New Site Design

[Craig]

OK. Now you can tell me and ShyHeidi what you think.

[three_hundred_fifty_five]

What are those icons next to each topic? Some have a picture of a closed envelop with a black dot, some have a closed envelop with lines above it, some have an open envelop, etc.

[three_hundred_fifty_five]

Originally posted by three_hundred_fifty_five
What are those icons next to each topic? Some have a picture of a closed envelop with a black dot, some have a closed envelop with lines above it, some have an open envelop, etc.

Forget that last question. I found it at the bottom of the page.

[Zelda]

Couple of things...
Can we put the log in at the top of the page please?
I know its supposed to be more user friendly but somehow I am not feeling very comfortable with it, I think its too puffy.

[Gav]

I like the new look, it IS different but I'll get used to it. One small gripe some of the posts aren't displaying properly, I can see a lot of the tags and it's making them difficult to read.

[counter riposte]

Interesting Look, but kinda difficult to tell the new posts from the old, to well...

Could you also put the names of the most recently posted threads in the discussion board opener?

Further, had trouble getting in here to post. Had to resend my password three times.

Ugh.

But no worries.... I will adjust....

[Craig]

Good suggestions. You can click on the "right arrow" to go to the unread posts/replies. Also look for the bright green vs. dark green icon below a post - bright green means that it was posted since your last session.

I'll work one evening this week to get the login area moved to the top and look for how to modify to show recent threads.

Cheers
Craig

[edew]

But what exactly was wrong with the original form?

[135711]

I like the new forum craig, and i don't want you to bend over backwards to make further changes that will drive you nuts. you can please all of the people some of the time. i only have one gripe: where's the login? it did take a while to find. i'd put the log in up top next to the little tags.

[minion]

Jeeze you've been working hard haven't you? Yeah, but the old wink tags don't show as icons, you could do a "replace all" on them or something pretty easily to make them show up right, couldn't you?

... and pleeeeeeeeeze let me log out so I can be shyheidi again!!


Okay, people, I've seen the poll, the results are alright, but what I'd like to know is, are you guys responding to the look of the site as a whole, or the forum by itself?

[minion]

Oh, btw, so Craig, did you want me to redesign the forum buttons? You'd talked about it before, right? I think they're rather hard to read. Just a little bit...

[JEC]

nice art work shyheidi/minion ...

[Inquartata]

(1) What's with all the symbolic tag-gobbledegook in some posts ( including ones from days or weeks ago brought from the old site )?

(2) The thread titles used to change shade/color once the thread had been opened and read. Is that feature gone?

(3) It took 4 minutes and 10 seconds for this page to load for me, on an extremely fast connection---the basic page appeared, then all of the buttons, icons, borders, colors, bells and whistles took forever to emerge. ( 66 items remaining...60 items remaining...57 items remaining...zzzzzzzz.... ).

[Zelda]

I know I am reacting to the Forum. The actual front page etc is kewl. I always did find side navigation easier then topwise!

[Sildar]

I much prefer the new message board format; I may be biased though, as this is very similar to another forum I frequent. Seems clearer and better arranged to me.

I really like the new look. Excellent work, Shyheidi and Craig!

[veeco]

I have a little problem with the home page of the site. I think that I preferred the other one because the news section was more compact.

I could see all the US and world fencing news all at once, now I have to scroll down.

Would it be possible to put the US and world fencing news in two boxes maybe at the top, one after each other in the same line? I don't think that it would take much more horizontal space and would avoid people to scroll down.

The rest is great, including the board.

[shyHeidi]

Ah, the forum's all Craig's doing, that stuff confuses me.
And yes, good work.

[shyHeidi]

Originally posted by veeco
I have a little problem with the home page of the site. I think that I preferred the other one because the news section was more compact.

I could see all the US and world fencing news all at once, now I have to scroll down.

Would it be possible to put the US and world fencing news in two boxes maybe at the top, one after each other in the same line? I don't think that it would take much more horizontal space and would avoid people to scroll down.

The rest is great, including the board.

Are you saying you want them above the site news, or that you want them in 2 columns?

... ooh, the alignment of the right bar on the "other useful fencing stuff" box is off... or my computer's funky.
Probably my computer's funky...

[veeco]

Originally posted by shyHeidi
Are you saying you want them above the site news, or that you want them in 2 columns?

No, I think that Fencing.net news should be at the top as they are now, but that the US and world fencing news would be better in 2 columns.
Or maybe if they were mixed together by order of date. Like having one "fencing news" section instead of 2.

... ooh, the alignment of the right bar on the "other useful fencing stuff" box is off... or my computer's funky.
Probably my computer's funky...

Looks OK on mine (Mozilla 1.0)... but then again, my eyes are tired... Probably my eyes are tired...

[Craig]

Edew,

Here's the breakdown:

The other board was totally cgi-based, and it was taking up well over 200 MB total disk space plus placing a large load on the server that I was using. This version has over twice as many posts and the total footprint is ~60MB. It's a benefit of moving over to using PHP and MySQL for the back end.

I will admit that I've gone a bit overboard on adding some groups, but that was more to test capabilities than anything else. (Unless people *really* want to read it, I'll be deleting the SCA newsgroup feed.)

In terms of design, I've had the same basic design for a few years and ShyHeidi made some suggestions and somehow I got her to agree to do a redesign. I'm happy with the new look.

For the "messed up" posts - that had to do with the translation from the old board's programming to this one.

Shy - I think new buttons would be good. They are a bit hard to read. Also let me know your thoughts on the table and font colors, some other combo's may be good to try.

Here is the current list of suggestions that I'm running with:
- Move login/logout to top
- Buttons more readable
- View most recent active threads/topics from forum home page

Feel free to email or message me with any other comments/requests. I'll be able to work more on this over the weekend.

Craig