One really, really nice aspect of that new design is that you have relevant content "above the fold" (available to see right as the page loads without any scrolling). A big pet peeve of mine is that on most bulletin boards you have to scroll before you actually see interesting content. The New York Times or CNN home page wouldn't make you scroll down to see the first headline, so why do bulletin boards? We're all so used to it that we generally don't even think about it, but it's bad design. It'd be sweet if you could add the box score from the last blazer game on to one of the side bars (preferably near the top) and the next scheduled game(s). I have no idea if that's even possible. I assume there are RSS feeds for those. I'd also like it if you could see all the page numbers of the thread with the featured threads. Or at least a link to the last page of the thread. Or a link to the last post in the thread that I've seen. Make it easier to jump right into the thread. I don't know that you really need to put the avatar in the upper left corner of the screen. That's really, really valuable real estate, and the user already knows what his avatar looks like, so you are really wasting it. The avatar could be at the bottom of the right sidebar. Personally, I'd rather see a Blazers box score in that top left spot. Anyway, I think it's a cool idea. I wouldn't get too caught up in people's initial dislike of it--changes in design, no matter how good, forces people to think differently, and people don't always like to. Still, though, I'd definitely run both the traditional version and this (drupal I assume?) version concurrently. I'd have RipCityTwo.com still point to the traditional view, but I'd have a big link at the top of the traditional view that says something like "Easy View" linking to this version. Over time, if the acceptance to the new version justifies it, you can then switch it around so this is the home page. But I'd let a popular vote here decide that. You definitely don't want to make big unilateral changes to the board, as we tend to get quite pissy.
Mine too. I believe their are, but I'll need to figure out a few things first. It might be of questionable legality if it's used commercially though. :| At the moment, can't figure out how to do that. Good point. Yeah, that's a much better way of saying we won't go and "fix" something that's not broken For the time being, it'll just be listed as a one-off page, and we'll always keep our standard forum views as well
Not that my opinion counts for squat but I REALLY dislike it. Too busy, too, too, too, too much. Ugh! Did I say I REALLY dislike it???? Simple interfaces are good for me and then I'll decide what I want to see. Showing the first message of several threads is very annoying to me. Seeing "Active" threads from different forums - no need or desire - makes extra clutter. It seems like trying to put too much into too little space and so it all just seems like a big mish-mash of stuff that makes me cringe. Oh, and I REALLY dislike it. Gramps...
Mook has some very good points and I'm sure the layout could be better so don't stop trying. I know everyone has personal preferences and you aren't going to please all of us. Thanks for your work on this. Much appreciated. Gramps...
One other thought about the sidebars, wouldn't it be cool if you had an area where users could load in photos of their favorite players? (From Bill Walton to Jerryd Bayless.) Ideally, there'd be one new photo a day based on what was next in the queue. If it's user-generated images, and they cycle in and out frequently, I think it might avoid legal problems. After all, SportsTwo isn't really responsible when a poster posts an ESPN photo of Roy... Adding photos would do something to help cut down on the clutter of text that Gramps is complaining about.
