New website design

[George Hay]

Bill, I like your idea of keeping the problem section fresh with contestant problems on the home page. There is room, and it would be good publicity for the ACF. Would that mean the entire contest would be moved to the home page?
I hope so. Comments could still be made in the forum.
--George Hay

[Ingo_Zachos]

Dear Jason,

just one small suggestion:

the ACF logo on top should always lead to the ACF homepage, not to the board index of the forum, because that would be a useful thing.

The board index (of the forum) is available in the bar below the ACF logo anyway, and sometimes it is just useful to be able to switch back to the ACF homepage from the forum directly.

As far as I see it the colors are now much better, and all margins seem to fit (using Mozilla Firefox).

Great work, much appreciated.

Greetinx from mild and sunny Dormtund, Germany

Ingo Zachos

[Jason Solan]

the ACF logo on top should always lead to the ACF homepage, not to the board index of the forum, because that would be a useful thing.

Changed.

Bill, I see no problem with your idea. I've sent you an e-mail on the subject.

[clintolsen]

I apologize if my previous message was a bit on the harsh side. Rather than only complain I've decided to give you some tips. A big part of my job for the last 6 years involves building internal tools at RIM, so I've learned a thing or two along the way about building effective user interfaces.

1) Use rounded corners where possible - Many areas of the main page appear very "boxy", which is much less pleasing to the eye than a simple rounded corner. There are free websites out there that will help generate images and css for you to use in a rounded corner setup. This is one example: http://www.roundedcornr.com/. Here are some other rounded corner ideas which are really effective: http://www.cssjuice.com/25-rounded-corn ... -with-css/

2) Add spacing around elements - I feel like the website looks crammed in many areas (borders around titles, upcoming events area, right hand menu, etc). There doesnt appear to be spacing anywhere. Use CSS to automatically add spacing around all paragraphs, tables, etc. Use tables to organize the different areas of the website with consistent spacing between sections. A UI with lots of space between elements is much easier to read and navigate.

3) Avoid text on a textured background image - The text in the checkers animator is very difficult to read on top of the background image.

4) Avoid assigning background colors to paragraphs/titles - Doing so makes them variable in length (see the Upcoming events as an example), and harder on the eyes. I don't know a nice way to say this, so I think this just looks baaaad and nobody does this any more. It's much better to change the font/colour/size of the titles, or to work within a header section of a rounded corner table . I think this was the biggest complaint i had about the new design and it still exists in the current design in some areas. Please change this

5) Consider oddrow/evenrow colouring for tables - Changing the colour of each row of a table back and forth between two soft (not competing) colors can be very effective. This might be worth a shot in the Upcoming events section if we were to remove the month titles and alternate colours for each month (or each event).

6) Change menu link colors when hovering - I think it's a nice touch if when you move over a link (ex. top menu "Join the ACF", "FAQ", etc) it changes slightly in color

7) Add more images to news articles - Images bring a website to life and would add visual appeal to the news articles. Have an article about a specific person? Find a picture of them! Even adding a random picture of people playing checkers when discussing a poker tournament would look nice.

Draw attention to other areas of the website - With the exception of the facebook article, there are no links to any other areas of the website in any of the news articles. The news articles are your best chance to advertise other possibly unknown areas of the website. There is a lot of content on the website which I imagine never gets looked at.

9) Advertise the ACF Store better - I wouldn't have even noticed there was a store if I wasnt reviewing the website right now. I'm assuming the store is used to raise money for the ACF. If that's the case, find a way to draw attention to the store. Perhaps make a nice image that links to the store and put it in the header, or change the colour of the menu text, or something. It might be worth checking out other professional sites that have stores to see how they're advertised, and laid out.

10) The font size of the tournament names in the upcoming events section is very small, almost hard to read small.

I'd add some more feedback, but it's bedtime. That's my advice, I leave it up to you whether or not you wish to try any of these. I welcome any criticism to my comments above if people wish to discuss these ideas.

[clintolsen]

Oh, and the game animator doesnt do a thing in Chrome. Test things across browsers if possible

[kkelly]

Clint,
The tone of your post reflects the charactor of a fine gentleman.
I think this was a prevaent trait exhibited in checker players of old.
Thank you.

[ae_ted]

Good to hear from you old friend! Thanks for trying to help these people. i wish you the best and I still think i can beat you hehe.

[Alex_Moiseyev]

i wish you the best and I still think i can beat you.

Different order of words, Ted. You have to say:

"I wish I can beat you and I still think you the best"

[Jason Solan]

Thanks Clint, it's very much appreciated. Don't worry about the initial post, it's totally understandable. If someone does a search for your name, there's probably a good chance this website will show up. I wouldn't want my name associated with something I don't like either.

I'll take a closer look at the suggestions throughout the week, didn't get much free time this weekend and I don't feel like starting it now.

I really feel a full redesign is due. I initially changed it when I was clean up some cruft and thought a checkerboard design might be nice. I threw it together quickly using the old layout and it just didn't work.