New Site Thoughts

[AF]

I decided to start a new thread to outline this.

Its my suggestion or plan for where the new site should be headed.

First off I would move the bar thing in the background up to the top. I'd theng et rid fo the small text and image at the side on the right.

I'd also make the menu buttons into a full menu bar with rounded edges at the opposite ends of the menu rather than inbetween every item. I'd then move the menu up into the header banner to make that part smaller.

Then, I would change mediawiki and start using dokuwiki instead. I'd then integrate dokuwiki and the forum together, and tie mantis and dokuwiki together, creating a single sign on for all 3, and the ability to reference a forum post or a mantis report or a wiki page from anywhere on the site.

Then, I would add custom tags to the wiki mark-up to display the news, then I would replace all the website pages with wiki pages. The translation would be auto-managed by doku-wikis existing language support.

The front page would be redesigned as more of a welcome page than a news page with masses of stuff, designed to either get a download there and then or entice the user into the site for further persuasion, all very nice and simple.

For dokuwiki I would use the dokuwiki monobook theme with modifications to use our header and footers.


This way most of our sites easier to update using everyday tools, and we have access to the full dokuwiki community for updates fixes or add ons.


I'll put up some concept art showing some of the changes. Tim isn't back working on the site till january, so we have till then to discuss it.

[LordMatt]

Couldn't you take over where he left off?

[AF]

I will in time, but here's a short list of things to do:

• I have an Open GL coursework due on the 5th December.
• I have phase 2 of my OO cw due in this Friday
• On Thursday I get handed my main coursework of the year and a week to decide what it is what its called what genre and who I'm working with
• I have to compete with 150 other people in the same department at my uni for work placements for next year on-top of several other universities so I need to get my portfolio up to scratch, which I've given myself a deadline of December.
• NTai work for my portfolio is incomplete and there's a hefty short list of fixes and re-factors to make the code presentable (Rare are big on clean C++ apparently)
• Darkstars needs work here and there concerning wikis and spam in my bug tracker
• Finish Richard Dawkins selfish gene and Open GL Super bible
• Clear out the aflobby bug list and implement the 0.76b1 changes
• Crysis and Forged Alliance are quite distracting atm

So at least 3 weeks before I can do site work. When I'm on my loong mas break Ill have much more time for these things and some of them will have been ticked off anyway. So I will surf forums and write things like this for when I get my free time sorted as a break from coding (unles it's warm enough to venture upstairs to my main PC and play crysis).


That and I'm not sure tim would agree with some of the stuff I put forward so it'd need discussion.