Feedback on new template

[Curry]

Public beta: Xboxic's new frontpage! (http://forum.xboxic.com/showthread.php?p=3379)

Post your bugs and feedback regarding the new template here :)

[Diaboluzzz]

1) ATM there is nothing located at the upper right corner next to the xboxic logo.
I suggest you put the browse per category section there, it is quite usefull.

2) I suggest you make the color of the links placed under most recent, reviews etc a bit more blue-ish to improve readability.


3) Put a border around the ad on the left, it looks disgusting the way it is now.

4) There are too many links in the menu's on the left side, I suggest you do 7 or 8 instead of 10 per section. This will improve the overall desin, its to stretched now imho.


5) Same goes for the more news from $day section. reduce it by 2 per day and go back no more then 3 days. Maybe put a section between the right menu's Xboxic and Syndication Called This weeks news.
Put links in there like News from wednesday 29 march, News from thursday 30 march till News from today.


Btw, the next line is meant as a big FLAME: Curry: it sure as hell looks like the tnet design!!!! >:) :X :D ;)

Just my 2 cents, I like this design more then the current one btw!

[Nino]

1) There wil be a banner there.
2) That was on the to-do list I think
3)
4)
5) 2 per day isn't enough for a lot of reasons

Thanks for the C&C :)

[Curry]

1) ATM there is nothing located at the upper right corner next to the xboxic logo.
That part is completely coincidentally exactly 728x90 pixels, size of a standard leaderboard ad ;) Still struggling to get that part laid out correctly.
I suggest you put the browse per category section there, it is quite usefull.
Try hovering the "News" link in the main menu :)
2) I suggest you make the color of the links placed under most recent, reviews etc a bit more blue-ish to improve readability.
Hmm you're the first one to complain about that section :D At the very least I'm going to change the hover-color, but I'll have a look into the regular text color as well.
3) Put a border around the ad on the left, it looks disgusting the way it is now.
Whut? Screenie? It's supposed to look more or less like this (http://crew.tweakers.net/curry/Xboxic-Website-Design.png), with a different ad :)
4) There are too many links in the menu's on the left side, I suggest you do 7 or 8 instead of 10 per section. This will improve the overall desin, its to stretched now imho.
Mmmmmmmmm not sure whether I agree on this. Keep in mind that the content is nearly always taller than the 2 sidebars anyway, so it doesn't matter if they're rather tall themselves. I like to keep the info complete.

I'll check how it looks if I remove a pixel from the line spacing though, might achieve the same effect (and fix another problem as a side effect).
5) Same goes for the more news from $day section. reduce it by 2 per day and go back no more then 3 days.
Definite no. Cannot limit news per day (simply showing everything and I have no way of deciding which posts would be "less important" and the 3 days is based on the amount of news (in total 30 headlines are always shown on the FP)
Maybe put a section between the right menu's Xboxic and Syndication Called This weeks news.
Put links in there like News from wednesday 29 march, News from thursday 30 march till News from today.
Perhaps a good idea :) I was planning to put archive links there anyway, didn't implement it yet.
Just my 2 cents, I like this design more then the current one btw!
Thnx for the feedback :*

[Curry]

First: Please keep serious topics ontopic.
Hmm you're the first one to complain about that section :D At the very least I'm going to change the hover-color, but I'll have a look into the regular text color as well.
Both regular text and hover are slightly darker now.
Mmmmmmmmm not sure whether I agree on this. Keep in mind that the content is nearly always taller than the 2 sidebars anyway, so it doesn't matter if they're rather tall themselves. I like to keep the info complete.

I'll check how it looks if I remove a pixel from the line spacing though, might achieve the same effect (and fix another problem as a side effect).
Thanks to IE/Win this is impossible. Blame Microsoft :P

[Chris]

First: Please keep serious topics ontopic.


Yeah, Yeah. I get it.

Great new site design!

[Curry]

Perhaps a good idea :) I was planning to put archive links there anyway, didn't implement it yet.
Done.

[Curry]

Top banner also fixed now :) And rest assured SmileyCentral is going on the blocklist right when I'm putting this template live. I'm not forcing my visitors to look at ads I hate as well.

[Chris]

Great new site design!

I also think this new layout looks more professional.:D

[Chris]

Is there some way to make the 'Recent Comments' section have local times?

[Curry]

Is there some way to make the 'Recent Comments' section have local times?
Not yet. When I have the forum accounts integrated into the frontpage I can use the forum setting which respects time zones :)

[Ponder416]

woot!!! like the new look!!! awsome

[cybermans]

wikitracker is now when highlighting open page ...
should be imo
go to ....
because otherwise you could be expecting a pop up

[Curry]

wikitracker is now when highlighting open page ...
should be imo
go to ....
because otherwise you could be expecting a pop up
Fix0red.

[Studley]

How does the drop-down list of Related Articles get chosen? Is it automatic, what criteria is it based on?

Some of them have some strange choices - eg the Brothers In Arms 3 scans contain a link to "THQ Licenses Unreal Engine 3", which doesn't seem to have any relevance.

I guess it's probably automated and it actually does a pretty good job, overall a big thumbs-up for the new look!

[Nino]

It's an automatic MYSQL thingy I think, Curry will be eager to tell you all the nerdy details. I bet BiA links to Unreal 3 because both have amazing grapics ;) (and those words are probably used in both articles).


Anyway, I'm really used to the new template now, I also thought it was a little too crowded but I think that's was because I had to get used to it. I love it now :)

[Curry]

How does the drop-down list of Related Articles get chosen? Is it automatic, what criteria is it based on?

Some of them have some strange choices - eg the Brothers In Arms 3 scans contain a link to "THQ Licenses Unreal Engine 3", which doesn't seem to have any relevance.

