Forum Replies Created
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Posts
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"battered_and_bruised":2gxv90bj wrote:Again,everyone is talking here like we have a team…The meeting is still this weekend and the votes still have to be tallied. Lets not jump the gun here.
[/quote:2gxv90bj]Fingers crossed it goes our way!
Ryan,
"Kyle":5a8mresa wrote:When you’re selling stuff, new products are news, as are special deals. People certainly consider that news when they’re buying it. As much as ‘XXX practice is cancelled is news’ or ‘Beasts won a game of ice hockey’ is news.
[/quote:5a8mresa]Yes, but it’s still not a news site which was what I was getting at.
Ryan,
"Michael":15k4vqwx wrote:Unique visits should help out with the actual number of people viewing the forums?
[/quote:15k4vqwx]People enter the forum at different points it the problem and I don’t have any way to track how many of those unique visitors is visiting multiple points of the forum.
On adding up ALL the uniques for the forum for the last month, they’re up to about 3200 odd, but presumably a whole bunch of those are double or triple ups.
The total uniques for the home page is 2438 for the past month.
So they’re in the same ball park, but at a guess there’s more uniques for the home page than the forum – but that’s only a guess.
"Chris":15k4vqwx wrote:Easy answer: stick the latest news item in the forum index header.e.g. “breaking news! Ryan lurves t3h buttsecks!”
[/quote:15k4vqwx]Or make the home page the most efficient way of checking the forum. But that’s already intended for the new design anyway. So there should be no need to check the forum per se as it’ll be integrated seamlessly into the home page.
Ryan,
"Kyle":3h0im9b8 wrote:You’re kidding right?[/quote:3h0im9b8]No, I’m serious. I don’t consider the latest IPod news, I consider that advertising and they don’t release new products every day, if they did they’d be over run with too much stuff on their site and it would be confusing as hell.
"Ryan":3h0im9b8 wrote:Personally I check the web page daily, but it’s static, and the forum is dynamic. If I knew that everything was posted to the forum then I wouldn’t go to the web page at all, because the forum tells me what I haven’t read already. The web site doesn’t do that with news.
[/quote:3h0im9b8]The forum gets about twice the number of visits as the home page. But there’s definitely a very large number of people who never use the forum. I don’t have numbers on it, but I’d estimate that more people check the home page than the forum, it’s just that the same people repeatedly ping the forum hence the stats are thrown out of whack.
Ryan,
"Jason":1ouunmtx wrote:What I’ve done on one of my sites….which is at the moment very outdated, but thats beside the point…is insert a script to randomly generate one of about 100 images every time the page is refreshed.[/quote:1ouunmtx]Yep, that is the plan for the new design. At least with some of the images anyway.
"Jason":1ouunmtx wrote:I personally like simple design with quite a bit of relevant colours, and straight to the point text, no need to get overly complicated. What is the colour scheme of the penguins going to be, take the colours of the jerseys and incorporate that into the site.[/quote:1ouunmtx]Yep, that’s definitely the plan too.
Ryan,
"Chris":3ku6eb25 wrote:Fourthly, if dunedinicehockey.hellyer.kiwi ever ends up looking anything like hockeycanada.ca I will personally castrate you. That site is sooooo 2001.[/quote:3ku6eb25]Have little fear, I hate it too.
"Chris":3ku6eb25 wrote:Fifthly, I find dunedinicehockey.hellyer.kiwi very very texty. I guess this is what I’ve been driving at with the whole beginners-section/make-the-text-bigger thing. There’s just too many words on the front page for anyone to navigate it.[/quote:3ku6eb25]Yep, no arguments there. Like I said before though, that stuff needs a redesign. There’s not a lot I can do at the moment as if I remove all the text, there aint much left <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/tongue.gif" alt="
” title=”Tongue” />Er, so you want ALL of the text bigger? I suggested that a while back and people didn’t like it, or at least someone didn’t like it, can’t remember who.
"Chris":3ku6eb25 wrote:The most elegant site on the web is probably http://www.apple.com. Hard to imitate, I know, but less text, more white, more colour are the order of the day, I think.[/quote:3ku6eb25]Nice site. Not much use for news though.
