[BLOG] Icrontic's next redesign, vol. II
So here's where I am so far with the new design for the home page:
The interesting parts are what's changed since my first draft, which several community staff commented on.
First, I'm going to start rolling out a new "generic" avatar. Instead of the ghostly outline used now (lovingly ripped from Wordpress), there will be the Icrontic-specific one shown above. Also, if you look at the "Last 5 Posts" box, you'll notice the bold username prefixing the comment excerpts. This was the result of a 15-minute back-and-forth in our chat room on the best way to present this sort of information. In the end, we decided that a Twitter-influenced look was the most informative and easiest to digest, and I've tried it out here. I updated the "Latest Comments" sidebar on the home page to reflect this new style over the weekend.
They also suggested removing the "Posts" column from the forum index to give some more breathing room to the Last Post info, so I've done that in the above rendering as well. The number of posts in a category is a great example of "things I might want to see once a month, not every time I open the forum." There's got to be a better way to present that. Still to be seen is how (if) I'll tweak that Last Post column further to increase readability.
For those of you who want to dive right into the forum categories, you'll be pleased to see that the Last 5 Posts header can be collapsed (and the forum remembers it being collapsed between visits). This reduces your overhead to almost nothing and removes an entire screen-worth of scrolling from your daily (hourly?) forum browsing.
Birthdays, events, and milestones will appear above the "Who's here?" box in the sidebar. The Byte and forum stats have also moved to the sidebar (below the part that was captured in the screenshot). The footer is nice and clean now, and is where I've moved the "Member List" link.
Now, some pain-points. First, I don't like the New Discussion icon. It screams lame default vBulletin. I need a new "button" design in general for the forum, and that will be its first test case when I figure it out. Second, I'm not sure about the Search box being above the big-bertha ad in the sidebar; I worry people won't identify it as an Icrontic site search. I'll probably have to refine it's style to make it feel like it's part of the design better.
What do you think of the direction it's heading?
The interesting parts are what's changed since my first draft, which several community staff commented on.
First, I'm going to start rolling out a new "generic" avatar. Instead of the ghostly outline used now (lovingly ripped from Wordpress), there will be the Icrontic-specific one shown above. Also, if you look at the "Last 5 Posts" box, you'll notice the bold username prefixing the comment excerpts. This was the result of a 15-minute back-and-forth in our chat room on the best way to present this sort of information. In the end, we decided that a Twitter-influenced look was the most informative and easiest to digest, and I've tried it out here. I updated the "Latest Comments" sidebar on the home page to reflect this new style over the weekend.
They also suggested removing the "Posts" column from the forum index to give some more breathing room to the Last Post info, so I've done that in the above rendering as well. The number of posts in a category is a great example of "things I might want to see once a month, not every time I open the forum." There's got to be a better way to present that. Still to be seen is how (if) I'll tweak that Last Post column further to increase readability.
For those of you who want to dive right into the forum categories, you'll be pleased to see that the Last 5 Posts header can be collapsed (and the forum remembers it being collapsed between visits). This reduces your overhead to almost nothing and removes an entire screen-worth of scrolling from your daily (hourly?) forum browsing.
Birthdays, events, and milestones will appear above the "Who's here?" box in the sidebar. The Byte and forum stats have also moved to the sidebar (below the part that was captured in the screenshot). The footer is nice and clean now, and is where I've moved the "Member List" link.
Now, some pain-points. First, I don't like the New Discussion icon. It screams lame default vBulletin. I need a new "button" design in general for the forum, and that will be its first test case when I figure it out. Second, I'm not sure about the Search box being above the big-bertha ad in the sidebar; I worry people won't identify it as an Icrontic site search. I'll probably have to refine it's style to make it feel like it's part of the design better.
What do you think of the direction it's heading?
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Comments
And I liked the 8 recent disscussions as opposed to last 5 posts. But if the "8" remain it would be really nice to have a "go to last post" button. Really handy if the discussion is more than one page.
It is starting to look more like the front page than a forum.
I know that I am just an old man that fears change , but that is the way I see it.
No disrespect intended
Scott
I guess part of the discussion I haven't brought up is that I'm trying to cast a wider net than other vBulletin forum users. I've decided that, while there is merit to being able to switch comfortably between forums, that's a pretty narrow group of people. The Internet is full of people who'd like to join in our conversations but don't necessarily know a thing about vBulletin. And, I don't think the vBulletin learning curve should be a requirement to participate
As an aside, the text of the "Last 5 Comments" is linked to the actual post shown (i.e. it will jump you down the page to it) so the text itself functions as the "go to last post" button.