Site Overhaul Test 7.862.157

[meppi]

All the talk about the site needing a big overhaul to make it much more user friendly, less confusing, easier to browse and a whole lot nicer to view had me thinking about the tests I did quite a while ago.

Now this is probably the last time I'm going to put any work into something like this as it has taken me a good 8 hours to get something decent looking together. This combines all the ideas of the download manager and the wiki and throws in the idea of having certain hand picked articles available online without having to download anything and thus making this more of a regular site which gets updates and has something to read instead of just a forum with a place to download mags.

And yes, everything is hand made. The wallpaper, the table backgrounds, logo's etc. Even the code was written mostly by hand...

Note that nearly all the links should work, but on the features page any of the 4 linked articles will take you to the Street Fighter Alpha Maximum feature.

And the Magazine Catalogue is just a Sega Saturn mini catalogue page where only the very first issue will work and take you to a completed magazine page.

This was obviously done with the fact in mind that I wasn't going to be creating a fully working site with dozens of articles and hundreds of finished magazine pages when the end result will likely be: "meh, it looks like sh!t, I'm gonna stick with the forum and not bother with the stupid site".

http://users.telenet.be/twin-dreams/VGI/retromags/index.html

[triverse]

Well, honestly, to me, it looks like the redesign has even less of a coherent usability to it. I do like the color style you have going on there, a lot more friendly looking than the way the site is currently.

[E-Day]

I love the term Magazine Catalogue. Brilliant!

I find the site is too dark. Dark web sites are passé. The way the meat of the content is layed out in the features page isn't the greatest (Mock up, I know), but I like the way the MAGAZINE CATALOGUE was done, with bigger covers, layed out so more could be seen at once, and the page for an actual issue also has some great ideas in it. This definitely has potential to be built on and maybe adopted someday. The current site has too many boxes on it and looks unfun. As a web design person, I see lots of potential with your mock up

[KiwiArcader]

Don't take this the wrong way Meppi .... just an opinion after all .... but ....

I think the categorising of magazines by place of origin is just plain unwieldy as you have PC/Computer based magazines merged with hardcore gamer mags etc and really ... the audiences for PS2 mags vs Zzap64 etc are vastly different. Thus it means a lot trawling through the site looking for your particular mag & that assumes you know it came from USA or GB or wherever etc in the first place. What about mags reprinted in other countries for instance?

Dunno .... just my opinion and it's not worth much after all anyway. And yeah ... I know lots of mags have stuff from both PC's and consoles but there must be a better way than how it's done currently. Maybe Computer vs General vs Console or Company specific?

[E-Day]

I am still a fan of just listing all the magazines alphabetically. Magazines are one category, players guides another, and manuals another. If I am looking for a certain magazine, say Gaymers Galore, I know it's a magazine. I won't need to know what country it came from; just that it's a magazine (thus under Magazines) that starts with G. Easy to find that way.

[Count_Zero]

As far as organizing the site goes... there are three ways we could go about doing this that come into my head.

Tags: Tagging would be done by "editors" and people submitting magazines, which limits tag bloat. This way a magazine could be tagged by Country Of Origin, Console (or computer platform) of focus (or a "general" category for magazines like EGM or Gamefan), Magazines or Strategy Guides, and format type (cbr or pdf). And maybe year.

Same: Using the same format we're doing now.

Catagory Restructure: Restructuring the category system for whatever new format we want to do. Such as...

Country of Origin

->Platform

-->Title of Magazine

Strategy Guides would be either organized by platform, or if they're put out by a magazine (such as Nintendo Power's official strategy guides) they'd be put under that magazine.

EDIT: Oh, and how the color scheme goes, this scheme is fine, though a lot of the retro consoles that weren't from Sega (before the Dreamcast) were a soft-white, which could work here.

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Now playing: Leo Laporte and the TWiTs - TWiT 178: Call Of Doody

via FoxyTunes

Edited January 20, 2009 by Count_Zero

[E-Day]

Right now I have skin on that makes the site white and the boxes various shades of blue. I find it a lot nicer and cleaner than the retromags 2.0 skin, which is black. Though this is about retro game magazines, the site doesn't have to look like it's from 1997

[Phillyman]

Right now I have skin on that makes the site white and the boxes various shades of blue. I find it a lot nicer and cleaner than the retromags 2.0 skin, which is black. Though this is about retro game magazines, the site doesn't have to look like it's from 1997

The site is not Black.....your contrast and brightness are messed up if the site shows that way. I view this website from multiple computers at work.....and on some it does show up Black....but fixing the brightness changes this.

Anyways, the little bastids that complain about this site being hard to navigate are most often leechers who just want to download magazines and give nothing back.....while I could probably make the Downloads button start flashing "Magazine Downloads" in a rainbow of colors.......I just cant find a reason to waste my time in doing so.

[KiwiArcader]

Anyways, the little bastids that complain about this site being hard to navigate are most often leechers who just want to download magazines and give nothing back.....

Wow!!!

I hope that wasn't aimed at me. I like the site colours etc as they stand but I have to say I just liked the previous layout of the magazine download area personally compared to the current as it looks very cluttered .... and my points about Computer vs console mags I feel is quite valid.

But it isn't my site and what you guys do with it is entirely your business. Meppi made a comment and some of us were concerned enough to offer opinions. Sorry for that ..... wont happen again .....

[Count_Zero]

Anyways, the little bastids that complain about this site being hard to navigate are most often leechers who just want to download magazines and give nothing back.....while I could probably make the Downloads button start flashing "Magazine Downloads" in a rainbow of colors.......I just cant find a reason to waste my time in doing so.

Actually... my EGMs are in storage right now... once I dig them out I'll see which ones we don't have overlap for (and I'll try to compare them to the scans we've currently got so I can try to cover the gaps. Plus, I'm kicking myself for getting rid of some GameFans a few years ago, particularly because I'm insanely certain that I've got a few issues we're missing.

----------------

Now playing: Leo Laporte and the TWiTs - TWiT 178: Call Of Doody

via FoxyTunes

[Phillyman]

Wow!!!

I hope that wasn't aimed at me. I like the site colours etc as they stand but I have to say I just liked the previous layout of the magazine download area personally compared to the current as it looks very cluttered .... and my points about Computer vs console mags I feel is quite valid.

But it isn't my site and what you guys do with it is entirely your business. Meppi made a comment and some of us were concerned enough to offer opinions. Sorry for that ..... wont happen again .....

No no .....not at you.....at the people on Digg that complained about navigation

http://digg.com/gaming_news/1000s_of_class...issues_for_free

Some of the negative comments can be found in there.....will find more when I have a chance......my comment above was toward the people who post negative comments about Retromags on other websites without even signing up for an account here .....which sends them the instructions on how the site works

[meppi]

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all...