Feedback on new template

Curry · April 4th, 2006, 02:56

Public beta: Xboxic's new frontpage!

Post your bugs and feedback regarding the new template here

Diaboluzzz · April 4th, 2006, 18:04

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!!!!

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

Nino · April 4th, 2006, 18:09

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 · April 4th, 2006, 18:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diaboluzzz

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.

Quote:

I suggest you put the browse per category section there, it is quite usefull.

Try hovering the "News" link in the main menu

Quote:

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

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.

Quote:

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, with a different ad

Quote:

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).

Quote:

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)

Quote:

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.

Quote:

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

Thnx for the feedback

Curry · April 4th, 2006, 19:54

First: Please keep serious topics ontopic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Curry

Hmm you're the first one to complain about that section

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.

Quote:

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

Chris · April 4th, 2006, 21:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Curry

First: Please keep serious topics ontopic.

Yeah, Yeah. I get it.

Great new site design!

Curry · April 4th, 2006, 21:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Curry

Perhaps a good idea

I was planning to put archive links there anyway, didn't implement it yet.

Done.

Curry · April 4th, 2006, 22:02

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 · April 4th, 2006, 23:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris

Great new site design!

I also think this new layout looks more professional.

Chris · April 5th, 2006, 11:19

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

Curry · April 5th, 2006, 13:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris

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 · April 5th, 2006, 16:17

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

cybermans · April 5th, 2006, 17:54

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

Curry · April 6th, 2006, 01:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by cybermans

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

Fix0red.

Studley · April 6th, 2006, 17:28

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 · April 6th, 2006, 17:31

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 · April 6th, 2006, 17:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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!

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 · April 6th, 2006, 17:57

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 · April 7th, 2006, 11:04

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 · April 7th, 2006, 11:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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)

Have you noticed the forum tracker on the frontpage?

Curry · April 7th, 2006, 11:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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)

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

Chris · April 7th, 2006, 17:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Curry

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

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 · April 7th, 2006, 18:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris

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 · April 10th, 2006, 13:25

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 · April 10th, 2006, 13:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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.

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

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)