Re-ordering The Download Section?

[meppi]

There has been some discussion recently as well as in the past about the misc section of the download system.

The biggest problem with it is that there are quite a few people that wrongfully think that this section is a collection of lesser or even unwanted magazine, which of course is anything but true. But due to the way it's ordered I can certainly understand that it might look that way.

The reasoning behind the misc section was to keep the download section from becoming too cluttered with magazine sections which only had one or two issues inside.

The thing in that at this moment we already have 24 separate magazine sections in the download manager not including the various subsections, so I've been thinking.

Perhaps it might be a good idea to create 3 different sections depending on the origin of the magazines?

A USA, UK and International section. which would have subdivisions for all the underlying sections.

As we have for instance a US official Dreamcast magazine as well as a UK one which caries the exact same name.

We could keep the manuals and gaming guides as root sections as well as they would just complicate things. Perhaps the Misc section also, if we decide on keeping it around.

I'm looking for input on this, so I'd like to here the various thoughts about what might be best for the site.

The main idea is to keep the section easy to browse, ordered and uncomplicated.

[Phillyman]

Sounds Good

[meppi]

Sounds Good

Well I was at least expecting some kind of critique.

I was just thinking on my feet and thought up this type of system in 10 minutes or so. So if there are any adjustments, which might improve on the idea, fire away.

[triverse]

Well I was at least expecting some kind of critique.

I was just thinking on my feet and thought up this type of system in 10 minutes or so. So if there are any adjustments, which might improve on the idea, fire away.

Are you wanting to change the download section to something like this:

Game Guides

Game Manuals

International Magazines

United Kingdom

-->UK Dreamcast

United States

-->Nintendo Power

-->Video Games and Computer Entertainment

Something like that? It could work, and it has the essentials to be just as confusing as having say, several pages of download categories. I agree though, something will eventually need to be done as there are a bunch more categories for various mags that aren't even uploaded yet, that could be soon.

[meppi]

That's more or less what I was thinking of.

First the USA section where you'll find every section on EGM, GamePro, Game Informer, etc.

Under that one UK, with Maximum, OSSM, etc,

The the International one with everything else catalogued by magazine naturally.

And the final 2 the Game Guides and Game Manuals since those don't really need to be divided by country of origin as they are simply 2 categories.

[triverse]

It would take some getting used to, but the more I think about it, the more I like that idea. If you want to see what type of mags were released in another region, it would be a matter of picking it in the download manager rather than having to click each category and looking to see. Fewer clicks. Sounds good to me.

[E-Day]

I still think "Downloads", whether it is changed to something easier for newcomers to know what that leads to or not, should be more prominent than it is now. It's between Shoutbox and Calendar in the links at the top. It should be first, and it should look different than all the other buttons so it stands out. Navigation of this site is still an issue I have, even after more than a year here. And we've seen complaints on Digg or whatever the heck it was about the home page layout. Maybe the whole site could/should be retooled. I agree with some of the criticism that the home page is very cluttered. I don't know how much flexibility there is to change things around, but making it easier to find stuff quickly and make it look sexy would be helpful for the site.

Reorganizing the download section sounds like a good idea. I don't know if people would prefer initially looking for their magazine by region, or by searching the list of Magazine titles. Why not a list of magazine titles; when you click on one, it brings you to a list of all those available (similar to what there is now), even if there is only one issue scanned. Tidy it up a bit as far as the table that displays everything, and you could be set. Game guides, manuals and everything else could be their own sub sections.

I think making the table more visually appealing would help quite a bit; maybe more so than reorganizing things into regions.

[triverse]

Reorganizing the download section sounds like a good idea. I don't know if people would prefer initially looking for their magazine by region, or by searching the list of Magazine titles. Why not a list of magazine titles; when you click on one, it brings you to a list of all those available (similar to what there is now), even if there is only one issue scanned. Tidy it up a bit as far as the table that displays everything, and you could be set. Game guides, manuals and everything else could be their own sub sections.

To go one step farther on e-day's idea there, how about having the alphebet up there too? You know, if you are looking for EGM, click on the E. Could that be, does anyone even want it, implemented on the downloads page somewhere? Would that require a lot of behind the scenes work?

[meppi]

I really do agree with you on the Download page thing E-Day and on the site layout in general, but I myself have no idea how to do those things.

