The Bluelight 2.0.08 splash page discussion!

[TheLoveBandit]

I'll be honest, this is still in my mind as something to finish - would the SO mods, smod, and admin consider moving this back out to general discussion as an ongoing project (retitled from a contest)?


I've got an idea in mind, but have zero coding capability for this at this point. I was hoping to use it as an opportunity to learn, but would happily leave it in the hands of others who are capable of taking an idea from concept to creation. I'll try to MSPaint some of my ideas and post them in the next few days. The more input we have, the better off we'll be in the long run - and with the group I see still kicking this around, I think there is a way to pull it off. I don't think the site would have to reskin, just have a holder splash page that points to all the right places (though as others have noted, the feeds from DITM and wherever else (probably a spot for 'current research studies') would be a little tricky - well beyond my scope of ability.

Question - for a splash page, wouldn't you want it with low graphics and as nearly static as possible for easy loading? Or would PDA people be the only ones effected and therefore have a separate bookmark for those users? If we can go with graphics (hell, we had pics in the past...but they were somewhat static), I think we can make it a little jazzier

Back with more later.

 

[SA]

Thread retitled. Not quite sure where to ship it first though.

/waits for TLB's paint extravaganza

 

[chrissie]

frizz, how to make the code work. i had buzzy look at it briefly and he said he would need access to something (i forget what exactly) to make it work.

 

[frizzantik]

yeah.. to make it work right you'd at least need to see the template to know the placeholder code.

 

[TheLoveBandit]

quick and ugly.... mostly ugly

Question for the techies regarding server loads and low bandwidth user issues - should we be concerned with images in motion, either animated gifs or rollovers? I have no idea of the impact that has or how simple a "splash" page ought to be for maximum effectiveness (recall a lot of our viewers - both members and lurkers - are NOT on T-1 lines ). Based on that we may need to dumb down some of my ambition here.

Secondly, in looking at my gross layout, it feels way too busy to me. Again, we want the splash to highlight our strengths, but I don't want to overwhelm people either. I know ego-loss spoke to the use of rollover dropdowns, I don't know if we would want to incoporate any of the expand-contract functionality (or if it is practical to try doing so) like we see on the forum listings page. Default for a new person would be to show everything, but members allowing cookies or however it is handled could have certain forum groupings listed or contracted? ...eh...that's starting to sound like too much work, but I'll leave it for comment anyways.


Some logistical issues: I'd like the admins to review the links atop the page to see if we need to add or remove anything (for example, how many people use the "Quick Links" and should the BLUA be more accessible?). There is an extra I've put at the bottom left for "Sites we like" which I stole from pillreports.com and think we ought to work into our site, perhaps expand. While people are kicking around how to handle the feeds for DITM headlines, the drug studies listings are a manual edit - so this splash needs to be accessible and editable for us in an ongoing fashion, not to be pinned up and untouched for months or years at a time.


Okay, now to the pics. The BL-tlb is my overall layout. The others are images that could be used in the center. My original intent was to have a handful of super high quality pics of MDMA pills that cycled thru that center image area, but I opened up my thoughts to 'action' images and some rah-rah words I threw on them. Especially as we are so much more than a simply a MDMA site at this point. Either the images could cycle thru on a timer, or be activated by mousing over regions of the splash page (COMMUNITY or peopleglobe if you float over the community section, etc).

The url for where I stole the bluebulb image in case anyone wonders (I liked it ). But we could easily get the SO community involved in making some images for this purpose rather than fight copyrights. I just threw these together for illustration.

*DONE*

Believe it or not, yeah, I'm done for now I'll come back later.



Okay, I lied - one other thing about the 'busy-ness' and central images. Part me wanted to wash out the entire background in one color that all the images would appear on, have that washout (light blue to white at the corners of the window...white in the center to light blue at the corners?) fade from center to edge and remove the blocky outlines currently locking up all the text. Just free float the text over the image without any borders. Just a thought, one that I couldn't do for shite with muh p41nt 5k177z

 

[felix]

i hereby demand acknowledgement of my (and MGM's) intellectual property rights, or a cease and desist order will ensue.

 

[frizzantik]

 

[frizzantik]

actually TLB i like your layout minus the big square in the middle for tacky graphics :D

 

[fruitfly]

^ That one gets my vote. :D

 

[TheLoveBandit]

Yeah, well, tacky graphics is all I gots That's why I was hoping someone could slip something really cool in there. I'll experiment a bit more but really this is a monkey with a crayon, not even refrigerator worthy for my moms

 

[frizzantik]

i just mean it would look good without the big box in the middle, tacky graphics or no

 

[felix]

TLB: i like the split between Education and Community. it seems so obvious now.

 

[ego_loss]

I don't think a reskin is necessary at all. It isn't unheard of for the splash page to be somewhat different from the rest of the site.

What was most daunting to me was making the news and announcement feeds work.

From my limited interactions with the behind the scenes portions of vBulletin, the way I understand it is that the current portal in use on Bluelight is part of an addon package that uses the same general skin as the rest of the site... header greaphics, CSS etc.

If you guys are talking about making a front page that is completely different than the rest of the site... not only graphically, but how it is coded and integrated... that's a horse of a different color.

IMHO, I like the way the portal looks right now, insofar as layout and presentation of information. The table of contents, DiTM headlines, and header graphics are more than enough to K.I.S.S. Adding any more at this point would simply pull away from the current streamlined look. As far as I concerned, this shouldn't be a matter of a whole new layout rather than a different presentation of the current layout.

 

[SA]

^
ego_loss has an excellent point! If BL is indeed using a CMS add on, achieving a simple layout makeover should be a matter of rearranging the modules, which should take little effort. Redesigning the splash page from scratch (in both content and colour layout), I still believe that the forums would have to be reskinned to match. Having a front page different from the rest of the site may be okay for a site just starting out, but not for a well established site like BL, which has been around for years.

 

[SA]

While on the whole redesign topic, could we also touch on the "misplaced" banner, please? Would there be time to reposition the banner so that it is better (seamlessly) integrated into the layout, instead of appearing at the top of the page in an uncharacteristically blank space? Here are a couple of quick ideas (which have probably been thought of before, but thought I'd mention them anyway):

or

I personally like the integration of the second one better. Editing the banner into that template shouldn't be much harder than it was editing the banner into the header, IMO.

Thank you for listening.

 

[chrissie]

SA, that was the goal. I don't believe our engineer has been able to fix it.

 

[SA]

Hmmm... I'll have to have a look at a similar skin (don't know who this one is by), chrissie, and check the templates within (navbar?) when I have time (if you all don't mind).

edit: I seem to have found the name of the original skin.

 

[SA]

Scratch that second idea. It could interfere with navigation listing if you happen to be in a thread in subforum X in forum Y on board Z.

Would the banner be too overbearing if it appeared on every page like so:

forumhome:

showthread:

If that won't work, and inserting it in the header bar (the one that holds the BL logo) is more appealing/functional, someone would have to create a new banner with the matching textured background* first, as I suck at creating animated gifs and the plain blue on textured doesn't look too hot.

*

 

[Pander Bear]

frizz win in a landslide

 

[tribal girl]

^When did you become 'tub of crap'?

I would like this title also.

*pouts*