ZRoadster.org Homepage

[board]

Hi Everyone,

Sorry I haven't been following protocol with signatures and images but i've been busy playing about with a front end for the whole site which has been keeping me busy.

So at the moment we have a bare bones layout which we want YOUR feedback on so that it turns into what YOU want and not what I think you want

Right now we need to keep it sensible with what we add and do so that time is best spent getting the front end together and then in time we can move on and keep tweaking it with lots of fun stuff. For the moment we have a dev frontend going on at http://zroadster.org/wp (right click on the link and select open in new window/tab to keep this page open) so hop over and have a look.

The images on the front page are obviously just examples i threw up to show the banner off and the other pages are blank as we haven't the content for them. One thing i keep seeing requested is the list of the latest forum posts so if you click the + sign under the banner on the front page you will get the list. It's also in the sidebar of the other pages. We can have more or less entries showing and currently it does not scroll. The scrolling is one of those nice to have options in the future but for now I think this might tick the box to get us going.

We need to decide on images for the banner. I think once we have the logo done we might have that as the first one and then we can go from there. that banner can have video in it as well as text (when you mouse over it) as well as just an image linking to another page.

We can have other types of styled boxes underneath with more information and links in so once I have an idea of what you would like then I can have a play with the layout.

So if you can start putting thoughts together as to what you would like to see on the site, any images you would like to use on the banner to get us going (I will resize them so they fit correctly).

When we have something nice we will take the forum offline one night and switch the site so it becomes the landing page and the forum will then be linked and located at zroadster.org/forum.

This is a really rough shell so be gentle :-ss Normally we would have worked with the client to get a full brief and show something a bit better but we're building this one backwards

Cheers,
James

 

[Boysie]

Hi James

Hopefully you have now opened the floodgate
shame you dont have a Smillies for 'one at a time please'

Good luck

 

[si-forks]

Homepage is bang on looks modern and fresh ^^

 

[XVar]

The Wordpress site is looking good, apart from the squashed pictures in the scrolly cube It's a shame that WP-United has been abandoned as it was a really slick solution to integrating phpBB and WordPress. Are you going to leave zroadster.org pointing at the forum? Or rejig it so its zroadster.org/forum?

 

[board]

The Wordpress site is looking good, apart from the squashed pictures in the scrolly cube It's a shame that WP-United has been abandoned as it was a really slick solution to integrating phpBB and WordPress. Are you going to leave zroadster.org pointing at the forum? Or rejig it so its zroadster.org/forum?

The plan is once you're all happy with the wordpress site that we make that the front landing page zroadster.org which then links to the forum on zroadster.org/forum

I'll do the switcheroo late one night when hopefully everyone is tucked up in bed. I had to wait till after 2am to play this morning so we might have to have a bit of co-ordination

The images are just thrown on for now and not resized as I need permission from the owners of the good images to see if we can use them. When i make them better and we add in some link text then the 3d scrolly cube can look quite good, i think, but depends what everyone wants as to whether it stays!

I do have a bridge that i want to use so you will be able to login directly from wordpress too but it's not playing ball at the moment. I think possibly because of the current structure with WP being a level down from the forum rather than the other way round so once we get things moved about that's my next task to get that working. I haven't spent a great deal of time on that yet as i've been pretty flat out but we'll get it sorted.

 

[Titan]

Can't say that I'm keen on the rotating, sliced, rhomboid pictures but so what? It's different and it works.
The choice of pictures could be based on the "Pic of The Month Competition" but I don't know how onerous it might be to update that particular graphic on a monthly basis.
It would however engender a sense of ownership amongst the membership and hopefully create greater interest.

I also think you/we should be careful of trying to re-create "that to which we have become accustomed" when at present the slate is almost clean.
One thing I DO miss is the scrolling latest posts but by saying that I am guilty as charged in my previous sentence!
You are unlikely to be able to satisfy all the people all the time so I will finish by saying crack on as you are - it's great ^^

 

[board]

Can't say that I'm keen on the rotating, sliced, rhomboid pictures but so what? It's different and it works.
The choice of pictures could be based on the "Pic of The Month Competition" but I don't know how onerous it might be to update that particular graphic on a monthly basis.
It would however engender a sense of ownership amongst the membership and hopefully create greater interest.

This is no problem at all and as long as everyone is happy for me to use the images I can get them on there and swap/add each month

I also think you/we should be careful of trying to re-create "that to which we have become accustomed" when at present the slate is almost clean.
One thing I DO miss is the scrolling latest posts but by saying that I am guilty as charged in my previous sentence!
You are unlikely to be able to satisfy all the people all the time so I will finish by saying crack on as you are - it's great ^^

The idea is to have them scrolling but for now they will be static. I think we're going to have to code it ourselves as there doesn't appear to be anything out of the box that does it so it's on the to do list once we have a basic site together. I know we're never going to please everyone but we'll do our best to, if not the majority wins on a vote

 

[board]

this is the bridge i'm playing with http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp- ... her_notes/

Obviously if any of you have experience of anything we are doing and know of addons or modules that are good, make them known, so we get the best of everything. While i do this sort of thing for a living, it's the kind of business where you are constantly learning so i never assume i know everything and i am always ready to listen and learn

I've used a theme for the wp side of things which was used on another job we did for a client, rather than starting from scratch to save some time, so if we go with that i'll get it licensed.

