The ATK Community Facelift!

http://www.atkcommunity.com/banners/news/general.png

After much deliberation over getting ourselves a new site design, Chazlene and I decided to make the new site ourselves.

Almost every colour on the forum has changed, with many graphics getting a complete facelift. Chazlene and I have gone through many different versions to get to this point, and I strongly believe that we have the right mix of colours, graphics and features, without putting off the average ATK member.

There have been some other exciting changes as well, in terms of the content and structure of the site. On the homepage you will see an "About ATK" box, with information to help visitors who visit the site understand what we are about more quickly. In the future many more slides will be added, with more general information also being featured.

There is also a news ticker box with live updates from the following locations:

• Digg - Technology
• Digg - Games
• 1UP
• CVG
• BBC - Technology
• Kotaku (requested by Siepie)
• GameSpot - Previews (requested by Daemon)
• GameSpot - Reviews (requested by Daemon)

If you have a site that you visit regularly and would like us to add their feed to our site, please let us know below.

There is also a brand new sidebar on the forum index. This will allow you to navigate the site much more easily, without having to refer to the homepage every time you want to find a link. There is also space for advertising which should help to boost the amount of money we have available to spend each month on improving the Community.

You may also have noticed that the Shoutbox location has been changed, and can now only be found here. This is because it was cluttering up the homepage and some people were finding that it wouldn't properly load for them in that location.

The new design was a huge joint effort by both Chazlene and I, and we have been working solidly for a whole day. This is by no means the end of the updates to the site, and we have many more areas of the site we would like to expand and improve over the coming days and weeks.

Let us know what you think below!

simply orgasmic

ive already told you what i think i lvoe the whole site, the only problem i have is with the background hich you know about

WE DID ALL THIS IN JUST ONE DAY. WE ARE AWESOME.

In terms of new stuff to be added, I'm going to remake small things like forum icons and emoticons, but there's also going to be some far bigger projects which we're keeping a secret for now.

Holy shizzle this is awesome, the new site looks great although the only thing I could say is that the background needs to change from 1960's wallpaper :p

woah, ddddaaaaaaaaamn, i got here i was like woah shit wtf , i was like am i on a wrong side then i saw the ATK banner, and where is teh shoutsy boxy?

I like all the new features, like the nav bar down the side of the forum, but I don't particularly like the new olour scheme. I much preferred the bright yellow scheme, while this pink/peach just looks fleshy, and the less said about the background the better.

I like the effort you're putting in to changing the site though, maybe a colour scheme similar to the new banner would be better (love the banner).

HOLY SHIT! This is amazing! In one day thats insane!

Oh. My. God. Love it, nice work!

i thought i logged on to a different website first of all :p
just trying to get used to everything but first thoughts are that its ace, not sure about the brown though tbh but great work anyway.:D

I logged in and was like = Holy Shit!! This is AWESOME!

ATK shall now be known as the Poo Community ;D

yeah this new site nice, htought i was in the wrong place at first lol, looks fucking awesome

Not too keen on the news feed, I think that the good idea of removing the shoutbox was kinda pointless considering it's been replaced by a news feed that looks ugly and still takes up the same ammount of space. I think moving the feed to the side (or removing completely), and just having the front page for ATK news is a much better idea. As it is now, I have to scroll down to see the first news feature, which I don't think is a good thing.

Another (very) small thing that would be easy to rectify, is the margin at the top of the page, it would look better if the margin wasn't as large as it is, maybe it should be the same as the spacing between the banner and navigation buttons.

Sorry it seems like i'm only critisizing, I really like the positive steps the site is taking, i'm just trying to provide constructive critisism to improve it even further :D.

EDIT: This is what I mean about the banner:
http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/8449/bannersx2.jpg

I think I agree with Phantom on the banner front, although it would be good if there was a little more of a margin than in Phantom's "better" image.

In terms of the news feeds, I think they should stay. What Chazlene and I were trying to do with the changes on the homepage was make it more like a centre of information and a proper homepage, not just a front to the forum. I know "Recent Threads" is at the bottom, but it was put there for a reason. If you want to see that kind of information, just click the "New Posts" link in the main navbar.

I like the idea of the news feed, maybe instead of taking up a sizable portion of the homepage, maybe it could consist of only a few lines, that refresh every 5-10 seconds. As it is now, i hardly have time to read all of them before they refresh, and the ammount of feeds and the 'wall of text' presentation kinda puts me off reading them.

EDIT: Much better!