I have quite a bit of experience with plain old HTML web design, but when it comes to the inner workings of the forum and everything that's built around it, that's a whole other mess.

The whole system is very confusing and I'm afraid if I were to start looking about changing stuff like that, I could bring down the whole site, so I will stay clear of that part.

As far as I can tell the structure is very rigid so we have to work with what we've got I'm afraid. I'm sure Philly could explain everything much better as he's the one that set this whole place up in the first place.

But to me even including something like an alphabetical lookup seems to be next to impossible...

[E-Day]

If the table was more neatly organized, finding magazines would probably be easier. For instance, why do the covers use half the table, leaving a bunch of white space - or in this case, blue space - in their cell? The cell for the covers should only be a bit bigger than the covers themselves. This would give more room for the magazine info, and would allow more info to be included on the listing page.

It seems this whole site is automated using a database, so I can't imagine making tweaks and changes to the design would be easy (fueling my dislike for content management systems in general). Some people may be intimidated by how everything is set up and layed out. I know I had a lot of trouble finding what I wanted when I first arrived. If I wasn't obsessed with finding old issues of GamePro and such, I might have given up. However, the universe is lucky that I didn't

[Phillyman]

If the table was more neatly organized, finding magazines would probably be easier. For instance, why do the covers use half the table, leaving a bunch of white space - or in this case, blue space - in their cell? The cell for the covers should only be a bit bigger than the covers themselves. This would give more room for the magazine info, and would allow more info to be included on the listing page.

It seems this whole site is automated using a database, so I can't imagine making tweaks and changes to the design would be easy (fueling my dislike for content management systems in general). Some people may be intimidated by how everything is set up and layed out. I know I had a lot of trouble finding what I wanted when I first arrived. If I wasn't obsessed with finding old issues of GamePro and such, I might have given up. However, the universe is lucky that I didn't

Retromags is comprised of a few different systems....

Invision Power Board - This is the Forum, Downloads and the Home Page (Portal)

Flyspray - This is the WIP section

MediaWiki - This is the Wiki section

Now each of these systems are PHP based and kind of strict in what I can do with them. We have had a discussion before on how to clean up the site.....my idea was to get a content management software such as Joomla or Drupal. This would serve as the Homepage and provide us a bit more flexability in what we can do for a homepage. We could assign out permissions for users to keep the front page updated, and also we could get rid of the Wiki and integrate it into this section....allowing users to use a GUI to create articles. Meppi believes we should go to straight up HTML for the website....and then give users the ability to create their own HTML pages and upload them to this site. We couldnt agree on which way to go....so we kinda just left the site as it is.

If you want to see another (BIG) site that uses the same type of setup as us....check out this site. I am sure with some work we could create a clean cut and organized site with our existing setup....

http://gbatemp.net/

-Rob

[E-Day]

I think Retromags as a site should be the Wiki. That should be the main site, with the forums being a section, and the downloads being a section. Kind of like Magweasel but better. On the forums page, there is no link to the Wiki.

As you look up things in the wiki, the issues that are scanned have a link to the download. Links to the forums and DL section and other stuff are always present somewhere.

http://gbatemp.net/ has too much stuff on the home page that I didn't go past that page. Too overwhelming. I think the site would function well as a nice, pretty version of magweasel with the forums and download section and such. That site is dead as far as updates anyhow.

[Phillyman]

I think Retromags as a site should be the Wiki. That should be the main site, with the forums being a section, and the downloads being a section. Kind of like Magweasel but better. On the forums page, there is no link to the Wiki.

As you look up things in the wiki, the issues that are scanned have a link to the download. Links to the forums and DL section and other stuff are always present somewhere.

http://gbatemp.net/ has too much stuff on the home page that I didn't go past that page. Too overwhelming. I think the site would function well as a nice, pretty version of magweasel with the forums and download section and such. That site is dead as far as updates anyhow.

Only 1 problem, Mediawiki is lacking in the Skins department.....We get a bit more flexability with Invision. Plus there would be no way to stream the latest magazines or topics to it.

[E-Day]

No need to stream topics or the latest magazines to it. The latest magazines could be added manually, like you were doing with the weekly release post. Keep it simple, easy to navigate, and less people might be turned away as some are now by the layout and clutter. Each page fo a specific issue could have a link to download the issue, which would bring them to the download, a link to discuss the issue, which would bring them to the forums, and a link about how to download (encourage them to contribute and so on).

