Site Redesign

[AROS]

I actually like my mock up sample even though I am hearing it looks dated. I think the key is to keep it simple, not over-design things. I personally dig the chrome/gun metal look but I get that some find it dated. I am open to different fonts and stylings to the font...But at the end of the day it's the Land Lord's call.

 

[Bobblehead]

Last year, our esteemed land lord came to me and asked me about a possible freshening up of .NET. I thought it was a great idea, I put a couple new takes on the old logo and they were both met with a collective "meh".

Rightfully so.

I found it ridiculously difficult to improve upon what I originally designed years ago. The masthead you see every day to your top left.

Great points were raised however. We have new uniforms, new colors...Maybe we should redesign our forum template to adhere to these new colors/logo tweaks, et al. As a graphic designer for nearly 20 years now, I completely agreed with the overall sentiment. I was frustrated that I couldn't figure out what would be the perfect solution for a new look for .NET. I know for a fact that a few of our members are fellow graphic designers like myself with great talent. So the question to you all is...

Should we redesign .NET? If so, what are your ideas to do so? Would you like a new masthead graphic? New color scheme for the background, buttons, etc?

Or do you want .NET to remain the same that it has looked for the past, what...six years or so?

This is the thread to voice your opinion...There's no right or wrong feedback...We will take it all into consideration.

49ers fans excluded of course. :stirthepot:

You have done a wonderful job on this site, it is really elegant with the right amount of sophistication without being to "overboard".
Colors everything is great and I have nothing to suggest.

except.. Is there any way to paste graphics without having to upload them? It would be nice just to cut and paste, but that maybe a product of the software used.

Let me thank you for building this site for all us Seahawk fans, I do appreciate it, there are very many knowledgeable fans that have a lot of good things to say and I do enjoy the banter that goes on. Thank you.

 

[MizzouHawkGal]

I have no issue with the site on my phone, and I don't use tapatalk either. The hell does tapatalk do for you anyway?

That's my question also. I have no issue running this site via phone but dark blue/white is ridiculous and hard on the eyes I am not blind but I am starting to think many of you are.

 

[MizzouHawkGal]

Last year, our esteemed land lord came to me and asked me about a possible freshening up of .NET. I thought it was a great idea, I put a couple new takes on the old logo and they were both met with a collective "meh".

Rightfully so.

I found it ridiculously difficult to improve upon what I originally designed years ago. The masthead you see every day to your top left.

Great points were raised however. We have new uniforms, new colors...Maybe we should redesign our forum template to adhere to these new colors/logo tweaks, et al. As a graphic designer for nearly 20 years now, I completely agreed with the overall sentiment. I was frustrated that I couldn't figure out what would be the perfect solution for a new look for .NET. I know for a fact that a few of our members are fellow graphic designers like myself with great talent. So the question to you all is...

Should we redesign .NET? If so, what are your ideas to do so? Would you like a new masthead graphic? New color scheme for the background, buttons, etc?

Or do you want .NET to remain the same that it has looked for the past, what...six years or so?

This is the thread to voice your opinion...There's no right or wrong feedback...We will take it all into consideration.

49ers fans excluded of course. :stirthepot:

You have done a wonderful job on this site, it is really elegant with the right amount of sophistication without being to "overboard".
Colors everything is great and I have nothing to suggest.

except.. Is there any way to paste graphics without having to upload them? It would be nice just to cut and paste, but that maybe a product of the software used.

Let me thank you for building this site for all us Seahawk fans, I do appreciate it, there are very many knowledgeable fans that have a lot of good things to say and I do enjoy the banter that goes on. Thank you.

Hi Bobble it's Jo, I totally disagree with your view. I assume we're still friends right?

 

[QuahHawk]

Aros, I dig the feather backround on that. I do think the font could be better, I like the grey seahawks similar to the jersey numbers but that might be to much feathers.

Any way the whole background could have the feather wallpaper?

I also think a Wolf grey background and navy lettering would look nice if we did go away from the blue.

 

[nsport]

I'd say there are a number of things to "improve" - not to say anything is wrong with the site at all. Left alone I think it does the job just fine.

