine online with blog features integrated. Our focus is bringing quality and fun back to the car scene along with a design that shows respect towards the cars we write about.
Too many car sites are ugly. Too many of them are boring. Too many of them…well too many of them are not what we wanted them to be. In the Open Source world if you have an itch, you scratch it by writing a program. This is the same type of thinking we apply to websites and is a reason you will see more from us in the future.
The Design
If you are wondering about the design of the site our Creative Director, Mike Rundle, has put together an excellent writeup describing his thought process while working on the design.
Our Talents and Services
TCB shows you what our team is capable of. Because our specialization rests in working with blogs that does not mean we can not create full scale websites for your company. We are using TCB as an introduction to our design services that we are also offering. More of these services will be discussed later, but for now head on over to The Car Blog and enjoy yourself. We know we will.
About Mike Rundle
Nicely done guys!
As a fellow car afficionado (current favourite, Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDi), I love the style, and I really think TCB could actually do pretty well…
My strongest feeling? It offers prime space for advertising. I mean, I don’t see why any automative industry insider wouldn’t want to advertise alongside prime quality content!
Curious what kind of pricing I would be looking at for a site similar to TheCarBlog.com. What would it cost me?
David, you have email.
You guys sure sound angry.
Manufacturer sites suck ?
Truck commercials suck ?
Trucks sell very well in the USA, just because a web designer (who probably drives a Prius) doesn’t like them doesn’t mean they don’t work.
Nice design, but you might want to find some actual car enthusiasts to write for the site.
Ian, thanks. Like all humans we do often get angry.
To both your questions the answer is yes. And most of our writers do like cars, and are often enthused. But just because we might be enthused does mean we have to cozy up to these companies.
As the About page says, TCB is a place to drool and bitch. In the long run I bet the former will outweigh the latter.
But I hope you pull the feeds, or visit the site often to see how the site matures.
Patience Ian, those are just some of the first articles. Merely a coincidence that they hit the same general area. Believe us when we say the writers are car freaks and you will see more car specific articles coming. Maybe even one on Friday…
My comrades posted ahead of me, but oh well.
Ian, many car manufacturer sites do suck, if you haven’t noticed. Besides Acura, Chevrolet, and VW, most of them are difficult to use, difficult to navigate through, and have massive IA and user experience problems. And since we’re all designers writing for the site (and it is a place for us to rant about car-related things that bug us) we felt as though talking about car websites was a good match.
I’m not sure if you read through our About page, but here’s a quote from the first sentence:
I’m not sure what would qualify someone as a “car enthusiast” beyond having a love for automobiles and a willingness to write about them, but we feel as though we’re all car enthusiasts. I don’t think there is any formal qualification for being an enthusiast, but I could be wrong. Feel free to enlighten me.
By the way, no one on our staff drives a Prius. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I was looking at one…
Me too. Don’t be a Prius-basher Mike. :P
My point was that you need to find editors who know what they’re talking about.
Eric states that truck commercials suck when he couldn’t be further from the truth. Truck commercials are designed to sell trucks to people who buy trucks, not web designers. Horsepower, torque and towing capacities are what truck buyers want to know about, not fake CG crap like Fords suspended truck (which would work with any vehicle, since there is no shear on the bolts, it’s just a static load).
The same thing goes with Matthews article. Why does Ferrari pimp their Gran Prix wins ? Because they are a race car manufacturer. Win on Sunday, sell on Monday. People visiting the Ferrari site are much more interested in how the company is doing on the track than in the showroom because it is a very specialized market.
He also shouldn’t complain about loading times just because his connection is slow. I’m on Comcast and none of the sites he mentioned loaded slowly.
You’ve built a wonderful looking, functional site, I just think you need to focus on useful content.
After reading the About page, and the comments above several more times, I still don’t get it.
The Car Blog site has been spammed on every blog I read over the last 24 hours. Everyone in the “in crowd” of web designers is oohing an ahhing about it. The words “business” and “advertsing” are used in too many posts and comments.
Is this what business blogs are all about ? Build a soapbox, spam it everywhere you can, offer a bit of content and try to lure in advertisers for only a couple hundred visitors a day ?
I’m still confused.