"Chris":3ku6eb25 wrote:Eighthly, we don’t need news posts going back two weeks. Today, yesterday and the day before is easily enough for me.[/quote:3ku6eb25]I think I need a highlighted news section or some such thing. As some news items need to stay for a few weeks to make sure people see them (most people don’t check the site more than once a week).
… you know, when I first started this thing, I actually had a hard time getting peoples opinions on it. I haven’t even asked your opinions and you guys are offering advice <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smiley.gif" alt="
” title=”Smiley” /> Makes my life much easier <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smiley.gif" alt="” title=”Smiley” />Once the branding side of things is sorted I’ll move on to this stuff, but in the mean time it’ll be on the backburner.
Ryan,
"Kyle":fh714513 wrote:Surely a site design should incorporate some brand energy? Why would you take a web about a fast, energetic, aggressive sport, and inspire your design on texty blog sites with very few images?[/quote:fh714513]Mainly coz they’re a butt load easier to update. And I figured images could easily be incorporated into those designs. Images are a high priority though, they’re just not in my immediate list of things to do, they sort of got lost in the design process somewhere, plus I’m wary of using photos which don’t suit the situation they’re in. I particularly need some permanent pictures, for example the type of large sized ones on the NZIHL and DIHL pages. Images are a pain to integrate without looking out of place, particularly within a flexible width design hence will be waiting till the new design is underway – otherwise I’ll end up doing the same job twice.
Just coz I like those sites for inspiration, doesn’t mean that it’d look like a generic blog. The final product would likely look quite non-blog’ish simply coz, well, this site is not a blog. The design ideas were more related to the use of a dominant header which in some the examples I showed you stretched right across the top of the screen. Whereas the main content of those sites meets the white space requirements you mentioned earlier (assuming I understood you correctly). The bloggy text type design is not what I had in mind, they’re just over simplified designs for inspiration.
I find it odd that you like most of those sites you linked to. They seem quite old hat and boring to me. Too much crap everywhere. Very 2003’ish. Or maybe I just have weird tastes in websites.
EDIT: Just thought of an old site I used to use which is vaguely along the lines of what I’m talking about … http://grandprix.com/
EDIT 2: Here’s another example, although this one is a bit busier than I’d like … http://www.pitpass.com/Ryan,
Kyle: I took a look through those sites you left links for. All of them used images for their news posts which were related to the post themselves (obviously); but this isn’t really an option for me as I don’t have either the time to prepare all those images, the time to take them all, or the knowledge of who/what the pictures would need to be of to make that work. Unless I had generic images, but then they’re not really appropriate IMO.
Also, I think I slightly misunderstood where you coming from with the white space comment before. I thought you were wanting the (half-filled) white space fully filled, rather than creating more of it.
The sort of sites I’m likely to use for inspiration in the new design are:
http://friendseat.com/
http://www.joostdevalk.nl/
http://cssgirl.com/
http://www.veoh.com/
http://www.projectseven.com/tutorials/
http://weblog.404creative.com/Ryan,
PS: Who ever they paid to code that Manchester United site should be kicked in the bollocks.
"Chris":7cuzvdmj wrote:Beginner’s page, “Wanna Compete?”, Second paragraph – “Althoug”[/quote:7cuzvdmj]Thanks. I’m assuming you don’t like the use of the word “wanna”?
"Chris":7cuzvdmj wrote:RE: Columns. IE conditional comment and tabulate it? If they’re using IE, they deserve the tables.[/quote:7cuzvdmj]It’s not an IE problem. It’s ALL other browsers apart from Firefox; Firefox introduced them as a browser specific hack, IE is actually in the right by not using them. Using non-standard code is weird and I’d like to avoid it. I only introduced the columns as a demo for a bunch of web nerds who wanted to know how they worked. The columns simply don’t work properly anyway, you end up with old news at the top of the page. I regularly (about once a month) get complaints about the columns so they really need to go. – having said all this, I do prefer them myself as they keep the news section more tightly knit, but again, that’s a design issue which will be dealt with later.
"Chris":7cuzvdmj wrote:Personally I would set the introductory text to about 1.4em[/quote:7cuzvdmj]What is “introductory text”?
Ryan,
"Kyle":3gw2sr3x wrote:I keep coming back to white space. The page uses the whole space across the browser, and I think it needs breaking up.[/quote:3gw2sr3x]That’s design thing, not really what I’m dealing with at the moment.