- Platform Search - I'd suggest looking at the possible alternative forum platforms - there are many out there. I'm sure most are open source / contributeware - but I think a good catalog of what new "features" would be desirable and those that are meaningless would be a worthwhile effort. Even a commercial product may offer more stability / scalability.
- Colors - no complaints about the color scheme - but there definitely could be a little more brightness to the site if I was forced to make a suggestion here.
- Mobile - more people are on mobile platforms than ever before. Would be nice to find some great features/functionality that are mobile friendly
- Content - Features? Authors? Newsfeeds? I think it would be compelling to bring in feature articles, editorials, etc. Forum posts are fine - but I bet there are a lot of people who would be jazzed about writing a few 300-500 word articles now and then. Even syndication would be excellent - there are some excellent beat writers for the Hawks that a lot of people probably don't know about. I think many come here because it is a great place to find new and updated news on the Hawks - I think it would be a good idea to supplement that. One good example I saw was from the Wayback machine - http://web.archive.org/web/200302010934 ... /main.html

 

[QuahHawk]

I like the Navy on Grey but the green doesn't show up so that won't work. If we went with a dark blue and a grey lettering instead of white it would look pretty good.

 

[kigenzun]

Best site. Best color scheme. You have done a great job. Don't change a thing... Change it all around willy nilly... idk graphics, so I trust your expertise. :lol:

 

[volsunghawk]

I liked HawknBalls' mockup pretty well. I liked the background in Todd's mockup, but I agree that the style of the font makes it look dated/unprofessional.

I agree with the idea of more navy blue and the feather totem addition, too.

 

[Hawkstorian]

You always come up with awesome designs, Aros. I'm looking forward to a freshened up look!

One suggestion that may be unrelated, but I would prefer that when we click a link it pops up a new tab.

 

[hawker84]

I would like to see a "Quote" and "Quote+" button.

Quote+ which is basically what we have .. you can capture the original quote and reply..

i would like to see a "quote" button, where it just captures the reply to a quote , as of right now, i have to copy and paste the reply, then highlight and go to the BBCodes to quote it.. be nice to just have a button added ..

other than that i truly think this is one of the best designs on the Web that I've seen


thanks Aros

 

[Omahawk]

Cool! I trust your judgements, Aros. You've done nothing that I didn't like. I can't wait to see it. If I can offer any input, I'd like to see some "wolf" gray and some of that striping pattern used in a subtle way somehow.

 

[nsport]

TwistedHusky, your post makes me cringe. Just out of curiosity, have you ever tried to make a mobile version of a web forum site that works consistently well across the majority of mobile devices out there? The different resolutions of the original Kindle Fire tablet, QHD phones, 1080p phones, 720p phones, various browsers for varying mobile platforms like Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Maxthon, Miren, and the myriad other browsers out there?

It's a ton of work. Tapatalk is so many order of magnitudes simpler and easier to have people use than designing a good mobile site, it's not even funny. Who's going to pay for all that work on a free forum that doesn't use advertising, hmm? You want to make a $5,000 donation specifically for that purpose, perhaps?

Both of you make great points. In the past couple of years, website templates have gone "responsive" - meaning they automatically adapt to the screen resolution and browser type. The key to mobile browsing is to show less in the screen and keep the functionality - no crazy scripting or plugins needed for an optimal experience. Responsive platforms do not require separate coding to ensure that the user has a great experience - probably similar to how Tapatalk ports over the basics - a responsive theme would operate without a 3rd party plugin and provide more or less the same or better experience.

 

[TwistedHusky]

Exactly.

You don't need $5000 to do that.

You need HTML5 and CSS code. Just do an @media screen check in the CSS and adjust your sizes accordingly.

Or you could use Bootstrap which does it all for you. But it would probably take the same amount of time to do that as it would to add feathers or quote box. The impact on the site as far as contribution to value and keeping new traffic would be levels different.

Regardless, it doesn't matter what the limitations are. The reality is that is where traffic is coming from, that is where more of it will come from and so neglecting to make changes in making a site mobile friendly just means that you are deciding that 70% of your future traffic/users are not worth the effort.

The average user isn't going to know what Tapatalk even is. They are going to think it is an ad (or worse) when you log in and it tells you that you should go get it. I know I did.

