new home page - comments requested [closed]
Posted: 12 July 04 10:22 am
the current home page for geocaching australia looks a little tired, takes up lots of space and weighs about 190kb, which makes it quite slow to downoad. so we are thinking of a new home page and want to bounce around some ideas
the design goal is:
- clear, clean design
- lightweight (quick to download, easy on the bandwidth)
- gives lots of information
- feeling welcoming
we've mocked up the following:
1. any comments on the design goals? should we be aiming for something else?
2. any comments on the mockup? if you like the way it is, let us know, but please let us know what you like and what you don't like so we have something to work from. here's our thoughts on the mockup:
- we want to add "now playing in the forum" to the top. we think that makes it more human and real-time
- comments will be added to the bottom - gives a feeling of community
- western australia will be populated - we just didn't happen to have that data on the development machine
- we have no idea about state colours - we'd like them to be the right colours so people can easily see their box
- if feels too information-loaded. we could do a state-based homepages, eg geocaching.com.au/nsw which shows just nsw caches, but more of them with with more detail. it seems from the usage of the RSS feeds that people are largely interested in state stuff, not australia-wide
- maybe two search boxes? one for "show me cache x" and another for "show me all the caches in this area"
- yeah, we've dropped the icons, but they were taking ages to load and didn't match one another. but they did have a certain charm. your thoughts?
- we'll probably reduce the size of the geocaching australia logo
- it feels a little corporate and boxy. maybe some rounded edges? maybe a collage image of various people geocaching would make it more human?
- probably also want a link to the latest forum articles (still need to log in, though)
- event caches are in bold. virgin caches were in pink but it looked a little ugly. maybe use bold for virgins instead of event caches?
- we haven't listed hidden dates for caches - it would be too much on the page. but we could do that on state homepages.
- we took off the state links to geocaching.com. did anyone use them? if so, we'll put them back in the header bar for each state box, or perhaps a "More..." link at the bottom of the box
- we probably need more content, eg "What is Geocaching" etc. if you agree, any volunteers to write some blub or can we snaffle some off someone's site (with appropriate attribution, of course!)?
- we should probably move the newsletter from the geocaching australia box to this new content box, eg "About Geocaching" or something. it will also highlight new issues in red when they come out.
your thoughts?
the design goal is:
- clear, clean design
- lightweight (quick to download, easy on the bandwidth)
- gives lots of information
- feeling welcoming
we've mocked up the following:
1. any comments on the design goals? should we be aiming for something else?
2. any comments on the mockup? if you like the way it is, let us know, but please let us know what you like and what you don't like so we have something to work from. here's our thoughts on the mockup:
- we want to add "now playing in the forum" to the top. we think that makes it more human and real-time
- comments will be added to the bottom - gives a feeling of community
- western australia will be populated - we just didn't happen to have that data on the development machine
- we have no idea about state colours - we'd like them to be the right colours so people can easily see their box
- if feels too information-loaded. we could do a state-based homepages, eg geocaching.com.au/nsw which shows just nsw caches, but more of them with with more detail. it seems from the usage of the RSS feeds that people are largely interested in state stuff, not australia-wide
- maybe two search boxes? one for "show me cache x" and another for "show me all the caches in this area"
- yeah, we've dropped the icons, but they were taking ages to load and didn't match one another. but they did have a certain charm. your thoughts?
- we'll probably reduce the size of the geocaching australia logo
- it feels a little corporate and boxy. maybe some rounded edges? maybe a collage image of various people geocaching would make it more human?
- probably also want a link to the latest forum articles (still need to log in, though)
- event caches are in bold. virgin caches were in pink but it looked a little ugly. maybe use bold for virgins instead of event caches?
- we haven't listed hidden dates for caches - it would be too much on the page. but we could do that on state homepages.
- we took off the state links to geocaching.com. did anyone use them? if so, we'll put them back in the header bar for each state box, or perhaps a "More..." link at the bottom of the box
- we probably need more content, eg "What is Geocaching" etc. if you agree, any volunteers to write some blub or can we snaffle some off someone's site (with appropriate attribution, of course!)?
- we should probably move the newsletter from the geocaching australia box to this new content box, eg "About Geocaching" or something. it will also highlight new issues in red when they come out.
your thoughts?