A new look for Coffee & Conservation

If you are reading C&C from a feed reader, click on over and have a look at the new site design. The goal was to make information on the site easier to find, as well as easier on the eye. Here are some of the new things included in the face-lift:

• Improved navigation. Now there are navigation links and a search box right at the top of the page. New links include a User Guide which summarizes the posts that direct you to what you need to know about sustainable coffee; a Glossary of coffee terms used on the site; and a Bibliography of peer-reviewed research on coffee and coffee growing. I hope these make things easier to find for readers.
• A page footer that includes recent posts, a rotating list of recommended responsible roasters (refresh page to see new selections), and a rotating list of featured posts, as well as feed, copyright, and contact info.
• Plenty of new design elements, including a new motmot graphic for coffee reviews. In reviews, coffees are ranked from 0 to 5 motmots. Motmots are super-cool tropical birds which are found in most Latin American coffee-growing countries, so we use them instead of stars. I've made a much nicer graphic of a Blue-crowned Motmot to display motmot ratings. (Sometimes, you just caught up in the details).
• Speaking of birds, I'll be initiating a new series called "Know Your Coffee Birds." These will be short accounts of bird species that rely on shade coffee farms -- both residents and migrants.

There are still a few kinks to work out. This site is under a beta test account, and despite my request in April to remove it from beta, I appear to be stuck. Typepad will not give me a straight answer as to how long this situation will last, and since rolling out various "improvements" the last several months, the service is plagued with problems.

Let me know what you think of the new design, if anything is acting weird, and if there's something else you'd like to see.

Comments

[Andy]

New face-lift looks great. Keep up the fantastic work!

Andy
Caffe Pronto

[Julie (BirdBarista)]

Thanks, Andy! (and to the flood of positive reinforcement I just know has yet to come!)

[Henry]

looks good!

[John]

I like the new look and the navigational links at the top. One thing that would help on the review index would be marking the coffees that received high marks from your coffee group or that have SMBC certification, etc.

I'm looking forward to the coffee birds series.

[Julie (BirdBarista)]

I have struggled with ways to categorize the reviews. Grouping them by rating won't work too well; as explained the bulk are "in the middle" and the value in the reviews has to do with the background info on the farms or regions...the reviews almost serve as examples of growing practices at the origin and/or sourcing practices of the roasters. Very few, actually, are Rainforest Alliance or SMBC (Bird-Friendly) certified. I often aim for coffees that are great examples of sustainably grown NON-certified sources. Realistically, I should -- and will -- do more reviews of readily available coffees (Starbucks, Caribou, Trader Joe's) and discuss their sustainability and taste. This is probably more practical for consumers. Thanks for pushing these ideas to the forefront for me.

The first coffee bird will be coming up late next week!

[BirdBarista (Julie)]

Update: On the review page, I put all the reviews scoring 3.75 or above in bold, and all coffees certified by Rainforest Alliance or Smithsonian Bird-Friendly in italics. Hope that helps!

[John]

That's basically what I had in mind.