Now given this site has no advertising maybe there is some compensation that comes to Tapatalk because of the relationship to the site? I don't know, and if that is the case and this site needs that $$$ to keep itself healthy then OK. But plenty of people don't or won't use it and many of those are still probably arriving from various mobile devices. There are some good cheap resources for making things responsive, or you could crowdsource the work using your users which I am sure some of which are probably web dev, design and other experts.

In our household, we have 3 desktop computers and one laptop. We also have 6 tablets (a variety of Apple, Nexus and Nooks). Guess which ones get used more. That doesn't count the iphones, ipods, and android phones. In my personal use, only use the desktop for this site for the reasons I already indicated.

You don't need to individually support each device, you just to set specific screen sizes and item sizes so that everything is easy to use, easy to read, and not confusing. But not making a site touch friendly (eg remove links - replace with panels, etc) is a choice that goes against the tide. Eventually you will have to do it anyway.

 

[RolandDeschain]

Both of you make great points. In the past couple of years, website templates have gone "responsive" - meaning they automatically adapt to the screen resolution and browser type. The key to mobile browsing is to show less in the screen and keep the functionality - no crazy scripting or plugins needed for an optimal experience. Responsive platforms do not require separate coding to ensure that the user has a great experience - probably similar to how Tapatalk ports over the basics - a responsive theme would operate without a 3rd party plugin and provide more or less the same or better experience.

This is fine if you're building a site from the ground up, but in this scenario, Anguish & company are at the mercy of PHPBB. I'm not sure building a simple and effective responsive platform out of a PHPBB forum like you're describing is realistically feasible without a tremendous amount of work. All to simply equal what Tapatalk already provides, more or less. Again, I point out the fact that Seahawks.net is not some corporation with a development staff, it's run by guys covering expenses out of their own pockets (unless they've gotten enough donations and Amazon/eBay purchases to cover it, now) and doing free work for the site in their spare time.

Far different from company X having four of its own 36 salaried web developers working on a mobile site, as an example.

 

[SmokinHawk]

Needs more comic sans, imo.

 

[AbsolutNET]

I think a multi-quote feature would be useful. That way you can quote & respond to several posts in one reply. Just click the "multi-quote" button as you go through a thread, and it populates them in the reply box at the bottom of the page.

 

[Seahawk Sailor]

How about something like this?

Absolutely love this! And correct me if I'm wrong, but the darker blue better mirrors the blue on the uniforms now, too, doesn't it?

 

[ivotuk]

Can we change the font to medium/light blue and instead of those eyes on the left, a totem character in there. And what about font type? There's got to be something that can reflect the PNW out there. Roland would probably know off the top of his head what would be appropriate.

Also, what about moving the page numbers off to the right of the post title?

Remember how FPDhawks name used to have that kind of flash to it? Wonder if you could add that to the title at the top or would that be too much?

 

[TwistedHusky]

"I'm not sure building a simple and effective responsive platform out of a PHPBB forum like you're describing is realistically feasible without a tremendous amount of work."

Well if it is PHPBB3, just off the top of my head you could order a RocketTheme for $300 and just hard code the color, design changes into it.

The newest templates are all responsive design. And while they aren't free, and $300 is not free - doesn't require a staff of 36 either.

The OP originally asked for help in deciding what design changes need to be made. The single most important design change for the site is to make it mobile friendly. If there are budget/time/expertise constraints on this then maybe we all pool what we know and can add to in order to make it possible.

But the best way to solve a problem has to start with acknowledging it exists. Once you start looking at what you can do to fix the mobile aspect (and relying on a 3rd party plugin is a dangerous fix imho), then you can

The key seems to be to find a templated PHPBB resource that can be used for commercial purposes, that way you do not have to reinvent the wheel build all the responsive web design elements from scratch.
Then start customizing to match current use.
Get a group of posters to test it and share their thoughts on what additional changes should be.
Finally, rollout the replacement on your existing servers.

Or, if you want to get fancy, use some of the free web forums on github available for things like rails, or call the guys from something like Discourse.org and pitch them on the value of helping you get your NFL fan forum using their open source product and then they could use it as a showcase to sell to other teams.

The options are out there, they take some time and decisions but not a whole lot of money.