New site design: getting your help!

I've mentioned it on Twitter, but I've hired a firm to help me redesign Gamers' Plane. I like GP overall, but its a bit messy, a bit harsh, and needs professional work. Hopefully in time, donations and referrals will help offset costs, but either way, its happening.

That said, I could use the thoughts of my users! First, color palettes. I'm considering sticking with the red/black/orange/white arrangement. I think it'll work as a new logo as well, though I'm open to other thoughts.

Second, design. Are there other sites that have neat designs/mechanics/visual items you like? For example, though I'm not a huge fan of their overall setup, I like the landing page for Obsidan Portal. Its clean, nice use of graphics, etc. What else?

The color palette looks good to me, but can you change the "new post" icon? With the dice being so small I can't tell the difference without zooming in on my iPad.

For design, does that include a wiki? Or is that functionality? Same question for being able to use (Multi)Markdown in posts. Visually, I love the simplicity of GP. It loads up nice and quick on my iPad and iPhone, with not a lot of fiddly bits to get in the way.

I'm a minimalist when it comes to web sites; the less clutter and useless graphics the better. Overall I really like this site for its visual simplicity, nothing distracting me while I'm going about my business.

I'm not a big fan of the palette colors, I think they're too dark and distract a bit from the nice clean look of the pages overall.

A new layout for the homepage would be nice, not sure what to suggest really, but it's the only page on the site that looks cluttered at all to me. Might be the big black box with my game list in it, just doesn't seem to belong there visually. Some options as to what appears on the home page might be nice as well, simple layout manager for registered users or the like.

That would be pretty sweet!

The design won't be including many major new features. There'll be some new things coming in, like a redesign of the tools, but mostly the same. No wiki yet, and I'll be building a blog off of the new design.

Any suggestions for palettes szemely?

I will keep developing functionality while the redesign goes on, its not like I'm stopping just to make things pretty! And I agree szemely, the simplicity of GP is one thing I'm shooting for and plan on keeping. White background, simple colors, clean layout. But blue input boxes, the messy parallelograms, and just overall visual could use touching up, both for look and for user experience.

Not specifically, no. Just something light would be nice when it comes to the pages themselves (I've always been partial to light blue themes for webpages, but that's how I roll).

Like the black and the dark red headers on the main forum page, while they do their job nicely, are pretty harsh to me. Light color for those with a dark enough gray text to easily make out the words would be easier on the eyes for me. The large dark grey section on the bottom of the page (with the referral links and such) is a bit harsh as well.

Personally as a function before form type of guy i really like it as is. Color scheme also uses my favorite two colors and therefore i would be loathe to suggest any changes.

I'm sure you guys have other sites you visit that you like the visuals/functionality you like; I'd love to hear which ones, maybe they'll inspire me too!

I have a couple thoughts, I think. ^-^

A floating header perhaps, up across the top, that follows the page as you scroll. So you can easily jump from a page to another without much effort perhaps. --idk how hard that is to implement code-wise honestly--

Dual sectioning -- a place for the forums and games then also a place for content that's not directly forums. So one for the forums and games to be running and posting in... and the other for articles, blogs, feeds, videos maybe. This would keep them separate and easier to find where each one is I believe.

Small thing, but it would be nice if more than the three most recent posts showed up on the front page. Maybe five?

I agree with ExperienceLtd - a floating nav bar at the top would be cool. Theme personalization would be handy. I love the current look (whites, grays, reds, blacks) but sometimes I'm on the site at night and the vast white background blaring off my 32" monitor breaks my eyes; being able to switch to a dimmer-themed palette pattern would be cool.

I think it would be good to select page of thread at both top and bottom of thread. At the moment it is only at bottom.

oh, this! definitely this! i remember thinking of that before at some point

Before you get TOO far, may I recoomend that you get three sites.... a Dev (local, which you have), a production site (which you also have) and a testing/staging site where you apply your dev changes and test them before moving to Production with several user types. The code on the testing site should only be code that you are planning to deploy, not something being worked on. Finally, some sort of source control system to enable roll-backs, should something go wrong. :)

grandmaster, usually that's my flow. This particular update was a 2 am, not thought out mistake. I'm using git, have testing systems up, can usually go back... I was just an idiot this time.

Could we get a "back to the forums" link at the bottom of the threads? I'm just that lazy.

I've been told to post a few color ideas up so here they go...
1: Keep the Red and White and add in a Dark Chocolate brown, a reddish brown clay color, along with a very dark blue
2: Replace just about everything and use dark to medium greens, one fairly vibrant green, along with a black or dark blue

a floating header would eliminate the need for such thing, just saying ;D

Hate floating headers

Dude, I ain't knocking ya... you are quick to fix things when asked and seem to have it under control. I've been in IT for 30 years and I too have done my share of "Oh CRAP! Roll back...roll back....crap, that aint working! Where's the override, the override!?!" Thank you for all that you do.

Not on my phone, I think it would cause more problems than it solves. I'm lazy AND primarily here on my phone.

Replace "phone" with "iPad" and he said what I was going to.

You're such a jerk sometimes, sandchigger!

I'm the woooooorst!

a search bar. so you can search for keywords, topics, games, authors, etc.
it might help reduce redundant threads as well and make posts easier to find if you're not sure where to look for something :)

This!!!

The ability to link to the specific game's forum in my game so when I click my current game, I can jump directly to the relevant forum.

Xueyie, I'm not sure I know what you mean by that. Can you clarify?

Currently, when I click the game details page, there doesn't seem to be a place to link to the game's subforum there so I have to go to the forums page to find the subforum. It seems more convenient if I can directly go to the subforum on the game details page.

You don't see the game bar at the bottom of the page when you're at game details? it should have all sorts of useful game links.

So, the music function. Do you feel like it's necessary? Does it get used often? I feel like most people with access to the internet are also having access to a wide variety of music. The question here is do you want to keep Music integration or not? It might free up space to do other things with if you decide it's un-needed.

I think the music is just links to Youtube, Alex.

Yes, but, does it get used?

No, I don't see the forum link at the bottom

Xueyie, you don't see any red bar at the bottom of your screen? When you're on the game details page? Is anyone else not seeing the game bar at the bottom of your game pages? What browser/OS/device are you using?

I don't see it in Chrome on iOS but I do see it in Chrome & Firefox on Windows 7.

Hm... not having any devices with iOS, I'm unable to test on there, but as far as I know, Chrome works the same on iOS and Android devices (one of the reasons it's very dev friendly), so its a bit surprising to hear. I'll have to look into that.

I confirm that there is no footer bar in Chrome for iOS when you're signed in and in a games details page.

Hm... that'll make testing kinda hard. I def don't make enough off the site yet to warrant buying a new device for testing, heh.

I don't see it when using Android default-based browser on Android devices.

Ok, so looks like the feature doesn't work in the default Android browser in Android. It does work in Chrome and Firefox for Android. Apparently it doesn't work in Chrome for iOS either...

I'm kinda torn. Internet for Android makes up less than 1% of my hits, and with two compatible free browsers available and being the only developer, I'm not sure dedicating the time to QA on a browser known for not processing CSS well is worthwhile.

However, the bug that's making it not work on iOS may be the same issue with Internet for Android.

You could always just add a regular link on the Game page to the Forum. So if the footer link is there you have two options, and if the footer breaks there's still a link.

It will be really convenient.