 

[ALM]

I think it looks great, fresh, modern and simple.....works for me.
:-bd

 

[Titan]

One thing I DO miss is the scrolling latest posts

Just seen the "view unread posts" link top right which is possibly better than the scroll!
At least you don't have to wait for the list to cycle round all the time

 

[NeRo]

The .net forum software is so old, I fully expect it to turn up on Antiques Roadshow in the near future

I can see where James/Gaz are going with their development of the site and I'm sure once developed, it will be what ZRoadsters want

I also applaud the ethics of the site in that it is for the members and that any monies go to a charity

 

[board]

Hi Everyone,

I have been having a play again with the front end again and made it a little more appealing with the images sized correctly and used some from the submissions you have made over the months. If we are using pictures supplied by you all then I'll need your permission before we actually use them as i don't want to ruffle any feathers by using a shot without consent.

The 3D banner is still in place but this can go and be a more simple one if you would like the photos to be there and rotate. It's not mandatory for there to be a banner so it can go completely if we think it doesn't suit the site.

I've made a tabbed area under the banner which currently has the 5 most recent topics (hover over them and you get more info), we can have more or less in the list so let me know what works for you.
Latest news, this is taken from the blog (news page) so will post the latest notifications here. We'll also probably tie it in with a facebook and twitter account so you can subscribe via those or an rss feed if that's preferable.

The mini gallery, which isn't sized correctly, is just filling white space at the moment. Having a brain freeze and no ideas of what to put over there yet if we keep the tabs as they are. We can have the tabs full width and more of them but i think splitting the section into two will give us more options to play with.

I have been having a think about what we want to provide on this part of the site. Some fun stuff like desktop backgrounds and maybe themes for your computers would be good. Maybe we can work on having a new theme each year and some backgrounds for mobile devices as well as the trusty PC? What are your thoughts and if you have any other suggestions that could be fun then please say. Obviously to make this work we are going to have to provide the pictures ourselves and also allow everyone to have the use of them on our machines etc. as well as anyone else who comes along and wants to download them (if we make them freely available). Do we have a zroadster.org watermark on the images and/or the photographers details. Again let me know what you think.

Under the projects section i thought it might be nice to have a central area for a knowledge base. here we could have the full progress report of something you are working on, details of quick popular mods you can do to your Zed as well as more advanced stuff. I thought this might be easier for someone rather than having to search through posts and replies and we can link from the page to the appropriate thread in the forum. As we build more ideas and projects we can then convert them from the forum into nice informational pages which could be printed in a nice form so you don't have to park the Zed in the office to see the screen while you do the work.

The events section really speaks for itself. we can have info on past and future events with lots of nice photos/videos from the ones gone by. this might encourage other owners to join in and help them to get involved without hunting through thousands of posts on the forum.

The news section we can post to so if you have a cruise going on we can update it. It might be fun to actually update the news while you are out cruising by using your phones? Live progress reports!

Have a look at what we have so far by heading here: wp/ and let me know what you think. (gone for a carbon look today for carbon fans )

please excuse any typos or grammatical errors as it's getting late now

Cheers,
James

[Edit] I have moved downlods under Z Stuff as i thought if we are having stickers mugs, hats and pipes we need somewhere to put them - Also added a links page, Maybe we should have a directory of useful links for things like mods, servicing or anything that’s useful for a Z owner?

 

[g8jka]

Also added a links page, Maybe we should have a directory of useful links for things like mods, servicing or anything that’s useful for a Z owner?

Will there be a link to zroadster.net 8-}

Sorry, couldn't resist, although it is very useful for the current knowledge base. Anyway is there a way of the forum taking us to the our newest unread post on the thread, rather than pressing the thread and it just going to the top if the page and us having to scroll through the posts until we come to our first unread one? I would find that useful if it can be done and to also open up a new tab if we click on a link, rather than the current page (I think this has been mentioned somewhere else before)?

 

[board]

Also added a links page, Maybe we should have a directory of useful links for things like mods, servicing or anything that’s useful for a Z owner?

Will there be a link to zroadster.net 8-}

Sorry, couldn't resist, although it is very useful for the current knowledge base. Anyway is there a way of the forum taking us to the our newest unread post on the thread, rather than pressing the thread and it just going to the top if the page and us having to scroll through the posts until we come to our first unread one? I would find that useful if it can be done and to also open up a new tab if we click on a link, rather than the current page (I think this has been mentioned somewhere else before)?

Yeah why not - we should link to the most useful information available for all and if it's on .net then why not

If you go up to the top right there is a "view unread posts" link which will list all the posts you haven't read yet as well as other options to view all the new posts and view all your posts. Does that do what you're looking for?

We need to edit the code of the forum to make the links open up on new tabs so that's on the list to do.

Cheers,
James

 

[g8jka]

Yes sorry its ok I have found how to do it. If I go to the new homepage and click on recent topics, it automatically takes me to the first unread post after the last one I have read. Saves scrolling through all the read posts to get to the first unread one

 

[board]

latest topics scroller added to all pages. I'm afraid this one is flash based at the moment but i will work on a replacement which works on all platforms for those on apple.

 

[board]

added an events calendar which allows for location maps etc to make things nicer to find where it is.

 

[board]

Does anyone think building a FAQ would be useful or should we stick to having all the info in the forum where it can be searched?

 

[hard top]

I think that building a FAQ is a good idea.

 

[Snoops]

I like being able to see at a glance who is on line, I know it's at the bottom of the Board Index page
but what about it being on the home page?
I know the changing pictures "theme" is quite flashy - not sure if it's too much, it feels a bit like when
you get a new version of PowerPoint and you go overboard with the features, don't mean to offend
sometimes subtle is better.
The overall feel of the home page is new and fresh and "alive".

I have always liked the feel of The Z3 Italian Site myself