Site Redesign and Goals for the Future

[dawn_felagund]

Hi, everyone,

My comods and I have been talking for some time now about some big plans for the group. I hope that we can start working on them this summer, and we would greatly appreciate any input from our members that they care to give! :)

First and foremost, we hope to redesign the site this summer. Our current design, while functional, represents my very first foray into the wild and woolly world of CSS layouts. I can do much better these days. Besides, the current design is getting rather old and tired. By the time I cleaned up the current code, I might as well make a new design.

Before I explain in greater detail what our plans for the redesign are, I want to make a few points clear:

• Whatever redesign we undertake will continue to be motivated by the goals I had when making our current design: accessibility and ease-of-use for as many users as possible. That means that we will continue to keep graphics to a minimum, and all design will be done only with W3C-compliant XHTML and CSS. So no worries that you'll be waiting half of forever for multiple large images to download or that your browser will crash because of the weird scripts we're using. We will always choose functionality over flashiness.


• The current layout will continue to be available on the archive portion of the site for members who wish to use it.


• The redesign will not affect how the archive functions in any way. This is strictly an aesthetic undertaking.

We are hoping to redesign the site in conjunction with a new section to the site: a gallery for members to share and comment on Silmarillion-related artwork. We've always tried to welcome artists to our group, but they have been left in the cold much of the time, without a place to share their work on our website aside from participating in special projects. We hope that a gallery will begin to remedy this.

As part of the opening of the gallery, we will be featuring an Artist of the Quarter. The Artist of the Quarter will have their work featured as part of the banner on our website, where currently we have the group logo. This will be the single graphic on our main pages.

As my comods and I begin knuckling in for some serious discussion and planning for the redesign, we want very much to hear what you all want to see on the new site design. After all, you all are the ones who use the site regularly to post your work and enjoy the work of others. We want the site to be something most everyone finds easy and pleasant to use.

If there is anything about the appearance or organization of the current site that you love, please do share it, so that we know to keep it! If there is anything that you dislike or find difficult to use, we also want to hear from you. If you have preferences or peeves in general where websites are concerned, feel free to share them. Whether you visit the site once a month, once a year, or every day, we want to hear from you! We are a small community, so even a single voice has the power to sway the decisions we make.

Please comment here with feedback or suggestions or email us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org.

Thank you and best regards,

Dawn

Comments

[independence1776]

I really like the site as it stands, mostly because it's one of the few sites that works 100% on my outdated browser (and no, I can't update it). It's the only fanfic archive site I don't have to switch computers to post stuff. Which makes me happy to hear that you're going to keep the current layout.

I also like the lack of graphics. It's clean and simple. I'm here to read.

I don't like the text size and font-- the default size could be larger (but not as large as the + button makes it) and I prefer serif fonts.

My suggestions:

~ keep the site layout simple and let us have the ability to choose between serif and sans serif.

~ I'm also go to probably go against the grain and say that while the default should be black text on a white background, I think you should have a choice of white text on black and black text on light cream. Some people find them easier to read. (I'm light sensitive-- my monitor is dimmed for comfort-- and I'd definitely use the black on cream.)

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

Amen! I am here to read to! I do love the special events graphics, but not for everyday. And I am notorious at being unable to navigate the special events pages!

Black on cream or very pale colors is the same difference for me. Grey on pale colors is already slipping into a problem. You are very, very young! White on black even bothers me for a graphic display, not mention something with real text. At your age I could read anything. By the time I hit 35-40 that was no longer true and it happened overnight (I still read without glasses also--so that is not the problem). I always think that no one else must read as much online as I do.

[independence1776]

Grey anything is bad. It just makes it incredibly hard to read, whether text or background.

Oh, white on black bothers me-- if I *have* to read a webpage in it, I'll actually switch the setting on my monitor to the "white on black" mode so it shows up correctly. (The setting reverses all colors, so it doesn't affect just the text.) But there are a ton of LJs that use light on dark, and I don't know why, so people obviously like it.

[dawn_felagund]

Thanks, Indy, for the feedback! :) When I designed the current layout, I very much designed it to be compliant with older browsers. I won't be using any coding beyond what I'm using now (XHTML and CSS), so the new layout should continue to work for you as well. Part of the reason for that was that I designed most of the site at my former job, which still used IE6 (and was still using IE6 when I left). Since IE6 is one of the fussier browsers, I had the opportunity to test it in that. Please let me know if any changes are showing up oddly in your older browser, and I will do my best to address them.

The text will definitely be a dark font on a light background. I'm not necessarily committing to black text on a white background. I'll definitely keep your preference for a not-quite-white background (and serifs!) in mind for the redesign! :)

[independence1776]

Awesome! I know it's far too much to ask for (and arrogant besides) to expect things to be catered to me. But I also think that many people forget that there are a lot of people who don't or can't afford to upgrade to the newest systems, and when sites are coded just for that, it makes things inaccessible. (The amount of news sites that crash my browser…) I just want to be able to post my stories and read!

Yay! As long as the background color isn't grey. As I told Oshun above, grey is a pain in either text or background. (And if I had to choose between a non-white background or serif fonts, I'd go for the serif anyday.)