Spring Site 2

[SinbadEV]

Um, natural selection is a mod for the halflife engine. If you've got halflife on steam you can download and play it for free. It's probably the best thing ever produced by the entire modding community of everything ever. It's a bit hard to learn at first, but frankly, in the beginning you're too busy getting your freaked out of your ass by horrific alien attacks to care to much.

First of all I didn't acctually know that... my point was that you don't know that from their front page so it's a good example of what i DON'T Want...

[Felix the Cat]

Ubuntu seems like a good model to use for what content should be included on the front page. It draws the user in (though I hate the colors), gives the user a good idea of what exactly the website is about, provides a short news headline box of exactly the type I described, gives links to relevant major sections of the site, and immediately directs users on how to obtain more information (analogue in our case is immediately directing users on how to download, install, and configure Spring).

Now, I'm not a big fan of some of the design choices on the Ubuntu site, but that's a different story...

[SwiftSpear]

Front page doesn't need to be the about page.

Sure, it's good to have about information on the front page... but the "about" icon has become pretty universal to web surfing. To be fair, that place isn't really at a point at this point in time where they are fishing to be anonymously discovered any more. So sure, I agree their page wouldn't work in context to what we need... nether would the other pages I linked though, but for other reasons.

[Felix the Cat]

Quick poll - raise your hand if you visit the spring.clan-sy.com homepage more than, say, once a week.

I'd like to see how many community members actually use the front page.

I still maintain that the primary purpose of a front page/splash page/whatever you want to call it is as an entry point for first-time visitors, and that the entry point for community members should be elsewhere so neither entry point loses its focus or becomes diluted. An example of an unfocused page is our current spring.clan-sy.com home page. Why does a first-time visitor need to know about the release of a version in 2006 or that downtime was over three weeks ago? On the flip side, why does a returning visitor need to be told what Spring is? These are the sorts of problems that unfocused home pages face.

[Warlord Zsinj]

I do - I always bookmark frontpages and then access the forums from there, because it lets me get any important news.

I agree that it should be primarily about winning new users, but I think a a basic news feed area is important, not only to keep players updated via one page, but also to show new users that we have an active community through recent headlines.

Also, there is not all that much point in having cycling mod previews on the frontpage if players are expected to only visit it once or twice once they first join, and then move on to a secondary page.

[Sertse]

I know the thread in the art forum is more appropriate, but it seems current discussion has moved here...

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/8092 ... kuptn2.jpg

I know nothing about html, otherwise I would of tried to reproduced on AF's thing myself. I got all the relevant pictures saved through:

Thoughts?

It's a cut and paste hack job and I don├óÔé¼Ôäót claim to know anything about design...

The got the idea of the player/developer spilt from browsing the main page of the wiki: http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Main_Page , which had already spilt most of our articles between the two. As Spring sees itself both as an engine development site, and as a "fansite" of the games/mods played under this engine, why not articulate this distinction from the outset?

The imagining the row of pictures of to be a "random screenshot of the day" thing...

I would also imagine that links like "home, forums, etc". would be located along the top title bar├óÔé¼┬ª I forgot to place them there when doing the picture. Heh.

EDIT: Reloaded on another host. Hopefully this one works. Though by later discussion this might not matter

[Tobi]

Just a random comment:

The current system to post news rules, if anyway possible I'd like to keep that. (as in, the in fact that the news is just read from the phpbb3 database)

Advantages:

• News is visible in forum too.
• Consistent interface for posting on forum/commenting on news.
• Single log in for forum/commenting on news.

However it would be cool if some more BB code tags could be made working on the front page, like [img] .

(Note this is just a random thought; not a comment on a specific thing that has (or has not) been done.)

On the news on frontpage subject, I think at least the most recent news item should be on frontpage, preferably something like last 3 items or so. If the frontpage is more focussing on other things then I can imagine the news items could just be a link instead of the full message.

Either way, it's good to see some activity again in the website department!

