Zugg Software :: View topic

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

As Darker pointed out in the shoutbox there is a lot of information in the portal and how it is shown doesn't make it very easy to read it.

Like it feels like all boxes is a single, huge box and there is little logical separation between them.

Some things I have noticed:
1. Remove the theme/style control panel. Changing style can and should be done in the profile.
2. It is difficult to read the news. It doesn't feel good to read on the right part of the screen, and the news pieces therefore get less attention, if any.
3. If you look at how for example e107 does it it puts the news pieces on another page which you can reach by pressing a button. Take a look at http://www.silverbridge.org/index2.php for an example. The news is much easier to read when it is more at the centre of the screen in my opinion.

Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2004 10:32 pm

Well yeah. Remember that I'm still playing with all of this. So, I've got a lot of features turned on that probably will change or go away.

In general, Portal sites look like this though. Lots of boxes in 3 columns typically. The problem is mainly with the Theme that we are using. The theme was designed for the phpBB forum and doesn't work very well as a Portal theme. Portal themes work better if the left and right columns have different background colors compared to the middle, for example. I think once we get some better themes converted it will all look better.

1) Right now the Theme selection is on the main page to make it easier for me to play with. Once I'm done playing with themes you will see this removed.

2) I know what you mean about the "News". The stuff on the right isn't really "news". It's just a list of announcements in the forums. I'm still working on the main "News" that will go in the main center section of the page. It will have the stuff like the "Announcements" that are in the current Zuggsoft home page. Yes, I know what you are talking about with e107...I spent a lot of time looking at that. That is closer to what I want it to eventually look like.

So, in general, don't worry. We are still in the *very* early stages of this site redesign. The main problem is that I only have a few hours a day to work on it. I don't want to take away from my eMobius programming time, so I'm doing web-site stuff instead of other relaxing activities, like reading, watching movies, playing video games, etc. Since it's still really "work" I'm trying not to spend *all* of my free time messing with the site.