Spring Site 2

[aGorm]

I wasn't saying that the homepage wasn't important, just that It should not come before the site itself. All AF's design really needs a big button on the home page saying DOWNLOAD. Thats easy. And then borrow maybe the 8 boxes idea from the other site, with links to the mods and there pages. None of that would take very long for someone with any 'shop/html skills to do.

aGorm

[Warlord Zsinj]

I don't want to be the continual pain in the arse, but I think that somewhat compromises the simplicity of roflcopter's design. I don't know whether that's your design decisions or inherently linked to your site though. The "Home | About | Games | Development" should be implemented into the design, not hovering at the top; the background shouldn't be reading at all (as it is currently), and all that stuff down the bottom is potentially confusing for a first time visitor.

Essentially, roflcopter's design was a pretty 'tight' design. It was carefully designed to lead your eye around to specific places. I think what's happened here is working against that. Many items are demanding attention, and the eye doesn't really know where to look.

Again, I don't know if that's easy visual things that can be resolved, or inherently linked to the fact that you've taken one website design and stuck it inside another website design.

[AF]

nm I have modified the css using the wiki html tags so that all the content part of the template is hidden resulting in:



Now obviously there are some improvements and further tweaks that could be made, and that text at the side will need to be rewritten to use the wiki pages and stuff.

Theres an edit this page link in the footer which you can use to modify the page or see how it was done... Please copy paste the code into another page and modify that so we can compare and contrast easily

[Forboding Angel]

That's really nice AF, well done!

[Forboding Angel]

I'd very nearly veto rofl's site simply based on the fact that it's fixed width. Fixed width has been an immense thorn in our side here for a metric forever, I'd jump through pretty much any hoop to move away from it.

I agree, BUT, the main site can be fixed width, BUT FREE THE FUCKING FORUM FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!

[Argh]

Two thumbs up. Way up.

That'll work, and looks more than pretty enough to keep things steady, until / unless somebody has a genuinely better front-end design. Good work, now we "just" need the PHP stuff to get the sucker to behave in a way that works, and we're golden. Gnome said he'd do it, so if you don't wanna, then shoot him a line, and then we can move on from there.

Minor quibbles:

The blue surround should probably have a bit more gray, to keep the colors popping a bit more, and I still think that the links on the upper-right should be moved over the top, with a simple topbar of buttons that aren't obtrusive, to pick them out visually.

Just minor quibbles- and I'm more concerned about the position of the navigation buttons than their looks. At 1600/1200 with a 20" screen, finding the buttons in the top-right is literally a large movement of the arm, head, and neck

[AF]

Your mouse sensitivity isnt high enough or your mouse doesnt have any acceleration on it for when you move it faster. I have a larger screen than you and I move my mouse barely 2-3cm to reach the menu from the centre of the screen.

[Argh]

I just checked, and from center to your buttons is no more than an inch and a half, at maximum mouse acceleration. However, it's not that- it's the head-turn that's required, that's annoying. If I had to do it a lot, my neck would hurt.

Practical problem for me? Nah, not really. Do I still think it should be changed, because it'd make the site just a wee bit better? Yeah. Does this need to be done immediately, or we're all going to die? No.

[Forboding Angel]

Head turn???

Ungh, stop nitpicking. Funny you never had a public outcry about this site. I view this site in 2048x1536 so yar, Shaddup.

For the php stuff I could prolly do it... What exactly needs to be done?

[SwiftSpear]

woah... using this thing we can basically have full independent face pages for each spring mod/game that wants to make one. They'd be contained within the wiki skin, which I still think we should modify somewhat, but still, there's alot of power to that.

[Argh]

Head turn???

Ungh, stop nitpicking. Funny you never had a public outcry about this site. I view this site in 2048x1536 so yar, Shaddup.

For the php stuff I could prolly do it... What exactly needs to be done?

Meh, chill. We have had multiple public outcries about this site... that's why we're here, silly. And I fully admit, if I'm nitpicking about something like that, we're in good shape

Ok... PHP... basically, it needs to do two things...

