New Homepage - Suggestions Welcome

I've been working on our new homepage. Daniel liked it but suggested I throw it by you guys to get some feedback.

Obviously its not done and theres lots left to do. Give me a shout! Might be some super secret news regarding a server though.

Obviously its not done and theres lots left to do. Give me a shout! Might be some super secret news regarding a server though.

Looks really nice. What do you use for prototyping, building, and the like? I want to get into some web design.

And PLEASE, PLEASE tell you're moving to a new server.

Quote from: John Davis on March 31, 2016, 08:45:40 AM

Obviously its not done and theres lots left to do. Give me a shout! Might be some super secret news regarding a server though.

Looks really nice. What do you use for prototyping, building, and the like? I want to get into some web design.

And PLEASE, PLEASE tell you're moving to a new server.

I was going to wait til it happened to surprise folks but a new server is in the works for hopefully this weekend.

Thanks, this time it was just a few changes to a fairly standard theme.

To answer your question, most of the time I'll get my designer to design up a mockup in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign. We send this to our clients and get it approved. Then we either build a bootstrap based template from scratch using NetBeans as my IDE or find an already existing theme that's close enough to the wireframe we want and just retheme what we need. Technology wise we tend to go towards Concrete5 because its so easy for clients to use and because its pretty easy to extend. The new version is really slick as well.

Quote from: palmerito0 on March 31, 2016, 09:41:39 PM

Quote from: John Davis on March 31, 2016, 08:45:40 AM

Obviously its not done and theres lots left to do. Give me a shout! Might be some super secret news regarding a server though.

Looks really nice. What do you use for prototyping, building, and the like? I want to get into some web design.

And PLEASE, PLEASE tell you're moving to a new server.

I was going to wait til it happened to surprise folks but a new server is in the works for hopefully this weekend.

Thanks, this time it was just a few changes to a fairly standard theme.

To answer your question, most of the time I'll get my designer to design up a mockup in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign. We send this to our clients and get it approved. Then we either build a bootstrap based template from scratch using NetBeans as my IDE or find an already existing theme that's close enough to the wireframe we want and just retheme what we need. Technology wise we tend to go towards Concrete5 because its so easy for clients to use and because its pretty easy to extend. The new version is really slick as well.

Thanks! I've already toyed around with Bootstrap a little. I guess I just have to start practicing stuff a little more.

Looks good!

The only real thing I can say is not to overstretch: while I have to applaud the work you've put into getting this site back in working order, displaying the podcast (last episode 2012, I think) and a blog so prominently might not be worth it unless you're planning on running them too. Certainly, link to the former, but it might not be worth such a stand-out position.
The twitter feed the current homepage has might be a better choice: much easier to maintain, at least. Plus it might be worth moving the 'become a member!' button a bit higher (maybe in place of the podcast?)

Something similar for the featured links: how's that going to be managed? It won't be easy to change that on any real regular basis, and how will it be decided anyway?
It might be better to cut down: instead just have a featured theorist, who could be a youtuber or forum/twitter user, and have it decided by, say, forum vote in the Believers section: then have text to the side as testimonials from the people that voted. Saves on work: no need to go searching for three separate people. You only need one, and most of that can be provided by regular users.

I don't know, random thoughts. Feel free to ignore, but you asked for suggestions 

Playing off what Jane said about featured links, maybe have a healthy catalog of links and display a randomized list of 10, so it's always different. You'd of course be able to update the list as-needed, but even between updates it wouldn't get stale.