Our Website Design is Terrible

Instead, I would like to engage the community: what are your suggestions for the design of our website? This could be in the form of a page mockup, a CSS stylesheet that would work with it, or even just constructive text suggestions.

I suppose I'll get nowhere with this, but I like old-school. I actually prefer the threaded nature of the old Usenet based on NNTP protocol, but if it's gonna be web forums, this is the style I like.

Another site I frequent -- SitePoint -- revamped the look of its forums from traditional (like this) to modern (like this: community.sitepoint.com/) and while they may look cooler, I don't think they improve usability or the user experience.

We need to move away from the EllisLab style - that is one of my concerns. It is not our place to usurp their style, or to pretend to be the same.

This forum's style is pretty much the MyBB default, and it is only a starting point. I am hoping that the community will step up to come up with a theme that will make the forum easier to use, or more "with it", even if at the expense of the "old school" that you like! Our main website, at the moment, is pretty much the default Bootstrap 2 format, as many are not hesitant to point out!

I have already had a number of private suggestions for the style of our main site, down to the point of stylesheets and even a CodeIgniter webapp to do it

I think that our own unique style, old-school or not, would be a reasonable target for the main website, the forum, and even the user guide
Think of this as an exercise in coming up with an "identity" or "brand".
Hmmm!

Using a pre-build framework like bootstrap on CodeIgniter is somehow weird!
The previus design was okay but since BCIT dont want to use it CodeIgniter needs a unique design.

I don't see the attachment. It does look a little in the past. I don't think you need to go all out modern, but responsive with maybe jQuery Rev slider to add a little bit of bling. Would at least make it look a bit more up to date.

My idea's would be to have a better design hierarchy. The home page is lacking in my opinion, but a lot of this can apply to other pages as well.

1. Codeigniter - Why it rocks! (Learn more)
2. Latest Version Displayed on the home page.
3. Social Media, Facebook page for it. Have latest tweets, link to github repo directly on every page.
4. Latest news on the homepage.
5. Latest community activity on the homepage. I think this is important, if the target is a community project the main website should be really community friendly.

Ideally if I were you I would come up with a top 10 list of your most important aspects for the project, and these should be how the page is designed. So when you visit your eye see's #1 first, #2 second and so on. #1 might be say the brand of codeigniter. #2 might be community. #3 might be codeigniter features. etc

Shawn

I like the way you are thinking, and will see what we can do about incorporating these suggestions!

See if attachments work. Didn't spend much time on it, but maybe it'll give some ideas.

PurdyDesigns Website Design, Development. Also Including Web Hosting. Print Media, server deployment and management, and more!

An idea should be to have a contest, where everybody post their mockups, and all the users can vot.

@Shawn P

Nice mockup mate. Would not mind seeing something like a Show Case/Featured Site Slider right beneath the main menu. One that would show case site/apps that use codeigniter. Otherwise, nice start mate. Looks clean and sharp. No extra bloat garbage.

There is a lot of work to get CodeIgniter back Up To Date as a Framework and perhaps the website should move in the same speed.

I think that there is no point to hurry about Site Design, but it will be good if we update the current one ASAP.

For a real Theme it will be good if we open a Contest.
I believe that a lot of designers will want to be involved. Perhaps there can be some kind of a Price (can be a real money or smarter linking inside the website - footer and even Contributors page, "Designed By XXX" ).
At the same time the Contest by it self can be placed in some Freelance platform as oDesk, Freelancer or other. I believe that if we contact their staff, they will accept to let a free contest in their sites (with some marketing brand to brand agreement ).

Regards

Best VPS Hosting : Digital Ocean

i think if it is a contest we do, we can do it all in house here on the forums and let the community at large here as well as the CI Team vote and give feedback. No need for other third parties to act as yet another layer.

I think we are putting the cart before the horse here.

CI needs to move on from its current iteration. I'm not sure why people are asking for 3.0. I'd wager happily that most don't even know what extra features or security features. Here's what I could glean from a forum posting on the other forum.

There is a new, strong “ucfirst” naming convention.
There is also a new API-convention “Return NULL, (not FALSE anymore) if you have nothing to return”.
There are some new features within the database query builder.
There is an “official” native PHP-session driver.

My only reaction is, "that's it?". Hardly anything to get excited over. I have multiple projects in CI and won't be upgrading to 3.0. If anything, now the license is MIT. I'll backport any other enhancements and run an unofficial 2.3.

There really needs to be a focus on moving codeigniter forward. For backwards compatibility, people should be using 3.0 from now on. Have an old project, use CI 3.0. On shared hosting, use 3.0. Your developers only know php 5.2, use CI 3.0 and the list goes on.

Want to be bleeding edge, use php 5.5/5.6 and get a fast framework? Use CI 4.0.

Something like this should be the vision and will have something for everyone.

Thanks

That's not a bad idea to do a contest. It could also bring in some new exposure for CI. A good marketing idea.

Shawn

PurdyDesigns Website Design, Development. Also Including Web Hosting. Print Media, server deployment and management, and more!

I think we are putting the cart before the horse here.

CI needs to move on from its current iteration. I'm not sure why people are asking for 3.0. I'd wager happily that most don't even know what extra features or security features. Here's what I could glean from a forum posting on the other forum.

There is a new, strong “ucfirst” naming convention.
There is also a new API-convention “Return NULL, (not FALSE anymore) if you have nothing to return”.
There are some new features within the database query builder.
There is an “official” native PHP-session driver.

My only reaction is, "that's it?".

That's not it. The 3.0 branch has more changes and bugfixes than CI has seen in many years. None of them are as drastic as you're hoping to see, but there's definitely more than you are seeing there.

Check out the change log for more information.

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