Hey guys, I've completed a rough first draft of the forum theme I'm building for MGSA.
Full Links:
http://nitrogenlab.com/files/mgsa2015/homepage.jpg
http://nitrogenlab.com/files/mgsa2015/homepagefull.jpg
Notes:
* The title of the site could be a contentious issue, I changed it from "makegamesSA" to "Make Games South Africa" to allow me to fit it on to two lines. I dont mind changing it again as long as it's not too long.
* The pagination and sidebar lists are a bit rough still, I will be putting more attention to them next.
* There's still no style for Announcement discussions.
* There's a few pages missing such as All Categories (which I think is useless if you have them on the sidebar) and stuff like My Drafts which I'll probably put under your profile dropdown.
* My monitor at home is larger than HD, so the fonts and dimensions may be a little large for smaller screens? That said,
* If you have constructive criticism to add, first download the PSD here, and mock up your idea and repost a screenshot of it here. Please dont just say "I dont like it". Rather, make a mockup and show us how you would have done it.
Full Links:
http://nitrogenlab.com/files/mgsa2015/homepage.jpg
http://nitrogenlab.com/files/mgsa2015/homepagefull.jpg
Notes:
* The title of the site could be a contentious issue, I changed it from "makegamesSA" to "Make Games South Africa" to allow me to fit it on to two lines. I dont mind changing it again as long as it's not too long.
* The pagination and sidebar lists are a bit rough still, I will be putting more attention to them next.
* There's still no style for Announcement discussions.
* There's a few pages missing such as All Categories (which I think is useless if you have them on the sidebar) and stuff like My Drafts which I'll probably put under your profile dropdown.
* My monitor at home is larger than HD, so the fonts and dimensions may be a little large for smaller screens? That said,
* If you have constructive criticism to add, first download the PSD here, and mock up your idea and repost a screenshot of it here. Please dont just say "I dont like it". Rather, make a mockup and show us how you would have done it.
Comments
Also I like the look of the theme.
Wouldn't it make more sense just to allow you to filter for those categories and have the category of the thread perhaps underneath the thread title?
A few things i've found useful from the other themes/iterations
* view count on the current theme is quite fun/useful
* From the mobile theme (and I'm guessing it's the same in your mockup) knowing who the thread owner is more useful to me than knowing who the most recent commenter is. At best I think we should have both bits of info available
* Agree with @dammit, the category tab would be more useful on the second line.
Keep up the good work!
1. Category colour tags - them being in different widths does suck, I'm fine with moving them below the title, but it might be a bit cramped there. Alternatively, how about we move them off to the right of each item, where there's just whitespace now?
I know in what we have now there's a gear icon ("dismiss"??) and a star (who uses that?)... Are they necessary?
2. Where *did* the thread starter go? It used to be there.
3. Agreed on view counts. We should keep them.
4. I would prefer makegamesSA.com rather than Make Games South Africa, as the makegamesSA is shown everywhere else as the latter rather than the former. Are there reasons other than "can put it on two lines" for using the latter option?
5. The "Get in touch" with the icons feel unnecessary. Twitter and facebook icons should be enough.
6. Are those the actual top nav/tag items that we've settled on?
Great diggidy job @Nitrogen :)
I also actually prefer Make Games SA rather than makegameSA in the title. Looks more professional overall.
Having the Get in Touch call to action seems like a good idea to me.
It's extremely difficult to satisfy everyone's needs in terms of the information layout for the discussions list.
2. The thing is that people shouldn't read them as part of the thread title, it becomes cumbersome if you're forced to - if the categories are equal widths it would be easier to read the title sans the category, which is how we would read it in most cases, for speed's sake.
3. What do you mean tabulate the data? On the thread list view? Or something else?
4. Gotcha, gear and star = good :)
5. Everywhere else refers to t-shirts, branding elsewhere (events etc). The thinking was that the singular wordmark is enough to communicate a whole bunch of things - it's about making games, in SA, and there's the url if you're interested. It beats having "Make Games South Africa - makegamessa.com" in most instances. Of course, this being the website itself, it makes sense not to NEED the url in the logo, but we've kinda adopted it *as* the logo. If we wanna change it then we can discuss it... Probably elsewhere. We don't have a CI beyond the bare basics that we threw together super quickly. https://www.dropbox.com/s/985r07q8f5gqs2d/makegames_logo.pdf?dl=0
6. I didn't realise the Get In Touch was a page on its own. Its arrangement with the social icons make easily read as being associated.
