The website (yes, again)

[Hoi]

http://newspring.darkstars.co.uk/wiki/idiots_guide
zomg i totally loled, but the site is confusing, where is the wiki!?

[AF]

The site IS the wiki

[AF]

oh wait no, its http://newspring.clan-sy.com I mixed up the test site and the new site

[Hoi]

oh wait no, its http://newspring.clan-sy.com I mixed up the test site and the new site

ok thats alot better:)

[Dragon45]

It's great having a site for the engine, but if you set it up like that, you're going to have to have equally nice-looking sites for each of the major mods. start with Balanced Annihilation and then complete annihilation and then kernel panic etc


i dont give a shit about the engine or the fancy technologiez inside of it

i want to play games damnit i want to blow shit up

and not a good idea having a mechwarrioresque mech on the front page of that people will think its a MW ripoff

[Caydr]

Make the screenshot bar one of those ones that scrolls...

[AF]

ew javascript and animation

Anyway the image was intended to change, but since theres only one image, and everyone sort of ignored the site and chased after fancy photoshop mockups, no alternatives were ever made.

[TradeMark]

oh wait no, its http://newspring.clan-sy.com I mixed up the test site and the new site

that looks good

Buts:
1) "SPRING ENGINE" logo at top doesnt work properly at IE6
2) need some text in the empty space at left, maybe news section there?
3) needs cooler logo at top, and some fixes at the links at top right (looks so tight now)
4) dont scale the positions for logo and top right links, so they would remain at same place when you resize window.
5) drop the wiki style crap from bottom.

[Hoi]

i really think the letters (forum) are annoying, too big and bold, if you could change them to this, that would be great

[AF]

How will users edit pages if I remove all the buttons at the bottom for it?

And the forum on the new site is not enabled. The forum on the darkstars test site is running under a broken stylesheet, infact the whole darkstars site stylesheet is broken, and you shouldn't use it to make aesthetic judgements because as I just said the aesthetics on darkstars were deliberatley broken to test something.

However right now I am not asking for aesthetic feedback. Right now new site is prettier than current site, please fill with content. Once the new site is in a state tobi is happy to deploy Ill work on improving aesthetics, I have my own ideas on how to do that but right now this week I have other things to worry about first.

[TradeMark]

How will users edit pages if I remove all the buttons at the bottom for it?

Normal visitors shouldnt see edit buttons on a page which they are not allowed to edit. and they should not be allowed to edit either. Only registered users might be able to edit, IMO its better to leave the editing to people who really knows how to edit. So we wont see any goatse porn at the front page because some teenagers thought it was funny.

[AF]

ACL has not really been setup for many people but ti should be put in place before its deployed.

However for now its not enabled so that anyone can contribute before ti goes live.

[SwiftSpear]

The whole point of this thread is to get this implemented there.

There's no point in critiquing the current newspring frontpage, it's intended to be a placeholder.

[AF]

The placeholder was a generic wiki page.

The current front page is not a generic wiki page. It is an actual front page.

If someone develops something better we can directly put in then thats fine.

However nobody is doing the necessary wiki transferral work despite it being orders fo magnitude more important than everything else.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Well, if the current front page is intended as an actual frontpage, while I think it's a lot better then most of the other stuff I've seen previously, roflcopter's updated design (linked by swift), is still superior, in my opinion.

[AF]

Indeed, roflcopters design integrated into the tempalte as an update would be good, however we must prioritize deployment rather than sitting in an everperpetual aesthetic design stage.

[SwiftSpear]

The more of the wiki is updated before we switch over the better... but I'll say right now, we don't expect the full thing to be ported over before we switch, and if the rest of the site resources are good enough we'd be willing to switch with none of the wiki ported over (we'd just leave the old wiki up and whine about it requesting people port endlessly).

Basically, we won't switch until the new site has more going for it then just a powerful backend. We want a nice frontpage, and our primary pages populated (News needs to work, FAQ, Staff, Screenshots, Downloads, working forum, development links like bug tracker and documentation) more wiki work done is basically a huge bonus.

The current site sucks, but it's finished in the regard of those things. The new site just needs to do them, once they are done we can switch over because the wiki work will realistically take a long time, and people would be more willing to work on it if it was obviously helpful (because every second link you click takes you to a page that's waiting to be ported)

The one thing I'm absolutely unwilling to budge on is that we need a nice frontpage. A HUGE part of the reason we need a new website in the first place is that the current frontpage makes a bad public impression.

[AF]

At the moment the new frontpage is orders of magnitude better than the current front page and its far better than those of many other projects. The back end provides the means with which to further improve upon it.

As such I think it is best we get that backend deployed as soon as possible.

Are you really going to block a vastly improved site because the front page is 100% not 200% better? It can be changed easily many many times once the sites deployed

[Roflcopter]

I don't think it's a good idea to change the looks of the website many many times once it has been deployed. However, updating progressively the wiki once this project has a frontpage that doesn't make visitors run away is a good idea.

[SwiftSpear]

What rolf said.

And no, I wouldn't "block" a vastly improved site... but I wouldn't call the new site "vastly improved" yet either. Ya, absolutely, the back end is more powerful, but if that doesn't come with improvements in content and organization as well it's effectively irrelevant. Like I say, I want to see a significantly improved frontage over what we currently have here, and that doesn't just mean more space for pictures.

At this point in time I'd hesitate to say the current newspring frontpage is even better then the one we're using on the old site. Sure, there's 1 more big picture, but there's alot less information space, the links aren't well presented or organized, there are only 2 links in the acctual site block and they have ugly underlines, the color schemes clash to some degree... and I don't think the model in the screenshot is even from a spring engine render. The actual game screen shots are in itty bitty eyestraino size, and there's no more space for more mod information, project description/categorization. The current site is a wall of useless text, but at least the important part, the project links, and the header bar are well presented, and the site looks coherent and organized, albeit boring.

I'd say the newspring frontpage is closer to what we want then the current front page, but "better"? If so, by a very slim margin.