In retrospect, I shouldn't have been all that surprised. After all, nobody likes it when they visit one of their favorite sites on the Web and find it looks completely different from what was there yesterday. Still, I was caught off guard when saw what seemed like an endless stream of posts on the TG Forumz pleading for us to change Tom's Hardware Guide back to the old design. I couldn't understand some of the comments from longtime Tom's readers; for example, they were upset we ditched the Forumz ticker on the front page, which listed links for the most recent posts.

Still, I was perplexed that most people didn't like the new design, arguing that that it was too bland, hard to navigate and lacked the personality of the old design (which can still be found at Tom's Hardware Guide U.K. & Ireland for the time being). As a result, we resurrected the Forumz ticker and are also planning on a few other tweaks and changes to the site in regards to readers' suggestions and complaints.

After reading and responding to more than 10 pages of posted feedback, it began to dawn on me why there was such a backlash. I and my THG co-workers knew this was coming and had seen various versions of the redesign over the last several months, so it was no surprise to us. But most of these readers had no idea the redesign was coming. Therefore, it was like walking into their house and finding all the furniture rearranged with new paint on the walls. That's the kind of personal connection that people have with the Web. At my old jobs in the world of print journalism, you could redesign the newspaper and magazine, constantly change the color schemes, layout, sections and fonts and very few people seemed to care.

The Web is a different world. And I can certainly relate. For about 10 years now I've been a faithful visitor of Yahoo Sports. I found it to be a great resource for NCAA basketball coverage, which I needed for my fantasy league. Plus, the site always loaded quickly because it wasn't bogged down with a lot of junk like video and banners and enormous images. It was basically a "Plain Jane" meat-and-potatoes kind of Web site - never flashy but always reliable and easy to navigate. But Yahoo decided to give its Sports section a major overhaul recently and now the site looks more like ESPN.com, which is so busy with photos and slick graphics that you can barely find the headlines and section tabs.

I resisted the Yahoo Sports change - after all, what was wrong with the old site? Well, from my perspective as a user, nothing was wrong with it at all. But then I started thinking like an editor, and I came to a different conclusion. The old Yahoo Sports had an amateurish design that lacked a professional feel, and that's not a good thing. From a journalistic perspective, if a site doesn't look professional (or "corporate," as some THG readers wrote) then it won't be taken seriously by the industries and people the site covers, nor will it garner interest from advertisers. And that's the kind of stuff that can't put a news media site out of business.

Eventually, I came around on the new Yahoo Sports design. I still don't think it's great, but I gave it enough time to learn the new navigation and layout. And I understand that the old design was getting, well, old and needed a more mature update. Oh well.

Anyway, we're continuing to make changes and improvements to Tom's Hardware Guide, as well as our other sites such as Gear Digest, TwitchGuru and TG Daily. Hopefully, they'll make everyone happy (though I doubt it). In the meantime, please continue to give us feedback, suggestions and constructive criticism.