[AF]

Tobi, as I told everyone in my blog post, and felix in the page before, and several times before that, the news is taken from the forums using rss. You can see it in action on the site right now in the table at the bottom with it showing the names of the topics in the news forum.


freeimagehosting doesn't work. Out of 6 pages, one page loaded but didnt show the picture and the other 5 pages showed 404 errors.


May I also point out that roflcopters design is not portable, under iPod safari the text and the images serving as their background do no match and the text leaks out into what ever is underneath.

[Tobi]

I don't always read everything everywhere

But that's nice, I see it integrates very well on your test site.

[AF]

Its much simpler than the previous attempts since the vast majority of it is using pre-existing functionality.

[Vadi]

I don't really visit homepages often unless they're updated often. Ubuntu's and Springs aren't really, so I just skip to the forums.

Imo ubuntu's isn't designed for regular users, because those know where they're going. Springs is sorta designed for that, but since it offers nothing interesting, it doesn't do either the job of being attractive to a casual / regular person.

[clericvash]

i cant be assed to read through 6 pages, but i like how it looks with rolfcopter design on afs page.

[Sertse]

http://newspring.darkstars.co.uk/wiki/sertsetest

Htmled

I suck at html though, wherethe lorum ipsum is, how do you get a particular background coolour for that, instead of using the blue main background?

Explanation about the player/developer distinction is as in my earlier reply.

We acknowledge from the onset our two fronts; the player/fansite/mods side, and the developer/technical/engine side. The random site visitor will get their wanted experience by choosing one of the two. Inspiration of main page of the current spring wiki, which does the same (sorta).

As to where "quick links" to stuff like "home/news/forums/contact" etc, perhaps insert another "bar" under the logo banner? Kinda like it is now.

[Felix the Cat]

While the concept everyone is using is nice, I really think something needs to be done about the "Download Now" being part of the game highlight picture and thus being quite confusing about exactly what you are downloading when you click on it.

I like the concept of immediately giving the visitor his choice of portal, but I wonder what will be in the Developers portal?

[Vadi]

Spring's website will not just be a developers portal for a long while, keep in mind - most links on the web point to this (http://spring.clan-sy.com/) website.

[Sertse]

I am assuming the games featured in "game highlight" on the main page will be ones included as options in the installer.

When one clicks the "Download Now!" they will be lead to that mods page on the site (e.g. In this case, the equivalent page on the new site to http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/SWTA). I suppose of that page there will be a message on the top and bottom with something like.

"Get Star Wars Spring Now! (Installer DL link). Check Star Wars Spring in the installer".

Of course, I am also expected that if we are to "game highlight" a mod, their page will be polished and regular updated

(N.B: I now the old Star Wars Spring, and the Imperial Winter mod are technically seperate projects, I was just illustrating an example)

[SinbadEV]

I'm not an expect at this stuff... but I really thing this is the start of a "best of both worlds" option...

http://newspring.darkstars.co.uk/wiki/s ... /frontpage

Not entirely sure what to do with that bottom section.

[Forboding Angel]

AF, here is my suggestion, take it or leave it...

GO ahead and finish the site. If the devs like it, then ur in like flint. Community discussion on the subject is useful, but only to a certian point. Almost 7 pages of talking is how a project like this never gets finished.

[Warlord Zsinj]

It's a good effort sinbad, but it's not quite the same. It's lost the immediate sexy impact of roflcopter's design.

Perhaps roflcopter can update his design to encompass a room for news and the other requirements raised?

[AF]

AF, here is my suggestion, take it or leave it...

GO ahead and finish the site. If the devs like it, then ur in like flint. Community discussion on the subject is useful, but only to a certian point. Almost 7 pages of talking is how a project like this never gets finished.

agreed, if anything these 'developments' seem to be moving backwards not forwards. By this time next year the new site will look identical to the current site, perhaps the squiggly orange sperm banner will have made a comeback.