Board redesign - provide your input

Blackshirt said:
I had them add KCs logo for now b/c I liked the textured background and wanted to give the borders & menu bg more of a "football" feel. I think the bg looks good, but I'm not completely sold on how it blends with the top header area. Then again we aren't necessarily using that logo - so that can change. Perhaps we do a white border on the right side which blends with the white in the top right header.
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I love the textured background.

Blackshirt said:
I asked about the scoreboard -- it seems it may fit nicely on the right side of the black menu
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Agreed. That would allow for easy contrast, as well, with white letters/numbers. Again, one thing to consider is the ability to "hide" it or "replace" it when the season is over, or we're going to have a feed with nothing in it for over half of each year.

Blackshirt said:
I think the "next game" area should be at the top and always visible. If it's in the slide-out right margin area many will miss it, IMO. I agree this is prime ad space, but essentially this is an ad for us. It promotes our tickets, contest, schedule (which has more links to tickets) - and we could also add a link for "Gameday Gear". I think these are all very important elements of the board which should be highlighted.
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Makes sense to me.

Blackshirt said:
I had them ad 2 Huskernation banners b/c I wanted to see what it looked like with ads in both locations. These are prime spots so the ability to sell 2 premier top spots is big. But this isn't a monarchy so Im open to your thoughts. If you guys are strongly opposed to 2 banners at the top, we could possibly put the scoreboard in the top right instead.
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Normally, I'm all for promoting HuskerNation any way we can, but...I think two banners is one too many. Given that it is an animated gif, it's pretty eye-catching. What I'd recommend is one at the top and one at the bottom - that way, no matter whether members are at the top of a page or the bottom, they see it. Particularly if we add the link to "Gameday Gear" to the "Next Game" entry.

And just as an aside, we probably need to re-do the HuskerNation banner to give it a transparent background...

Blackshirt said:
They are working on a "CMS" system to allow for easy bulletins etc. Here are their comments about that:
"The CMS part has been setup, if you click on the Pages tab you will be able to see it. On the board index you will see the Recent Articles Tab. There is a system in the Admin Area that allows you to delete the demo articles as well as customize the sidebar categories. It is a fairly simple system."
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If I'm reading that correctly, and from playing with it, what they are saying is that the bulletins and the RSS feed is handled by the CMS system. Just to be clear - to update the Countdown Clock/Next Game and the Previous Game - we'll still do these through the Board's Control Panel, by editing the templates, correct? If so, it would help if they would tell us which specific templates are used for each. I believe the Countdown Clock/Next Game would still be the globalTemplate - what would it be for the Previous Game? Knowing that would save a lot of hunting and reading all those templates.

Overall, I'm really liking all of this. Good job, Chad, on coming up with changes and communicating them to the design company.

 
Can we have a non-animated banner from HuskerNation? To be honest that thing drives me nuts, and I've adblocked it on the main page we have now.

 
To address a couple things quickly:

The 2 huskernation banners are just there for examples. Ultimately there would be sponsor A/huskernation in the top right, and sponsor B (maybe tickethippo) in the other spot.

And yes Im open to de-animating the banner. As Frank said it needs to be re-designed anyway, so at that time Im all for making it more subtle.

Will respond more later.

 
I too am liking the textured background.

I don't mind the animated ads, you can't avoid them pretty much anywhere you go on the net.

I think if you go with two ads, they should be side by side, cleanly dividing the header from the main content.

The scoreboard should be near the top, and would it be possible to combine the scoreboard and countdown clock into one fancy "scoreboard"?

All in all, coming along nicely. :thumbs

 
Here are some things I would change/suggest. Most are more "final details" than anything. Use attached picture for reference.

  1. I would make some adjustments to the navbar. First, I would lose the transparent look. I would give it more of a "tabs" feel by highlighting the current page in white. When the mouse hovers over another option, the background would turn from black to red. I also think this would be a good place for a small scoreboard that rotates through the day's scores on the right.
  2. I would move the count down clock back to the top right. Not only does it look better, but if we put an ad up there instead, it would look too much like a site banner itself, even if it is a different site.
  3. I would dedicate the prime ad spot all to itself (nothing around it; you don't want it to blend in). I would also suggest just using some sort of script to have it rotate a new ad in every time the page is reloaded. This would take up minimal space and provide ample exposure for all sponsors. Every time a user clicks on a new thread, a different ad would be showing.
  4. I would keep the background. While we primarily focus on football, the texture could also pass as a basketball.
  5. I would make sure all the colors are consistent throughout the site (red, black, grey, white)
  6. I would use the same font throughout the site.
  7. I would loose all the gradients and just put a subtle stroke around each background element. It gives it a clean look and adds some contrast.
  8. Last, I would square everything up. Currently, some elements have rounded curves while others don't.
Just my 2 cents.