” for only a couple hundred visitors a day ?” – I seriously doubt that the eventual audience size for the site will be that small…
Ian, I don’t give a shit if Ferrari wants to pimp their wins. Actually I am all for it.
My point, and it must have been badly made, is that after I get to watch their pimping, I cannot access the rest of their site without completely reloading the page.
Besides, the two posts you are focusing on are opinion pieces.
And to your point brought up again about who buys trucks… 2 (mainly) kinds of people generally buy trucks: Those whose parents had trucks and those who need trucks for work-related activities. Yeah, most designers probably don’t have a truck unless they fit into the former category. What’s your point? Just because I drive a car doesn’t mean I can’t have an opinion about trucks. I like trucks. I drool over the 2005 Tacoma. Won’t ever buy one because I am entirely too practical a person.
And I actually can complain about the load times. Because I, as a user of the site, using a T1 line, am experiencing load delays that make me want to leave the site. None of the marketing managers at any of these companies want any of their customers or potential customers clicking away. So I point it out. Just because you don’t have a problem, doesn’t mean I am the only one who does.
And lastly, I am glad that you read so many of our sites and the ones related to what we do as a business. It means we are doing something well in your eyes regardless of what you think of my (or others) post on TCB. Like we said before… please keep reading. This is a nascent project. If after 20 posts you still have the same complaint, I wouldn’t blame you for not reading anymore.
Maybe you have plug-in issues. The Ferrari site loads fine. There is a GP thing, but it has a close box in the corner which allows me access to the rest of the site.
You might also want to traceroute to many of the sites you say load slowly to look for any routing problems, then again, you’re on a T1 which is slower than 50% of the population that have broadband access, especially if it’s shared.
You want lots of pictures and zoomable images, but you expect not to wait for them ? Ok.
You wrote an opinion piece, but it seems that maybe it was opinion about your poorly configured connection and computer, not auto manufacturers websites.
You launched with 4 articles. 2 were pointless unfounded drivel, one was a rehash of info found elsewhere, and one (Too Much Tech in Cars) was actually worth reading.
Better luck next week or month.
You want lots of pictures and zoomable images, but you expect not to wait for them ? Ok.
There’s a difference in waiting for an entire page of stuff to load which includes flash, iframes, pictures, text, etc., and loading one page with a 30-50k image.
The first is waiting for a bunch of stuff to load before I can do what I want to do on a site. The second is waiting for a specific action I take to complete. It is waiting in a different context.
You may be absolutely right about the plugin issue. It’s odd though that it works on some sites and not on others. I’ve had my version of IE6 work oddly before, but I’ve never been able to perceive a pattern. Sometimes there’s no problem, other times… Though I usually don’t have these issues (where it will work, then not work) within a site, it’s just between sites.
Thanks for your good wishes for our success.
I will fend for myself on the trunk front. I’m not a frequent vistor on this page but I stand by my article on TCB.
I don’t feel that truck advertisements are effective. They don’t work for me. I am also NOT a web designer.
The reason the marketing gets to me is that I am a truck enthusiast. I love trucks. They do everything I could ever ask of a vehicle. My point is valid; how many times can I be innundated with the same old specs, of which the models are skewed to each company’s advantage? Some operate on the base model, some among more loaded models. The fact is, these values are intrinsically worthless and often not significantly different.
However, given the context of businesslogs.com, many of these comments should be addressed over at TCB, where they are better fitting.
Nice start. I am planning something similar. Right now I own 1 car blog but they are more of reviews on news. I have my blog on hybrid cars. Do visit futurecars.blogspot.com. Link exchange is also welcome. I could add some articles too if you require.
I think people just find it weird that you launch a site about cars and get a bunch of designers/developers to write for it.
It was the same with Paul’s Bet Fest – nice idea for a site, but undermined by the fact it’s his design buddies and businesslogs mates that are the writers.
Hey Bing, would you rather us hire mechanics and NASCAR drivers to write for it? Just because we’re web designers doesn’t mean we can’t have other interests.
I like many different cars,I think many cars look beautiful and works well.And I like this car blog very much,I’m glad to comunite with all who like this blog.
My favorite car in the Land Rover, I have been driving one for years, but wouldn’t it be a great idea if someone was to build a land rover 4×4. Thats defiantly something I would love to see.