Outdated Design???

[limsy]

Originally Posted by ctjcad

What i would add, though, to the current webpage & perhaps improve the forum are:
1. A visible enough Search box (which i've mentioned/suggested before)..perhaps no more repeated threads??
2. A link to BWF's homepage for their latest World Rankings
3. A link to tournamentsoftware.com for the latest & greatest scores/tourneys (we do have that now, but only through each individual Tournament's section/sub-forum)..
4. Link(s) to badminton news portals, either use the badzine.info website or the BWF homepage

bright idea from chris

[elastiekje]

Originally Posted by ctjcad

- What i meant was, when is this change going to be actually implemented??

Well, actually, your guess is as good as mine. Ultimately it's Kwun who has to authorise it. I can't answer that question for you.

Do you know abt BWF's website?? Do you know they have news article as well?? Hmm, it's not so much abt badzine.info giving BC something "visible" in return.

I'm aware of its existence, yes. And I think both badzine.info and internationalbadminton.org can be interesting to our visitors here at BC. So that's why I thought your idea to link to them in the top menu still is a good idea.

I guess in a way, BC could operate on its own, even without any news/article feed as we get to read news/articles, from different media sources, being shared by other members as well.

That's what this new design actually aims for: it doesn't try to add any external newsfeeds or whatever, it merely provides easy access to them. And BC - in this particular approach - can remain what it is: a forum where its members share the earlier mentioned news and their opinions.

I was thinking, if the change is basically to the forum's banner/header, why don't we just use the same banner as before (in the Homepage)?

Primarily because simply putting up that header, doesn't provide for the features you suggested yourself: the quicklinks and the prominent search bar. Next to that, I personally think the website would greatly benefit from this revision in which the banners (Kwuns revenue needed to keep up this site) are better integrated.

Secondly, I think we have to opportunity to start something new here, so we don't have to start building on something that was phased out over 1,5 years ago. Of course there's still more than enough room for changes to my design and I invite others to submit their proposals as well.

Originally Posted by limsy

bright idea from chris

I agree, but we all have to realise that returning to such a portal like site, requires the very active involvement of more than just Kwun (and a couple of moderators). News gathering, editing pieces, etc. takes up a lot of time. I applaud any such effort, but I'd then also very much welcome some kind of plan regarding how to mobilise and retain a group of people willing to invest their time and effort into such an endeavour.

[phaarix]

I'm glad this has been brought up, always good to have some change every now and then . Love your design elastiekje, never been a fan of the left alignment. Looks squashed up on a large-ish monitor.

I hope this goes ahead, there's a lot of potential to really update the site, it could be quite exciting!

Originally Posted by elastiekje

I agree, but we all have to realise that returning to such a portal like site, requires the very active involvement of more than just Kwun (and a couple of moderators). News gathering, editing pieces, etc. takes up a lot of time. I applaud any such effort, but I'd then also very much welcome some kind of plan regarding how to mobilise and retain a group of people willing to invest their time and effort into such an endeavour.

There are quite a few members who regularly update with the latest news etc.. I guess a lot of the time it's copy and paste... but I'm sure there'd be interest.

[limsy]

hehe
i will
after i graduate

[ctjcad]

Originally Posted by elastiekje

Well, actually, your guess is as good as mine. Ultimately it's Kwun who has to authorise it. I can't answer that question for you.
...
Primarily because simply putting up that header, doesn't provide for the features you suggested yourself: the quicklinks and the prominent search bar. Next to that, I personally think the website would greatly benefit from this revision in which the banners (Kwuns revenue needed to keep up this site) are better integrated.

Secondly, I think we have to opportunity to start something new here, so we don't have to start building on something that was phased out over 1,5 years ago. Of course there's still more than enough room for changes to my design and I invite others to submit their proposals as well.

I agree, but we all have to realise that returning to such a portal like site,
...

- That's more important. The execution part...
- Using the old banner could still work. IMO, there's no major difference between your banner and the old BC banner; after all it's just a banner. We can put the Search bar below the banner, non-intrusive of the banner. The quick links/tabs bar at the top can be re-located. We can even have them layed out on the sides.
- What is a design that is "phased out over 1.5 yrs ago"? or one that is current?? or one that shows "1.5 yrs into the future?"...
- I was referring to the layout sample, not going back to a portal type website. BC homepage as a discussion board can stay as is for now, but the layout could change. The example of that UCI website is just an option for the new BC layout.

[elastiekje]

Originally Posted by ctjcad

- What is a design that is "phased out over 1.5 yrs ago"? or one that is current?? or one that shows "1.5 yrs into the future?"...

Personally I don't see any purpose in re-introducing the 'old design' at a point in time where you have the opportunity to do something new and perhaps make things more attractive. There's something to be said about what constitutes 'more attractive', but I'll let others be the judge of that . My last iteration certainly isn't a final draft yet!

The header that I attached to one of my earlier posts is the one that - I believe - was phased out when BC was turned into its current form: first and foremost a forum website. So either this is a form of linguistic miss-communication (might well be, I'm no native speaker, far from it ), or I value the introduction of a new design more than you do.

- I was referring to the layout sample, not going back to a portal type website. BC homepage as a discussion board can stay as is for now, but the layout could change. The example of that UCI website is just an option for the new BC layout.

Of course that's true, I understand that. It's a good example of a portal website.

