Help make a better website

[XeRnOuS]

Hi Everyone,
I've been looking through some websites trying to find some templates we can modify to create a new look & feel for warzone 2100's website. I'm not really sure what everyone would like, so i just picked a few templates i thought didn't suck too much. Please check them over and let me know what you do / dont like. If there are any websites out there you really like, post them in a reply so I can get a good idea of the direction everyone would like to see WZ's website go.

Thanks
- XeRnOuS

http://www.freetemplatesonline.com/temp ... l-212.html

I think furtulul is an excellent template to work with. The coloring on it is ugly, but it comes with the PSD's so it shouldn't be very difficult to modify. If we were to change the coloring to a more brownish / tanish color,turn the stuff above the top navigation into a banner, and the section below it could be a slide-show of some sort which goes though some of the games unique features. It would need some redesign work but it definitely has potential.

http://www.templateworld.com/templates-7002-640.html

This is another sort of clean & simple design. Although i dislike the coloring on this as well, the concept is clearly and effectively presented. We could easily change around the formating, add a nice navigation to it, and swap out the things we don't like.

http://www.templateworld.com/templates-4004-233.html

This is a design i'm not particularly fond of, though i thought i'd throw it in just for some variation. Personally i'd drop the stuff on the left-side of the content and make the content one large box, maybe fix the banner up a little bit so it looks more like the rest of the page, and of course swap out all of the image & customize it to look more like a wz website rather than the tacky counter-strike website it is right now.

[GiGaBaNE]

did i miss something? whats wrong with what we have. sounds like a lot of work that is completly unrelated to making the actuall game better =(

[BulletMagnet]

/BulletMagnet liked the old one better.

[Q-Necron]

I wouldn't mind taking a crack at a design for WZ... Played it several years now (first played on the PS1) and still enjoy it, so contributing would only be fair. Just let me know what exactly you are looking for and would like to see - I mainly work with Joomla! and Zencart templates at work but some good old fashion HTML/CSS work would do me some good.

If you'd like I can probably have a WIP up on my server to browse/test/edit in less than a week.

[Q-Necron]

Follow up (boredom @ work took over), I made this WIP. Just throwing out ideas, fonts and their colors would more than likely need to be changed but the general idea stands.

800x600 Example WIP


Questions/Comments always welcome.

[Zarel]

Whoa. I like it.

Some ideas:
- instead of that weird stuff in the header background, use a faded screenshot.
- use a different color for the tabs
- use a darker color for linktext and text
- do something fancier with the headers
- desaturate the cyan (and use the new logo, not the old logo)
- remove the black "Warzone 2100 2.2.4" and "Download" from the screenshot, and place a download button somewhere else

[Q-Necron]

I was playing around with the header, it was supposed to be the blues from this site + rusted dents however it didn't come out like I had pictured so I started playing around with metal/rust effects.

Sample effect...

Some ideas:
- instead of that weird stuff in the header background, use a faded screenshot.
- use a different color for the tabs
- use a darker color for linktext and text
- do something fancier with the headers
- desaturate the cyan (and use the new logo, not the old logo)
- remove the black "Warzone 2100 2.2.4" and "Download" from the screenshot, and place a download button somewhere else

1) Not on a machine with WZ, but I was thinking the same thing OR a nice rendering of a couple units/buildings.
2) Darker? I went with the chrome look from the logo but can be changed easily... maybe transparent + shading for a junky look.
3) Yeah I figured the colors of the text wouldn't fit - I would like to match em to the current site and see how it looks, but in the end we can change those via CSS in seconds
4) Working on that - In the end I would like the header + the box title stuff to have matching graphics.
5) Anyone got a link to the new logo (the bigger the better), small one on the site doesn't leave much playing room.
6) Wasn't sure about the content box, playing around with that - it can go away for now. A Download tab would be where the Home/Forums is I was just lazy and didn't make all the buttons haha.

I'll continue to play with it until something comes along that you the WZ people would like to see in a browser window. Then its just cutting up graphics and assigning minimal HTML with a crap tone of CSS!

[Zarel]

1) Not on a machine with WZ, but I was thinking the same thing OR a nice rendering of a couple units/buildings.

No worries, we can add it later.

4) Working on that - In the end I would like the header + the box title stuff to have matching graphics.

Sorry, that was a typo. I meant heading. The site looks like it could use underline-style headings. Like the kind Wikipedia has.

5) Anyone got a link to the new logo (the bigger the better), small one on the site doesn't leave much playing room.

http://developer.wz2100.net/browser/tru ... 00logo.png

Is that big enough?

6) Wasn't sure about the content box, playing around with that - it can go away for now. A Download tab would be where the Home/Forums is I was just lazy and didn't make all the buttons haha.

I mean a separate download button. Like most of the more popular software have. For instance:

http://getsongbird.com/

In general, we should learn from the websites of popular free and/or OSS software.

http://firefox.com/

[Q-Necron]

Is that big enough?

w00t on Logo size!

Sorry, that was a typo. I meant heading. The site looks like it could use underline-style headings. Like the kind Wikipedia has.

I see, I'll incorporate some examples in round 2.

I mean a separate download button.

Yeah pretty standard practice now days, I'll get a few examples in round 2 for sure.

[Q-Necron]

Round 2!

I played with some texturing for the top banner: rusted, torn metal with an open space in the top right. With a little bit of javascript it can load a different image every time a browser comes to the website.

Updated logo! Thanks for the link.

I also played with the button some more, the Home button is an example of the hover effect. I'm still thinking how to get Development on there. Its a rather long word so it doesn't quite fit with the buttons atm - I'll be coming back to this problem and addressing it.

I changed up the font (hover over) colors as well as the base text color - not a big deal as this will be done with CSS with ease, but for a general idea I made them close to the current website.

I took the Download button and applied it to the 3 major links located above the screen shots (currently). Made them a soft gradient and a floating look (popular nowdays) - also provided an example of the hover over effect.



Questions/Comments?

[Zarel]

Looks good. I wonder if there's something better you can do with the tabs, though... Other than that, I like it.

[Q-Necron]

Hrm, no likey tabs... I'll see what I can come up with.

Just thought of something, if I had the fonts + psd (or w/e was used) for the new Logo something like this wouldn't be to bad:

Picture the 2100 replaced with Home, FAQ, Help, Forums, etc...


Granted each image would have to be made with the text and matching font, so a little more work, but would still look nice.

[XeRnOuS]

Hey guys,
sorry i haven't been around for a few days, my work finally picked up a bit.

Necron, nice job on the template, i've got a few suggestions though.

First of all increase the size of the document to 1024x wide or so. You can leave the site at 800px wide centered on that. This will let you see what it'll look like for people using larger screens, just imagine a great deal of white on the sides with the current design in the center.

I'd recommend playing with some backgrounds or something for the extra space around the edges.

Personally i like the original tabs you had better, but thats just me. All over all its a nice design though, once everyone agrees on a final draft ill be more than welling to code it for Kamaze, and help out implementing it if needed.
- XeRnOuS

[Q-Necron]

I had actually planned it to be a canned design like this one, set width with a pin stripped background, much like the stripes used in the template. However with a little more time we could add in a metal background with holes torn/rusted out and then place screen shots behind with a fixed attribute and it would look as if you was looking through the holes. But I wasn't sure how small you all would like to keep the site.

I'll post a 1280x800 image so we can see that it looks like soon.

As for tabs , I kinda prefer them however if the general consensus is to change them thats fine by me.

[Buginator]

Round 2!

Questions/Comments?

/me likes