7. Cool
Only thing is be sure to test with a max length forum title using wide letters like W. Imaging that will break it pretty quickly. Like maybe views can be part of the second column which leaves more space for the title. ;)
Also, I tried the old site title text in the above version.
Here's my mockup. Let 'er rip!
<img src="http://makegamessa.com/uploads/FileUpload/86/3ce05ccf56bb9bd8faac96b963c16b.png" />
(by the way the insert image button after attaching it seems to be white on white? Invisible?)
I just wonder about the "I think it's important" line of thinking as other people might also find the thread starter important. Or number of comments important, then we're back to everything on the left, which I'd rather avoid.
Anyway, I'm happy with it left or right, it's really not like I can't or don't associate the [x new] icon with its correct thread title easily enough anyway.
I don't feel particularly strongly about this, and I'm not a designer, so it's just my 2c
I've been working on coding up the MGSA theme, and I need to get some outside opinions as a sanity check. Does it look okay on an HD screen?
- The colours of the categories are based on a formula that takes in a Hue and spits out the tinted colours you see. It's probably not as good as hand tweaked values though.
- The date formats are more informative now (you can actually see what time things were posted now)
- The Red strip dog-ear corner thingy is meant to show an announcement post. I'm not 100% happy with them, but cant find a better way to do it at the moment.
- You'll notice threads that are longer than one page long have quicklinks to each page next to them. Clicking on the title or the number of comments will take you to your last read post.
- The good news is that we're getting a per-user setting to choose either a light or dark theme. Wooo!
1. Are bookmarks still accessible?
2. How soon can we switch to this?
I'm sure we can find things to improve once we've had a bit of a chance to use it, but I vote for switching now and working out the minor details later. The only thing that would make me want to wait before switching is if bookmarks don't work cause I make fairly extensive use of them and I believe others do too.
Before we can start using it, I've got to fix up the thread page, it's still untouched as of yet, but yeah I'm all for installing it and tweaking as we go.
On the date format, is it then everything that's not this year gets a year on it? So the 2015 posts are not labelled 2015 and the rest are? I'm fine with that, but some people might find that confusing. Maybe. Probably not a big deal.
I in fact like the dog-eared announcement posts much better than the vague colour shifts we had in the past where I usually have to move my head up and down to see which were stickies and which weren't. We might change it from triangles to circles (like iOS notifications) or stars or whatnot if anyone else has good reason to, but I think the triangles are good.
"Mark All Viewed" should really not be on top like that, right? Probably should be under the page selection (pagination) element, but visually it should be right-aligned, on the same row as "Home" just above "Make Games SA".
Wait, that whole big "Make Games SA" should actually "Discussions" or "Home", rather than repeating the name just above it.
Good job man :)
@Tuism - Yes those are all valid points,
The dates grow in complexity depending on how far in the past they are, so it starts with 6:00pm (if it's today) then 6:00pm 12 Feb (If its this year), then finally 6:00pm 12 Feb 2014 (For anything else)
Lots of things can be hovered over with the mouse to see more info - the dates show full dates, the title shows an excerpt of the discussion and the avatar image shows who it's started by and when.
The "Mark All Viewed" yes, I am going to nuke that menu item, I dont have a lot of control over where it's put because it's a plugin for the forums, but it's proper place will be in the menu that appears under your name.
The homepage title will definitely change to something like "Recent Discussions" or something. It's just a setting in the backend.
I'm just getting the comment view looking better and then we'll be ready to start using it.
I see there's some issues with images not resizing, I'll have a look at those tonight.
By the by, are we expecting to see a custom home page anytime soon? I only mention this because if we're going to be handing out MGSA "business cards" at GDC we should show people arriving first time better context and representation.
You can at least browse through @Elyaradine's Art Dump now without fear! (Amazing work in there dude by the way, it was quite cool to test the resizing with :P )
I didnt think anyone used that. I'll think about how to add it in a decent way, like a footer menu or something...
Sorry for being a nuisance. :P