[ctjcad]

- IMO, there's no one better or one worse banner design. As long as the banner involves anything to do with badminton (old banner or your proposed design), that'll fly with me. Of course, how interesting, attractive or catchy it is, it will depend on the viewers' opinion.
- Yes, the link you gave earlier was the last banner design for the (portal) site. It can be used for the current discussion forum format, can't it?? What does a "new design" involve? Simply a banner design? or a complete layout design? or both?..
From Wong8Egg's 1st post, it seems the proposed change was only to the forum's banner/header??..
Hmm, I don't think there's any miscommunication...

[phaarix]

For the sake of variety I'd rather see a new banner personally. I don't know how many designers we have here, but in other forums logo/banner competitions have had quite a lot of entries (even if there is no prize other than to have your logo/banner used )!

Personally there are a few things I'd like to see:

- Layout centred on the page

- New banner

- New colour scheme to match the banner

Which is kind of like what we've seen so far anyway. Simple but effective.

I also think it could be a little wider. It seems to be 910px wide at the moment?? So somewhere between 800 and 1024. I know.... zero people who use 800x600 resolution now, so I don't see why it couldn't be stratched a bit to perfectly fit to a 1024x768 screen.

[Wong8Egg]

Originally Posted by phaarix

For the sake of variety I'd rather see a new banner personally. I don't know how many designers we have here, but in other forums logo/banner competitions have had quite a lot of entries (even if there is no prize other than to have your logo/banner used )!

Personally there are a few things I'd like to see:

- Layout centred on the page

- New banner

- New colour scheme to match the banner

Which is kind of like what we've seen so far anyway. Simple but effective.

I also think it could be a little wider. It seems to be 910px wide at the moment?? So somewhere between 800 and 1024. I know.... zero people who use 800x600 resolution now, so I don't see why it couldn't be stratched a bit to perfectly fit to a 1024x768 screen.

Changing the color scheme could be time-consuming, simply you have to update the property for every single element in the CSS. But maybe Kuwn can find some pre-themed template to borrow the css (maybe layout too). Then we can design the banner from there and on. I believe this would be the simplest way to change the look.

But yeah, I agree that simple is better and hopefully we can get something going soon.

[elastiekje]

Originally Posted by Wong8Egg

Changing the color scheme could be time-consuming, simply you have to update the property for every single element in the CSS.

This seems to be the current css-file: http://www.badmintoncentral.com/foru...3486-00019.css. Doesn't look that impressive: notepad and Control+H can get you a long way .

Phaarix has a good point and it's something I already took into account with both versions of my proposal. I'd even consider going wider than the 1024 width, but I don't know what resolution the majority of users use. Kwun can probably tell us.

[phaarix]

Originally Posted by elastiekje

This seems to be the current css-file: http://www.badmintoncentral.com/foru...3486-00019.css. Doesn't look that impressive: notepad and Control+H can get you a long way .

Phaarix has a good point and it's something I already took into account with both versions of my proposal. I'd even consider going wider than the 1024 width, but I don't know what resolution the majority of users use. Kwun can probably tell us.

Oh wow... if I'd known about ctrl H before I could have saved so much time . Thanks for the tip!

[Gollum]

From the perspective of a web designer, I see several problems with this project:

• Design by committee
• Lack of a clear agreement with the "client" (kwun)
• Unclear goals (feature creep)

Speculation on whether kwun should return to running a portal site is futile. Unless the man himself says so, I think we can assume BC is not going back to portal content.

Personally, I think there are two main problems with the current setup:

• The banner "links" that don't actually work
• The loss of old articles

The banner "links" are really confusing. It's just bad usability, and is surprising to see on such a popular site. The site doesn't necessary need a brand-new banner, but those "links" really should be removed.

It seems that the old articles were removed as a consequence of deciding not to produce (or syndicate) new ones. This is a bad decision. The old articles were worth keeping; there was no need to delete them.

[Destricto_Ense]

Having spent a lot of time looking at BC's CSS, trying to figure out how to centre and adjust the page with Stylish ... I can say that it's quite a headache in terms of columns, nested DIVs and browser compatibility. With that said, I think the latest generation of browsers are all pretty standards-compliant, with IE8 being a notable improvement over previous generations and IE6 dying out completely.

I would be in favour of a design overhaul.

[phaarix]

All I'd like to see is the site centered and freshened up a bit. With a new design preferably, but a little polishing up here and there would be okay too!

IE6 is practically dead? I really hope so... IE6 really put me off web design a few years back...

[phaarix]

Originally Posted by Destricto_Ense

Having spent a lot of time looking at BC's CSS, trying to figure out how to centre and adjust the page with Stylish ... I can say that it's quite a headache in terms of columns, nested DIVs and browser compatibility. With that said, I think the latest generation of browsers are all pretty standards-compliant, with IE8 being a notable improvement over previous generations and IE6 dying out completely.

I would be in favour of a design overhaul.

Just tried fiddling around with Stylish for the first time. It's pretty fun! If you figure out a way to get the site centered though, please let me know .

[Destricto_Ense]

Originally Posted by phaarix

Just tried fiddling around with Stylish for the first time. It's pretty fun! If you figure out a way to get the site centered though, please let me know .

I have managed it, but it does result in some strange effects on centring other elements of the page ... like text in the post composition field. This is because I had to style the html tag since I couldn't figure out which DIV it was that I had to centre (the page content is in like 5 nested DIVs and even centring all of them had no effect...) I will PM the code to you