I guess it's probably automated and it actually does a pretty good job, overall a big thumbs-up for the new look! Very automated, based on MySQL fulltext search indeed.

What MySQL does however is just return a score for every article in the DB. I could sort by score, but that is rather pointless since it could possibly score news from 10 years ago higher than 1 week old news based on pure word matching, while the 1 week old article is probably much more relevant for the user.

The alternative I chose is to sort by date and show the most recent 10 matches that exceed a given score. After trying a load of different thresholds on a lot of newsposts I decided that the current setting would be best, because I prefer getting a few hits too much over cutting a relevent one just because it uses slightly different wording.

As long as half the mentioned articles are slightly related I'm happy actually. I may tune it later if it turns out to be giving lots of false results, but it's not going to be perfect anyway as long as it's automated. Not every post about Tomb Raider Legend is related to Legend of Zelda, while a machine would say so based on the title.

[Studley]

Excellent. You're right, for an automated system it's pretty accurate. I figured as much because I know a fair bit about php/mysql (except for arrays - they make my head explode - but I guess this scoring uses a fair amount of them!)

[Chris]

Could there be a way to link the frontpage to our forum login so that maybe we could get like a .jpg or something that says there's new forum posts/threads next to the forum button? (just like a yellow dot or something simple)

[Rival24]

Could there be a way to link the frontpage to our forum login so that maybe we could get like a .jpg or something that says there's new forum posts/threads next to the forum button? (just like a yellow dot or something simple)
Have you noticed the forum tracker on the frontpage?

[Curry]

Could there be a way to link the frontpage to our forum login so that maybe we could get like a .jpg or something that says there's new forum posts/threads next to the forum button? (just like a yellow dot or something simple) I'm working on connecting the subsites :) It's just not my highest priority, that was the new template, and now I've got some behind-the-screens stuff prioritized to make sure we can keep the site running even though the crew is growing. But yes, binding the logins so for example the FP can also modify times based on your Timezone setting on the forum is on the list :)

Actually showing login-dependent forum data on the FP is a hefty DB operation though, and since yesterday's experiences I don't think I'll be doing that anywhere soon :P

[Chris]

Actually showing login-dependent forum data on the FP is a hefty DB operation though, and since yesterday's experiences I don't think I'll be doing that anywhere soon :P

At least this site isn't too big (yet) to the point that you can't even acknowledge questions or input. Thanks for explaining. :)

[Curry]

At least this site isn't too big (yet) to the point that you can't even acknowledge questions or input. Thanks for explaining. :)
No prob, I've learnt on the other sites I've 'worked' for that keeping the community happy is the most important thing about running a good site. Commucating is key, and I'm happy to explain :)

[Diaboluzzz]

Something very frustrating:

images posted in posts open in the same window.
Every self respecting website opens them in a popup 800x600
I suggest you put a target="_blank" width="800" height="600" in the template when someone adds a picture it's auto 'targeted'.

Since IE6.5 only popups that are opened automaticly are blocked by internet explorer.

[Rival24]

Something very frustrating:

images posted in posts open in the same window.
Every self respecting website opens them in a popup 800x600
I suggest you put a target="_blank" width="800" height="600" in the template when someone adds a picture it's auto 'targeted'.

Since IE6.5 only popups that are opened automaticly are blocked by internet explorer.
You're right, it's very annoying. If you insert an image in the wordpress editor you have the option to open it in the same window or a new one, you should ask Curry to change the default option :P

[Curry]

Something very frustrating:

images posted in posts open in the same window.
Every self respecting website opens them in a popup 800x600
I suggest you put a target="_blank" width="800" height="600" in the template when someone adds a picture it's auto 'targeted'.

Since IE6.5 only popups that are opened automaticly are blocked by internet explorer.
Crew file management backend creates all the HTML already thanks to some wonderful Javascript I wrote, I can change that to use popups automatically :)

[Diaboluzzz]

kick

still no popups :(

[Curry]

Just got my devserver to work again :) It's on the agenda ;)

[McGrude]

On Firefox on my home computer (Windows XP) there's a particular flash based advertisement that usually shows up at the top of the front page. When it is there I can't click on the top news story. This does not happen in IE on the same computer and it doesn't happen on my work computer ( Firefox on MacOSX ).

[Curry]

On Firefox on my home computer (Windows XP) there's a particular flash based advertisement that usually shows up at the top of the front page. When it is there I can't click on the top news story. This does not happen in IE on the same computer and it doesn't happen on my work computer ( Firefox on MacOSX ).
Someone else stated this as well on the FP. If you can get me the URL it goes to or a screenshot I can remove it from the running campaigns :)

[McGrude]

Someone else stated this as well on the FP. If you can get me the URL it goes to or a screenshot I can remove it from the running campaigns :)

Alright. I'll take screen shots of the ad as well as the behaviour (if I right click anywhere on the top story it shows the flash menu ).

I'll have to do this in about 4 hours though (I've still got to slog through the rest of my afternoon at work).

[McGrude]

The problematic ad isn't coming up (and sorry for all the page reloads, was trying to get the ad to come up ).

[Rival24]

The problematic ad isn't coming up (and sorry for all the page reloads, was trying to get the ad to come up ).
Try removing your cookie (something with tribalfusion in it). :P

[xboxguy]

when i am at school i click all the ads and popups i see, the computer people really piss me off, but thats not my point...my point is i love shooting ducks and kicking footballs to win game consoles. Thanks Xboxic!!

[Curry]

when i am at school i click all the ads and popups i see, the computer people really piss me off, but thats not my point...my point is i love shooting ducks and kicking footballs to win game consoles. Thanks Xboxic!!
And thus you pay our monthly paycheck so we can continue running this site for you O+ ;)