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Our Website Design is Terrible
#1

(This post was last modified: 10-24-2014, 03:15 PM by jlp.)

The new CodeIgniter website was unveiled October 20th. Most of the reaction has been terrific, but there were a number of comments about the site design. Some of the responses: terrible, meh, needs more polish, not responsive, too old school, really hope you're still working on that design, awful, shockingly bad!

I totally agree. As one tweet pointed out, "About page asks for help with site design . So people tweet and complain about -- the site design." One of my responses has been that I was striving for a "designed by a programmer" look - I think I achieved that Smile

What are we going to do about it?

I have suggested that I will open-source the website, as another project under bcit-ci on github. I have been strongly cautioned against doing so, until I can achieve a better separation of content from presentation. Good advice! This will happen, but not as soon as I had hoped Sad

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.
James Parry
Project Lead
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#2

One of my advisors suggested something like the following...

   
James Parry
Project Lead
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#3

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
PurdyDesigns Website Design, Development. Also Including Web Hosting. Print Media, server deployment and management, and more!
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#4

Hi James,

I watched your new site. You include bootstrap for dessign that i think is a good idea, but you doesn't make use all bootstrap power. Make a responsive site with this tool is easy, and you can begin from a open source responsive bootstrap template like bootstrap starter-template and then customize it creating your own css tu redefining all you want.

If you need some help about it only have to ask me, but i'm a developer, i think i really can help you more to make a good structured and usable web.

Best wishes.

(10-24-2014, 02:41 PM)jlp Wrote: The new CodeIgniter website was unveiled October 20th. Most of the reaction has been terrific, but there were a number of comments about the site design. Some of the responses: terrible, meh, needs more polish, not responsive, too old school, really hope you're still working on that design, awful, shockingly bad!

I totally agree. As one tweet pointed out, "About page asks for help with site design . So people tweet and complain about -- the site design." One of my responses has been that I was striving for a "designed by a programmer" look - I think I achieved that Smile

What are we going to do about it?

I have suggested that I will open-source the website, as another project under bcit-ci on github. I have been strongly cautioned against doing so, until I can achieve a better separation of content from presentation. Good advice! This will happen, but not as soon as I had hoped Sad

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.
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#5

I've been a Codeigniter dev for 6 years. The web presence has always been professional and useable. I can't for the life of me figure out why it was changed at all. So it needed the new school logo. I don't see any reason to put up an amateur site in its place just for that. People choose frameworks partly because of the people behind them and the web site is a reflection of that. It's a brand. I don't know which is worse, the new site or that we now have leadership who would make the decision to destroy the framework's brand by putting up a less than professional site. And the docs have been murdered. They've always been easily navigable and well organized. Not so anymore. All the best finding help. Make sure they understand the difference between brand and design. In the meantime, please bring back the old docs.
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#6

To be fair, the docs that you're complaining about are how they've been in the dev repo for the last 2 years and was one of the big things that EllisLabs had left before releasing v3 - that they never did. So that's not a change the new owners did, it's something they have to overcome. And they just got the project. Give it a chance. I'm sure EL didn't transfer the design to the new owners as part of the agreement, so they have to rebuild their presence. And isn't that what this post is about? Asking for advice on rebuilding?

New owners - things change. At least it's not stagnant any more, right? Smile
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#7

(10-25-2014, 07:47 AM)kilishan Wrote: New owners - things change. At least it's not stagnant any more, right? Smile
"Word!" Smile

The website and the docs, I'm sure they will improve, everything takes a bit of time.

My opinion: I did miss the community feel in the Elislab page (3,4,5 from Shawn P), and the design misses a bit of "bling" (that's the way it is these days).
But I'm not the one to judge the design, as I got to the CI webpage for information, and if it was given to me in plain text, I would be happy...

The docs, (I probably know them by heart anyhowSmile ), and except for a "bit basic feel", I could use them quite well...
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#8

I think we should use the loved old CodeIgniter site (goo.gl/dv3TVO), it can be enough. The HTML and CSS can be downloaded from wayback machine.
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#9

(10-24-2014, 03:34 PM)Shawn P Wrote: 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!
James Parry
Project Lead
Reply
#10

(10-24-2014, 02:41 PM)jlp Wrote: 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.
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