Wanted: Web sites whose design you like

[saint]

Looking for inspiration on the redesign of BYOAC. Plesae post examples of websites with good design that you think would serve as a good model for BYOAC.

Thanks!

--- saint

[SirPoonga]

considering the nature of this site (FAQ, informaional, has forum, chat, eamples, etc)  I'd go with a phpnuke or, as pj has been "promoting" lately a mamboserver based site.  I have a couple of sisues with mambo server bu that's because it isn't doing what I want it to do

Saint, I know you have seen me controls.dat test site.  A format like that would work.  However since you have ads I think the 3 column look might work out better.  You can run ADs in the footer and right column.  Kinda like mameworld.net.  Other than the super huge header I like the mameworld layout.

Now, for FAQs (main byoac content), I like Mambo's system, it's searchable too. From what I tested on sites that use mambo it searches quite well.

Other site I visite regularly that have the three column layout.  Luckily for this layout there's a bunch of canned software like mambo to do that.

http://www.mngca.org/
http://slashdot.org/
http://www.dilbert.com/
http://forums.delphiforums.com/star_riders/start
http://www.microsoft.com/ (Ohhhh, evil!!! but good website layout)
http://www.airsoftretreat.com/

What I DON'T think would work for BYOAC.  A top menu style website like
http://www.star-riders.org/

[Soulcon]

Here are just my suggestions

www.kikizo.com

www.pvponline.com

Just my 2cp

-Soul

[JoyMonkey]

I've always liked the clean layout of my home news site:
http://www.online.ie

The color scheme works very well and you don't have to go nuts trying to find a particular section of the site.

[RetroJames]

www.retroblast.com

[Sir Auros]

I think www.xbox-scene.com would be an excellent choice for this site to emulate not only in layout, but in ideas.

They have a ton of user-submitted tutorials for working with Xboxes...what if BYOAC started accepting similar tutorials for MAME cabinets and such?

No offense, but the current layout is really hard to navigate if you're new to the site.

[patrickl]

considering the nature of this site (FAQ, informaional, has forum, chat, eamples, etc)  I'd go with a phpnuke or, as pj has been "promoting" lately a mamboserver based site.  I have a couple of sisues with mambo server bu that's because it isn't doing what I want it to do

I dislike PHP-Nuke more and more as I use it.  Too much work to make it look even half decent. Maybe Mambo would be an alternative. Even the site http://www.mamboserver.com/  looks pretty good.

Personally I like clean layouts with not too many graphics. For instance http://www.rohdesign.com/weblog/ and http://www.siebel.com/

[AlanS17]

I have to second the Microsoft vote. They have a very well laid out site.

[Jakobud]

I have to second the Microsoft vote. They have a very well laid out site.

Are you kidding?  It's freakin impossible to find anything you want on their site...

What I really really like about www.mameworld.net is it's incredibly fast loading times.  I can't remember which one of the MW guys made the site, but you should talk to them about it.  One of the main reasons that the site renders so fast, is because they use CSS for laying out the page, as opposed to super slow html tables.

I don't know much about mambo, but it looks very good and clean and FAST.  Check out http://www.mamboserver.com/ It renders so fast!

In general saint, keep the design to a minimum number of images.  A great layout can be easily achieved using only text and html and css (www.mameworld.net is a perfect example of this).

And PLEASE don't design the site to work great with Internet Explorer but doesn't work as well with other browsers.  IE sucks.  It's horrible.  If you cater BYOAC to IE users... shame on you...

[SirPoonga]

Just because you can;t find stuff on their site doesn;t mean the layout is not a good design

I can find stuff on M$.  You don't think M$ obviously.

[Jakobud]

Just because you can;t find stuff on their site doesn;t mean the layout is not a good design

I can find stuff on M$.  You don't think M$ obviously.

I guess I don't... I think a little bit more straightforward than M$... let me give you an example.  I goto microsoft.com and do a search for "visual basic command reference".  Microsoft basically came up with/standardized their visual basic.  There are a lot of visual basic commands that I am sure are in some sort of 'command reference' page.... but where is it?  My search yields these results:

search results

I see "how to call vb assembly for .NET..."
"visual basic directory list info..."
"visual studio directory list"
"invoking command line .NET compilers"
"top 10 reasons to use visual J++ 1.1"  <--- what the heck?  hahaha not even close, Bill!

the list goes on and on and I don't see anything close to "visual basic command reference..."  In all my experience in MS's website over the years I have had to dig dig dig dig just to get to something simple.  I usually give up  I guess you find stuff easier than I can.

Oh well, sorry about the thread hijacking!  On with the much needed BYOAC redesign!

PS - I saw someone mentioned the idea for a user submitted tutorial section.  I love that idea!

[patrickl]

I don't think VB statements are constructed from commands, but rather from methods, objects, properties API's and such. So there is no "command reference" for VB. Besides you just press F1 when your cursor is on the "command" and the help file pops-up. That's not why I reply though.

I have to agree that it's sometimes hard to find stuff on sites that carry a huge amount of info, but that's why they tend to get split in sub sites. Microsoft has done that really well. Your example actually shows very well how that works. You entered a search command that's basically searching for non-existing info. The search function is never gonna work if you don't know the name of what to search for. Still you get a "related link" to the "Visual basic Developer Center" if you go there you'll find all the documentation, examples, patches and what not a Visual Basic developer might need (and where your answer is).

So, a global search function is nice, but a well structured organisation of the information is much more important.

But then I guess people were talking layout more than overal structure. I don't think BYOAC is big enough for splitting into several sites (apart from the forum) I personally like their clean layout very much too.

[Sir Auros]

The big problem I have is that the Step by Step Newbie Guide really isn't much of a tutorial. Seems more like simply a newbie guide.

I thought I remembered there being a more indepth tutorial covering pretty much all aspects of building a cabinet on here a year ago when I first joined. Did that get axed once the book came out?

It also seems like a lot of stuff found on the forum FAQs really should be available on the mainsite.

[Jakobud]

It also seems like a lot of stuff found on the forum FAQs really should be available on the mainsite.

Agreed.  Saint, when you are ready to start revamping the content of the site, I would recommend you get a handful of 5-10 volunteers to comb through the existing 400+ pages of information on the message board.  We could mark specific topics where we would pull that information from those threads into the actual content of the site.  

There have been so many threads where questions have been asked and people join together to answer the question and it gets answered and then the thread is basically over.  Perfect example of information that needs to be in the content of the site instead of getting lost in the messageboard (which results in people just asking more questions on the messageboard about things that have already been covered).

[Sasquatch!]

I'm sure this will come across as a shameless plug, but I'm really happy with the design of arcadeparadise.org.  It's clean-looking, it loads fast (because the graphics are at a minimum), and all layout is done via CSS.

[patrickl]

I'm sure this will come across as a shameless plug, but I'm really happy with the design of arcadeparadise.org.  It's clean-looking, it loads fast (because the graphics are at a minimum), and all layout is done via CSS.

Yeah, that style switcher is realy cool too!

[Jakobud]

Hi Saint, do you think you could give us an update or something and sort of where you are at in this whole grand scheme of things?  I am curious

[AmericanDemon]

I'd volunteer to wade through the old school pages of the forums to dig up the prescious nuggets of needed info.....

We could all play Forum Spelunker.