Bloom, IN HA Web Site - Possible Redesign

I've been thinking of giving our website a makeover (though it might take me a while to get this accomplished 'cause I've been very busy of late). Any ideas on how the site could be better (including if I should just be updating it more often)? Any thing you've wanted to have on the site? Design ideas? Ideas?

Note, I would like to request that if you say "flashier" or "more Star Wars like" or something along those lines that you please include examples of what you mean (like links to a site that does what you are thinking, or just your detailed vision). Just telling me the site should have more "Star Wars stuff" on it probably won't get results, or at least the results you are looking for.

Thanks!

 

Great idea.

Was just looking at it the other day and was thinking about this.

More later when I wake up

 

Probably an update in design. Other then that, is there an applet or something similar that could display recent topics from the boards in the left or right column? Something like a dedicated bot that fishes the hoosier alliance boards specifically, feeding info to a script on the website? I wouldn't expect you or anyone else to design it, but perhaps its already floating out there somewhere? I actually have been trying to find something like that for a while for other sites (actually wanted to create a private web page for myself to more easily keep abreast of the many forums I personally belong to). Ideally when you click on a thread it could take you to the boards. Just a wish thought anyhow.

 

Update club structure.

For example,

RC should be shown as the CR on the HA boards, just like here on the FF boards.

 

I dont know the first thing about web designe so I say what ever you think would be cool.

 

An applet might be possible. It would be a heck of a lot easier if the boards supported RSS feeds (something I wish they had supported for a long time now), but I might be able to design a Perl script using LWP to grab the main page, yank out the pertinent information, and then use AJAX to put it on the site. I doubt there would be anything out there that would already be written to handle the boards (someone may have already done the basic concept but I doubt anybody has done it for the boards as of yet), but as I'm a programmer I might be able to figure something out.

Any thoughts on the design itself? Preferences for a top or side based navigation?

 

Yep, updating the club structure and putting a bit more information for some members is high on my list.

 

Please note you don't have to know anything about web design to contribute to this thread; a good way to contribute would simply be pointing out web sites that you like the design of, themes you would like represented (more SW movie based, more comic based, more EU based, etc.), or things you wish the site had (perhaps more current news, a blog, a integrated catalog app to catalog your collectibles, etc.).

 

Top or side navigation doesn't really matter to me so much, however I think top navigation can offer a cleaner UI.

As far as design, I would go for star warsy

Ok, kidding aside what about making the content color neutral (white, black, greys) with a banner across the top. Thinking is we can (much like the boards) change font and bg color through the style sheet and add a new banner to change with season or special events and give the site a fresh look regularly without much effort.

What does everything about also have a small player on the front page playing random photos from the album? Even though its not "Star Wars" it could really convey the real aspect of the HA, friendship and camaraderie? I think things like the LOTR nights really exemplify that.

 

Not a bad idea. I'll think about it and see how it looks.

My one worry is that I don't want the front page getting too cluttered. Put too much on the page and people start overlooking what's there. But so far I think I can work the these ideas in and still keep a clean-ish look to the site.

 

I agree. That's all I can think of personally.

 

For any who are curious, I spent an hour and whipped up a prototype program to get the current list/links of board topics:

http://www.hoosieralliance.com/cgi-bin/test.pl

It's just a prototype, but I think I might be able to put this on the new site to show the recent updates to the boards. Thoughts, anybody?

(note, the page is pretty plain because this info will be put into another page; the page won't be standing on its own like that)

 

And using the logic I tested here:

http://www.hoosieralliance.com/cgi-bin/test2.pl

I was able to get the scrolling marquee off of the boards which details the next meeting time, i.e. if I decide to use that whoever updates the boards marquee will automatically update the one on the site at the same time. Thoughts?

 

Sweet.

 

What about a space about club events, past and future? The photos section is great, but it doesn't really tell people much about what the club does other than meetings. A photo could be selected to represent a particular event and then a summary of what happened, the highlights and such.

I think an events page could feasibly replace the News page, which hasn't been used since 2006. Since general news can usually be found on the boards, I don't think News really has much use these days.

As a note for links: Possibly link to Game Preserve if they have a website, and then to other places that have sponsored us in the past, like the Spring Break event.

Also, I know we've been mentioned in the IDS and other local papers in the past, so perhaps we could provide links to those articles?

Just throwing out ideas, as requested. Hopefully something useful in there!

 

Good idea about an events page, and yeah, with the boards the news section has hardly any traffic. Replacing the news section with a live update from the boards might be the best option.

There is actually a link to the Game Preserve right now (it's linked where I mention about the upcoming meeting), but I will admit that it's not obvious. It might be better to have the links elsewhere, but I'll have to think about how to style it; I've read several things where people don't seem to care as much anymore about "Links" pages on web sites, but I could have a "Where Can You Find Us" section that can encompass much the same thing.