"Kyle":3gw2sr3x wrote:You talk about 2 columns, why not one column but restrict the width?[/quote:3gw2sr3x]Coz I think a design which uses the whole white space would be better. Fixed width is budget IMO.
"Kyle":3gw2sr3x wrote:The other thing is photos on the front page. Hockey is a very photographic sport, and we had a professional photographer here for most of the season. Why not take advantage of it? Photos break up text, provide the action and excitement that is inherent in the sport, colour etc.[/quote:3gw2sr3x]Again, that’s a design thing. So will be dealt with later. I could add random photos to the page, but I’d prefer to have photos related to up to date stuff in the hockey world which is tricky since there’s a massive lack of photos coming in (ie: zero since Joe left).
"Kyle":3gw2sr3x wrote:What about a ‘most recent games’ box. A photo on top with a sentence story below. With games from the DIHL. nhl.com has a really good box which slides along through about 5 stories I think.[/quote:3gw2sr3x]I really need a photo which is related to the game though. Which is a fundamental problem unless I run round with a camera taking pictures all the time (not gonna happen).
"Kyle":3gw2sr3x wrote:The news items are still too long. I think the purpose of the news should be to get people interacting with the site. That means clicking. If you take a news story:[/quote:3gw2sr3x]I’m a bit wary of linking multiple times to the same forum topic from the latest news section. I thought it might be a bit annoying for people constantly clicking links which lead them to essentially the same place each time.
"Kyle":3gw2sr3x wrote:I’d also break news up. News I think really should be for stuff that has happened. Some of this stuff is ‘coming up’, and that should be separated out – push it out into that white space in a new section.[/quote:3gw2sr3x]Good idea <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smiley.gif" alt="
” title=”Smiley” /> I’ll looking into that. Won’t be done any time soon though – too many other things to deal with at the moment.Thanks for the input <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smiley.gif" alt="
” title=”Smiley” />Ryan,
Thanks Jason <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smiley.gif" alt="
” title=”Smiley” />"Jason":383vtxqr wrote:I’m not sure about the column layout, there’s a lot of horizontal reading there, I think I prefer two columns or offset it with another photo, etc so that it doesn’t blend together.[/quote:383vtxqr]Yeah, that’s a fundamental problem with the design. The thing is, only 40% of our visitors can see the columns anyway as they only work with Firefox. I can’t incorporate the columns without causing all sorts of problems with the titles of the news posts seperating from the post itself, and the titles are needed as part of the new system.
There’ll be a new design coming up at some stage which will avoid the overly-wide news posts issue. Basically, that’s a problem I’m aware of and am happy to leave until the design is upgraded.
Ryan,
For any of you on Facebook. If you visit my Facebook profile you’ll see that the latest news posts from the new test site show up on my Facebook profile <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smiley.gif" alt="
” title=”Smiley” />Anyone can set this up as it is simply using the RSS feed from the site. Hopefully this will help keep those who don’t check the site everyday more informed and give us a bit of free advertising too. Just need to convince people to start putting it on their profile!
Ryan,
"Crash":169erkjq wrote:but Ryan said they don’t look quite as good as the ones I have.[/quote:169erkjq]I said ‘pretty’, not ‘good’.
‘good’ does not equal ‘pretty’.I’ll PM some FTP details for your own account. That way you can test out anything you want and Chris wont need to worry about another person having FTP access to the site.
Ryan,
"battered_and_bruised":3jwpz58x wrote:Had to be done. It works well though. Had them playing well I thought…and I must say for 32 shots against and only 4 goals against, that wasn’t too bad. The Jonnies guys would like me to play again in goal for them next week, is that okay? It’s not like I am playing out or anything.
[/quote:3jwpz58x]Jane is likely to be quite busy over the next few days so I’m guessing wont have time to respond. It should be zero problem for them though I imagine. Would be handy for them to have someone more experienced helping them on the ice too.
Ryan,
Chris, how about sticking it in the main menu instead?
https://dunedinicehockey.hellyer.kiwi/beta/%5B/url:3qs3o95j%5D
I’ve removed the ‘News’ dropdown to fit it in. I don’t think the news dropdown was used much anyway.
Ryan,