1. Go fetch random Mod / Game links, texts, images from a list, to fill in the "games of the day" area.

The list needs to be somewhere public in the Wiki, so that new games can be added by their creators, with instructions as to how their stuff needs to be formatted to be retrieved properly. They'd put an entry on the list (maybe a link to a specific Wiki entry?) and the PHP would select random entries for the front end's featured Games of the Day, basically. So, we need relatively simple PHP that says, "today is Friday, April 11th, time to pick out a new set of games for the day", fetches them via the list, and then gamers will see new games, but because it'll be tied to the date, bandwidth will be conserved.

2. Go fetch a "Featured Game". Same principles apply- it would get the image, and an appropriate link, given in the entry, which would take users to the Wiki page, or to their game's website.

I would think that most games that want to be featured will fill out both areas of the Wiki as a matter of course.

That's pretty much all that needs to be done- should be relatively simple, once you've got a firm grasp of how to read in the data from the Wiki's list, which is probably going to be the hardest part.

woah... using this thing we can basically have full independent face pages for each spring mod/game that wants to make one. They'd be contained within the wiki skin, which I still think we should modify somewhat, but still, there's alot of power to that.

Yeah, this is really quite powerful stuff, from what I've seen thus far. I think this is going to really work extremely well, and quite a lot better than the current Wiki.

[AF]

There are a lot of dokuwiki plugins out there, and installing them is as simple as copy pasting the url in the admin backend and clicking install.

Look for plugins here

Keep in mind that more plugins will slow down the site and not all plugins are desirable. Having said that I am sure there is a set of plugins for things like random images etc.


If push comes to shove there are the php tags but I do not like the idea of enabling them for security reasons.

[rattle]

The stuff around Roflcopter's mockup looks like one of these ad sites tbh.

[AF]

Id quite like to change the colours so there was less of that gray blue colour and more red or black etc, perhaps changing the blue on the overlay to a translucent black so the underneath is showing through, and perhaps making the rounded thing at the top red instead of dark gray blues.

Or perhaps removing the rounded bit at the top altogether and stretching the entire thing across. The 8 things at the bottom also seem a little redundant since there's a games menu and there's need for news too at the bottom.

[SinbadEV]

there's need for news too at the bottom.

See, we don't think so... front page should say "LOOK! AWESOMENESS!!!" not "Downtime over
The server has been moved to its new location, so we have now passed the scheduled downtime. So we will now resume the regular operation with unscheduled downtime only."

That is news and should be on a news page... FrontPage should be nothing but a splash of awesome, this is who we are, this is what we have to offer... make a link ON this splash page to a reasonable "Homepage" with news information and mod updates etc etc.

edit: Splash Page should have:

- Big Awesome Glamor Shot
- Showcase of Games
- Download Link
- Blurb that makes people realise the thing is A: Good, B: Ready to Play and C: Free

maybe a little thing showing when the last version was released and when the last svn commit was so people know the project is active.

[Vadi]

The stuff around Roflcopter's mockup looks like one of these ad sites tbh.

Can you please explain?

I really, really hope I'm misunderstanding you atm.

[SwiftSpear]

there's need for news too at the bottom.

See, we don't think so... front page should say "LOOK! AWESOMENESS!!!" not "Downtime over
The server has been moved to its new location, so we have now passed the scheduled downtime. So we will now resume the regular operation with unscheduled downtime only."

That is news and should be on a news page... FrontPage should be nothing but a splash of awesome, this is who we are, this is what we have to offer... make a link ON this splash page to a reasonable "Homepage" with news information and mod updates etc etc.

I'd disagree... I would want to decrease the space devoted to project news, but ultimately this site IS a development center as well as a community base and a project promotion piece. Project news should remain on the front page, especially since at this point in time it's looking like we're not going to go to a pure splash page.

[Vadi]

+1

Because spring promoting mods should only be a temporary / fallback solution. Ultimately, it's the mods website that's supposed to do everything.

[Warlord Zsinj]

I don't know Vadi, I think it's a reciprocal relationship. Spring promotes mods whenever it gets the chance, because without mods it's just an engine, and mods promote Spring whenever they get the chance, because without Spring they're just a bunch of art and text files.

[SwiftSpear]

I don't know Vadi, I think it's a reciprocal relationship. Spring promotes mods whenever it gets the chance, because without mods it's just an engine, and mods promote Spring whenever they get the chance, because without Spring they're just a bunch of art and text files.

Ya. We're nothing without the content developers. I want to give them more space than we currently can, not less.

The point is we need to promote both aspects of spring, gameplay, and development. Not favor immensely one over the other.