As for the IDS, perhaps I can have a "Hoosier Alliance in the Press" section or something like it. Will have to think on it.

Good ideas, keep them coming!

 

One thing I would like to see,if not already mention, Have a link or something to the fact of upcoming HA events. Not necessarily next meeting but like conventions or book signings that we plan to attend. And then something a little bit more then just a HTTP link to said event.Not sure what more can be done other then the link but something like that.
And a if someone like Sara or Auston would help me, Write a History of the HA to add to section.
Have a separate place for Brian and his comic/Book reviews with links to the comic /book he reviews.

 

I'm thinking a general HA blog might be a good idea. That would be a place where you could post new items from Star Wars news, we could announce events and such (and link to the appropriate page if created), and Bryan could post his comic/book reviews. The reason I suggest a blog format is because people can then subscribe to it via RSS (which is how I read most of my news and keep up on stuff), and also because it's easy to set up accounts for different people (so you can post, Bryan can post, if you want somebody else to be able to post we can set them up, etc.). Also I've been thinking some of the news items that are brought up during the meeting would have been cool to know during the month, and a running blog would handle that. Thoughts?

That's really my one major complaint with TheForce.net boards: no RSS feeds, which means I have to come to the site to see updates. I would understand that more if you had to log in to read the articles, but anybody can see them, so.... All the other stuff I keep up on has support for RSS so I get notified when there's something new to see. Make it easy for people to get your content, I say.

 

Regarding the blog, that was my thinking in being able to get info from the boards to show up on the webpage. Most everything we talk about takes place on the boards anyhow... just have an automated duplication of info on the website. That way, it kind of updates itself.

 

However, you can't subscribe to updates from the boards (lack of RSS support), and in my experience it can be hard to get someone to keep going to your site(s) on a regular basis (RSS updates appear in their feed reader, while updates on a web page require the person to decide to go there (preferably daily)). A blog would let the user choose whether or not they want to come to the site or subscribe and get the updates in their feed reader, and a lot people I know use feed readers. Also, the blog would be for news updates and announcements, whereas the boards are used for discussion on any topic people can think up. If people just want to keep up to date on Star Wars/HA news they can follow the blog; if they want to discuss it, they can come to the boards.

But a blog would only work if people are posting to it, and you are correct that currently most of the things we talk about takes place on the boards. And we are also now on Facebook. I don't know, it could be redundant and I'd rather go with the solution that people will be updating, regardless if it's ideal or not. I'd like to hear what Eric and/or Bryan think, as those would be the two main people (I believe) who would be posting. In any case, I'd personally like to see more updates of SW news, books, comics and stuff show up.

 

Speaking of news, though, would anybody object or like if I did a automatically updating section for TheForce.net's newsfeed on the main page or a sub page? Just a thought. That might take care of the "news blog" issue, as we could report what's new on the boards via RC's suggestion and also have the latest in SW news from TheForce.net (which we wouldn't have to update, a nice plus).

Thoughts?

 

Tim as always your ideas are great.

 

Definitely like the idea of putting TheForce.Net's newsfeed on the site.

As for the debate of Blog vs Facebook, to bring up one tiny bit of the earlier discussion... I'd check a blog more than I would Facebook. But that's just me. I really don't spend much time on Facebook, just use it when I need to contact people about school-things, so I'm a bit biased.

Thinking along the lines of having comic/book/movie/etc reviews on the site (or whatever it ends up being)... Has anyone ever considered advertising our group/meetings with the local comic stores? Or if there are small locally owned book stores that carry Star Wars books? We could easily create a flier or such for the group and the site, advertising our reviews and our meetings, to get the word out, and I'm sure local businesses would post them somewhere. Not only would it potentially gain them extra business by drawing customer attention to these items in their shop, but if they did agree, we could possibly have a "Friends of the Alliance" listing somewhere.

(Note: I'm not sure if there might be some rules somewhere against this, just randomly throwing the idea out there because it popped into my head.)

 

Whichever way we go, I suggest we use squarespace! Good stuff. http://www.squarespace.com/

 

Thanks for the suggestion, but I have my own dedicated private server I host on and I prefer to write my own code (either from scratch or using Dreamweaver) or install packages like WordPress. Also, since I'm using my own server it doesn't cost me extra every month to host the site (using Squarespace would cost me an additional $15 a month just to be able to port what we currently have (and I'd have to upgrade to the $20 a month package shortly thereafter); technically I'm paying $40 a month for my private server, however that hosts more than just the HA's site (10 domains, currently) and I can utilize my dedicated hardware as I see fit).