Comments on: Redesigning The Duck

By: Laowai Interview: Richard Burger of The Peking Duck | Lost Laowai China Blog

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:28:58 +0000

[...] Disclosure: I, via my design biz, gave the Peking Duck a bit of a facelift this past May. I’m, admittedly, an avid reader of the Peking Duck, and it was great fun to work so [...]

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 09:47:08 +0000

@Fili: Yeah, that’s quite a hit. It’s likely search traffic as the bots spider the new permalink structure.

I wanted to put in a redirect from old posts to new, and spent a good chunk of time on it, but the Duck’s old archive structure is completely ducked up. For example, 000009.php should be post #9, which would translate into WP as ?p=9 and then get mod_rewritten into a pretty SEF url… but 000009.php is actually post #324… there’s no pattern to redirect to.

Hopefully the fact that the site now has SEF/keyword URLs and still maintains solid authority will push the SERP-based traffic back up to its former levels.

And cheers for the kind words about the design.

By: Fili

Fili — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 03:58:32 +0000

BTW – did you see the effect of the change on his search incoming traffic?
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s16pekingduck&r=12

A drop to less than 50%. Since you maintained permalinks (I think) I wonder why that’s happening…

By: Fili

Fili — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:24:58 +0000

Looks terrific. You’re talented…

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 29 May 2008 06:57:22 +0000

@Gabrielle: Way to hi-jack the thread I see your Sinosplice hi-jack yielded results. Cool stuff.

I wish I got postcards – of course, I should probably send more than I get, as I am the one that lives in foreign lands. Would love to get a postcard from my hometown though.. haha.

By: Gabrielle

Gabrielle — Mon, 26 May 2008 17:09:57 +0000

Hey there. I have a favor to ask of someone. I recently received a postcard from Hong Kong, completely written in Chinese. Could someone with the awesome ability to read and understand Chinese hop on over to my blog and translate it for me? Thanks in advance. I really appreciate it.

Oh, and Ryan, you did a wonderful job on the redesign. Looks great!

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 26 May 2008 08:46:19 +0000

@All: Cheers.

@Richard: No worries at all – no praise needed. Just happy you like it.

@Michael: It’s a process, I’ll say that. WP makes the transfer somewhat easier by having a great import tool – however, make sure your MT export is UTF-8 encoding. I learned the hard way (Duck, back online soon – damn MT).

@Anonymous: How do you not have freedom of self-expression by putting in a name? My point was that you can put anything in that “name” box – there’s no check to see if it’s your real name. But to go the distance and put anonymous… just seems… weird.

I say Web designer and developer because I don’t just fiddle in Photoshop, but rather also slice and dice designs into usable HTML/PHP/CSS. Additionally, I use the term “developer” in a more general sense to refer to the fact that I “develop” sites (both for clients and for myself).

By: michael

michael — Mon, 26 May 2008 04:35:21 +0000

I’ve just been informed by my friend/server-provider that I’m gonna be kicked off his notspecial.org server in the near future! Fug!

That, plus the fact that I’m still using Movable Type 3.121 from 2004 is giving me a lot of blogger anxiety. I’ve got to upgrade to WordPress.

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

By: kmm

kmm — Sun, 25 May 2008 01:21:30 +0000

Awesome stuff Ryan.

If you want to turn your business into a charity that focuses on poor English teachers in Chengdu, please let me know.

By: Chris L

Chris L — Sat, 24 May 2008 02:22:09 +0000

I concur, excellent work on the site. As Matthew said, it retains the feel of the original The Peking Duck site while highlighting your own stylistic input.