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.