This living site is an experiment to determine what design is optimal. Every new session on metamorphosite presents a random layout. Throughout your session the style stays the same, but once you clear the cookie you'll be presented with a completely different look. "Optimal" is a combination of most time spent on site and number pages visited.
The algorithm will slowly start weeding out the combinations that do poorly until only the best remain. It will also be narrowing down specifics once a broad choice has been made. All colors are currently picked from a group of 8 base colors. Once a base color has been selected for an element, it will then refine that color down until it finds the perfect shade.
While a general winner should eventually emerge, the end goal is to present the optimal look for each user based on readily available characteristics such as language, platform and local time. Check out the statistics page to see how the variables are doing and what type of users are visiting the site.
Here are the things that can change:
- Fixed or fluid width
- Menu position
- Location of suggested articles
- Location and number of share widgets
- Location, number and format of dates
- Position of star rating widget
- All colors
- Font family
- Line height
- Link styles
- Ad shape and placement
This site is built with the following technologies:
- Nginx
- PHP
- PostgreSQL
- HTML5
- CSS3