[Phillyman]

No need to stream topics or the latest magazines to it. The latest magazines could be added manually, like you were doing with the weekly release post. Keep it simple, easy to navigate, and less people might be turned away as some are now by the layout and clutter. Each page fo a specific issue could have a link to download the issue, which would bring them to the download, a link to discuss the issue, which would bring them to the forums, and a link about how to download (encourage them to contribute and so on).

Yea but I would want to use a CMS, I like to be able to update things from wherever I may be. If I use straight HTML....I have to have a FTP client and such with me at all times

[Phillyman]

What if we didnt use either a CMS or HTML for the main page......What if we just did a straight Flash page where users could pick from 4 locations?

Forums

Downloads

Wiki

How to Help

[E-Day]

Flash is awful, especially when you want to make changes. For ease of updating, I would go with a CMS as long as you have control over how stuff is layed out.

[meppi]

I think Retromags as a site should be the Wiki. That should be the main site, with the forums being a section, and the downloads being a section. Kind of like Magweasel but better. On the forums page, there is no link to the Wiki.

As you look up things in the wiki, the issues that are scanned have a link to the download. Links to the forums and DL section and other stuff are always present somewhere.

http://gbatemp.net/ has too much stuff on the home page that I didn't go past that page. Too overwhelming. I think the site would function well as a nice, pretty version of magweasel with the forums and download section and such. That site is dead as far as updates anyhow.

That would be the basic idea of what I did with the preview site I worked on a couple of months ago.

http://users.telenet.be/twin-dreams/VGI/re...s/features.html

And the magazine catalogue part is just another sample page where I had to delete the images from since I only have 50MB of space on the ftp.

It's only bits and pieces since it didn't get very far in development.

A wiki page as the main site is a pretty terrible idea in my opinion. There's not enough control on a wiki site to make it a homepage. Either on the server side or on the side where users can input things.

[E-Day]

In any case, a retooling of the navigation and/or the home page would be a good idea t oremove the clutter and make it easier to find stuff.

[KiwiArcader]

Too cluttered in its present form.

[Phillyman]

A major revision to this site will be coming along in a few months, This site will be upgrading from Invision Power Board 2.3 to Invision Power Board 3.0. I think we may want to see if the new version gives us better control over the home page before reinventing the wheel

See a Preview here

http://ipb3preview.ipslink.com/index.php?app=portal

[Hidinger]

A major revision to this site will be coming along in a few months, This site will be upgrading from Invision Power Board 2.3 to Invision Power Board 3.0. I think we may want to see if the new version gives us better control over the home page before reinventing the wheel

See a Preview here

http://ipb3preview.ipslink.com/index.php?app=portal

will the arcade and attack shop still be fully functional in the new format?

[Phillyman]

will the arcade and attack shop still be fully functional in the new format?

Luckily the Arcade, Battle System and Casino are all maintained by 1 website......and I am sure they will have a way to upgrade

[hahnchen]

I think the current ordering of downloads is clearer than the original ordering, it's good to see that you guys are still busy working behind the scenes, much appreciated.

I would suggest however, that you insert custom fields into each of your uploads, such as issue number and date. Not all the filenames follow the same format, so they're not all correctly arranged. But if you could arrange it by issue number, it'd make it even easier.

[meppi]

I would suggest however, that you insert custom fields into each of your uploads, such as issue number and date. Not all the filenames follow the same format, so they're not all correctly arranged. But if you could arrange it by issue number, it'd make it even easier.

That was the general idea of what I created the wiki pages around, so that everyone would use the same naming template.

That way everything would look like it fit together and we wouldn't have the chaotically ordered issues in certain series.

This is the template I still use to this day and the way the wiki is laid out:

Next Generation 001 - jan 1995 (USA)

EGM² 001 - jul 1994 (USA)

Official Dreamcast Magazine 000 - jun 1999 (USA)

Super Play 001 - nov 1992 (UK)

I have adapted so that the names of the months are fully spelled out in all of my final release versions though, but this still wouldn't impact the arrangement order.

The problem is that most people are using their own way of naming the releases, so if there are several different people working on one series it can get a bit messy.