Pendragon 6 Share Posted August 11, 2013 I think it looks good, it looks clear and I'm liking how it navigates. Nice work. I do have one issue, though. There's a lot of blank space here, and it makes me think "unfinished website" when I see it. I've looked at it in three different browsers. This is what I saw: In Firefox with my username signed in, the black bar at the top still spanned the whole length of the browser, but was mostly empty. The icons on in the right helped the appearance a bit. The space next to the PCGW logo was just completely empty, while the content was beneath. Under that were the tabs, next to even more blank space on the right. The search bar on the right is just sort of floating there, and I don't think the advanced search button is that obvious. On the right side as I post this, under the poll and post options, is even more blank space. With adblock disabled, there are no ads on the site still. For Chrome, I did not login. There is no difference in the appearance, except that the black bar is now even more noticable without being logged in. It's almost completely blank. No ads there, either. With Internet Explorer, I see all of the things in the other browsers, with two banner ads. The ads are not placed in the blank space, the first one is below the navigation tabs, pushing the content down. So, first I'm thinking, can the ads be moved into the blank space above the tabs and by the logo, where they would not push down the content, and would be more visible? Second, could the search be moved into the black bar? If the advanced search is moved to a black background, the advanced icon would be more visible and noticable. If it's not moved, it might help to change the color of it. As for the ads themselves, I am not thrilled with their content (not anything on PCGW's end, it's the ads themselves). Both depict a large "Download now" button with no context, with small text on the right stating what the download is. I am a bit concerned this kind of thing could give off the wrong idea of PCGamingWiki (I know when the first thing I see going to a new site is "Download Now!" with no explanation, I leave). Adding a note under or over the ad saying "This is an advertisement" might help that. That would help clear up any worries or confusion by users from ad content. I'm attaching a screenshot of the IE version. Edit: I attached it, but I don't see the screenshot...can regular members not attach files? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hungry eyes 6 Share Posted August 11, 2013 Upload the screenshot to imgur or another site and then use the img tags Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pridit 39 Share Posted August 11, 2013 Attachments should work, I've verified the permissions and they're enabled. Regarding advertisements I've put a notice above all of them stating they're an advertisement (I'm still messing with the design) and I'm going to talk with Andrew about getting the one at the top of the forum moved into the sidebar (see the one on news for an example) so it doesn't take up space and instead blends with the theme naturally. Regarding appearance in general and the black bar, that will need to be discussed a bit further before any changes are made. For staff part of that bar is used to access sections to administrate/moderate the board and in my opinion to start messing with it like putting the search bar (which I'm not even sure would fit with the theme and would just end up looking out of place) isn't a very bright idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pendragon 6 Author Share Posted August 11, 2013 Got the attachment to work this time. So it shows what I'm seeing on the page. I was looking at how google and Facebook handle their top bars as a comparison to this site. For Facebook, the effect is somewhat similar except they do have the search there. For Google, it's just text but it's left-aligned, so the blank stuff is off to the right side. You generally don't notice that it's half-blank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andytizer 269 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Hey guys thanks for the feedback. I take it there is an issue with how much white-space there is at the top of the page. This is mostly caused by the padding and such in a non-standard logo size, which I may try to address by using a more horizontal logo layout. I also hope to fill blank space by utilising the area to put things like Steam/Facebook/Twitter logo links. For reference the IP Board default theme can be seen on their official board with a more compact header, which we will try to emualte. However I don't want to deviate too far from their design by moving search bars and such, as we would begin to bring in customisations which will become hard to support (e.g. displacing AdminCP link, etc). I think their design has been tried and tested in 3.x for a number of years now, and works well for most browsers and devices. Advertising on PCGamingWiki is essential to help achieve its goal - it funds the dedicated server hosting costs, new software like this forum, programming and development and it also allows us to supply review codes for new games and for our community to keep up to date with new releases. It's essential that there is a way of advertising on the site that is effective, but is respectful to the user and does not get in the way of the content. In terms of placement, I have put the horizontal 728x90 in the default placements in the header and footer and these are disabled for any logged in users. These are very much standard positions for almost every successful website. I do not think that we can be expected to signpost all banners to say 'this is advertising', and I think that doing so would be detrimental to the layout and the clickthrough rate, and looks ugly and unprofessional. The type of advertising displayed is determined by Google AdSense and will not not normally be 'Download this' type ads. As we fill in more content onto the forum, the ads will display more gaming-related banners (as they are on the Wiki), as well as banners based on your own searching history. In the coming months we will also be most likely be moving to a different ad provider, who will be providing gaming-only advertising (under discussion at the moment). Google also provide a 'heatmap' to show where ads are best placed on a page - and the best positions invariably push content down slightly, but I do not believe it is intrusive. The majority of professional websites use those kind of banner placements. I also hope that our policy of 'logged in = no ads' means that we also avoid lots of issues with ad perception, as you only need to login to avoid them entirely. I also hope this help to highlight and encourage more people to join and support our community, as new editors and contributors are our biggest resource. Anyway over the coming week I will doing some extensive work on reskinning PCGamingWiki to match the IP Board header, and to integrate things fully. Any feedback is highly appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicereddy 109 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Currently there's no border between the content and the advertisements on content pages. I think we should at least have a light line separating the two from each other to avoid confusion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheFroggynator 2 Share Posted August 19, 2013 Just my two cents: It would be nicer to reduce the width of the page. It is easier to read when the rows are shorter. Most of the websites nowadays are between 950px and 1000px. And I guess there's a minimum width set for the pages too, cause when I place my browser's window only on half of the screen, I have to scroll left and/or right to see everything. So, for the best experience, I need to place the window left or right and then make it a little wider. Other than that, it looks clean and easy to navigate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hungry eyes 6 Share Posted August 19, 2013 The thing is we are already narrower than Wikipedia and if we go any narrower I fear everything will look squashed and templates and tables will stop formatting properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheFroggynator 2 Share Posted August 19, 2013 The forum though misses all the widgets from the sides and so the content has a much wider space in which to spread. Anyway, it's not the biggest of deals. I, for one, don't mind it that much. Most of the times I keep my windows on half of the screen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pridit 39 Share Posted September 21, 2013 [Automated] This discussion has concluded and a verdict has been reached. If this is not the case and there are still matters left undiscussed please contact a member of staff to get the topic reinstated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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