EXAMPLE

 
eliot1171 said:
Here are some things I would change/suggest. Most are more "final details" than anything. Use attached picture for reference.

  1. I would make some adjustments to the navbar. First, I would lose the transparent look. I would give it more of a "tabs" feel by highlighting the current page in white. When the mouse hovers over another option, the background would turn from black to red. I also think this would be a good place for a small scoreboard that rotates through the day's scores on the right.
  2. I would move the count down clock back to the top right. Not only does it look better, but if we put an ad up there instead, it would look too much like a site banner itself, even if it is a different site.
  3. I would dedicate the prime ad spot all to itself (nothing around it; you don't want it to blend in). I would also suggest just using some sort of script to have it rotate a new ad in every time the page is reloaded. This would take up minimal space and provide ample exposure for all sponsors. Every time a user clicks on a new thread, a different ad would be showing.
  4. I would keep the background. While we primarily focus on football, the texture could also pass as a basketball.
  5. I would make sure all the colors are consistent throughout the site (red, black, grey, white)
  6. I would use the same font throughout the site.
  7. I would loose all the gradients and just put a subtle stroke around each background element. It gives it a clean look and adds some contrast.
  8. Last, I would square everything up. Currently, some elements have rounded curves while others don't.
Just my 2 cents.

EXAMPLE
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I agree with this. The preview now is looking good, but this would drive it to a very solid look. Remember, people do judge books by their covers.

 
Thanks for the input ISRP & Eliot. Those were some real good ideas - I had them incorporate most, and I think it's looking pretty darn sharp.

http://dev.solidaredesign.com/huskerboard/

They're suggesting we give it a live test-drive. What do you guys think? Any other glaring things you'd like to see adjusted before going live?

Re: New banner/logo. Since we haven't voted on the new one, we'll want to use the old one for now. Who designed the current one.. think we can get a transparent version so it works with the new textured bg?

Here's a list of some finishing touches which they can change later. Im sure there are more, so please help me compile a list so I can send a complete list to work on next.

1) Give a list of the files where the new things are installed so we can easily update

2) Make Schedule & Watch Sites link open in a new window

3) Implement banner ad rotator

4) Facebook link

...

 
The current banner was created by on of our own Mod graphics gurus - huskeraddict. So, huskeraddict - can you modify your current banner to use a transparent background?

Chad, setting the Schedule/Results and the Watchsite pages to open in a new window is something I can probably do once I can access the Control Panel for the new site. Should be the globalTemplate that's edited. If I can help with that, just let me know - again, I'll need access to the Admin Control Panel for the new site/design.

Before we go live - the Countdown clock is not actually displaying the countdown, at least in my browsers. Is it supposed to be live now? Either way, I think we're ready to give it a shot unless someone finds something really glaring that's missing or needs correction.

 
This may not an issue if we continue using the current logo, but there's too little space between the top of the image and the top of the page. "Huskerboard", the words, happen to be at the very top of the logo, and as a result it looks odd. I think in general the logo could be improved if 'Huskerboard's placement were revised...maybe below the sub-logo? Or maybe all it needs are 15 px of margin-top.

 
I like the idea of a 15px top margin. I think that would improve the look overall - even the Countdown Clock looks a tad crowded up against the top. Good eye!

 
It would've been tough to make the current banner transparent so I went with a temporary banner that looks like the one we have now:

hbtempbanner.png


 
^ Seconded, on the scoreboard.

I do think the slight mismatching of pixels is intentional, though. I still don't like the text shadow of "A Test Category." That text could stand to be a little more clear and readable. The scoreboard is a neat widget, but it can be turned off, right? And this means status updates are disappearing?

This may just be me, but I'm not the biggest fan of the pebbled background. With it, the pages seem a bit too red...

 
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