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!

Cheers.

I have changed it to four news feeds on one page, and kept the refresh time at 10 seconds.

I go away for two weeks (I'm writing this in a Disney Net Cafe), and you have completly trashed the site. I'm sorry if this offends you, but as we all know, I will speak how I feel, and I feel that the new site color scheme, features etc. have ruined the site. The banner with the blue and black rings makes us look like 12 year olds, and the brown looks like I eat a really hot curry and decided to do my business over the website rather in a restroom.

We all know I didn't like the Facebook-like additions previously, but this is in a completely new league. The only good things I can say about it is that I log on to see a gaming newsreel with a Madden 09 story on it, and that it's reversable.

If you want to post hate mail against me, go fo it, and I won't be able to read it until Monday lunchtime when I get back. I will be on TS by Monday evening at the latest, and look forward to discussing this with Chalex in the near future.

EDIT - If you have removed the shoutbox, I will skin you alive.
EDIT2 - Do we really need an About us box? If people care, they would read the story on the side.

Oric, go to hell, i like this new look, and where is the shoutbox?

As i said the other night, kudos :)

lol sorry but nice rant oric. i suppose its to peoples different likings. however, i would prefer if the shoutbox would still be on the main homepage because for me, thats the page that sits on each side of me playing WoW so i can actually see the shout box and new posts

The shoutbox is still at the top of the forum, we didn't want to keep it on the homepage because it would mean the page would be too long with the new About ATK box and the News Ticker. We also wanted the forum index page to be used more, since a lot of people skip it out by clicking on the new posts link.

And Oric, you don't have to be so bloody rude about the new design, everyone else just said something calmer like 'I'm not sure if I agree with the colour scheme'. You can't expect us to listen to your advice if you're going to start a huge rant about it.

Moving the shoutbox to the forum index won't make me use the forum index, it just means I have to click a link to see the shoutbox, then go back and scroll down to see the recent posts box. I know you may want the forum index to be used more, but the fact is that the recent posts box is just so much easier than going to the forum index, clicking through all the subforums, replying, then navigating back out etc.

I do agree with Oric somewhat, though I dislike the negative style he chose to write it in. The about us box (i'm being blunt here), quite frankly looks bad unless you have the website small enough that there are no gaps either side. It is also pretty useless, you're taking up half the frontpage with a box that is only useful to new users visiting the site, and is just an annoyance to the current members of the community, which, let's face it, should be your primary focus (i.e. improving the usability of the site for US, not trying to entice new members, though we need to do that too). I think the about us box does what it does well, it is just badly placed, and anybody wanting to find out about us can just navigate to the about us page.

Thirdly, the news ticker. I know Chalex you went some steps to improve the news ticker, and it is much better this way, but (and I speak with my opinion here, I don't know how much other people use it), something that has nothing to do with ATK shouldn't be a dominating feature on our homepage. Move it to the side and ill be happy (though I do think that we have too much crap on the side as it is).

Fourthly, the colour scheme, I won't say much about this, but I do think the previous scheme was more attractive.

But seriously guys, I really like the effort and thought that you're putting into changing the site for the better, any critisizms I give are purely positive and to try and help you make the site even better by giving you my opinions :D.

I thought this design would be quite Marmitey, you either love it or hate it. One of the other reasons why the shoutbox was removed from the homepage was that for around 50% of people visiting the website the shoutbox wouldn't load. This should be fixed in the future, and then the shoutbox may be put back on the homepage, but not as tall as before.

The About ATK box isn't going to remain as 'About ATK' we'll update it to include major news items, such as the i34 video being released for example, and with only one slide staying as 'About ATK'. If you don't like seeing the box every time you load the website, you can always choose to collapse it with the chevron symbol in the top right.

I also think the News Ticker should be moved to one of the side boxes, since it isn't detailed enough and doesn't contain enough images to be given a place in the centre of the page.

Now remember that we changed the whole colour scheme in just one day, so it was fairly rushed. I'm probably going to make changes to the colour scheme and improve the horizontal bars, just suggest colours you think will go well with the header.

I also think that we could reorder the columns on the homepage so it isn't so symmetrical, i.e. the wide centre column could be moved to the right and the two narrow columns to go next to each other, what do you think?

I like the layout of the portal at the moment, I think that what you suggest would look a little strange. The obvious colour scheme to try would be an aqua colour to match the banner at the top, white, aqua (forgot what the colour is), and some black. Would it also be possible to have multiple skins that people can chose from in their profile?

I didn't know you could collapse the boxes individually, but it's kinda pointless because you would have to do it every time you loaded the page, maybe if it was stored in cookies somehow?

EDIT: My bad! They do store in cookies, that's great :D.

ahh this new ice blue and grey is bad im sure hutch would have a good choice we should let him come back into the community

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wM Marshy

ahh this new ice blue and grey is bad

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Heh, well I like it, considering it isnt finished yet :D. I guess this is really the reason why there needs to be some sort of option so each user can have a different skin.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wM Marshy

ahh this new ice blue and grey is bad im sure hutch would have a good choice we should let him come back into the community

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good try marshy, not a chance

Im back, Chalex you lying son of a bitch, i knew i was right.

oh... your back
aahhh just kiddin, hows you bin

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Snerfs

good try marshy, not a chance

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Why thank you also this topic is a little old.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darkeagle

Im back, Chalex you lying son of a bitch, i knew i was right.

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Actually you were wrong. The announcement I was preparing was the statistics / 1 millions hits one :D.

oooooh very funny!

SO.... all agreed on letting Hutch back into ATK. Agreed!

i'd rather shoot myself in the foot, put my head in a baking oven and wrap myself in babblewrap than to agree to that. its already been said that we ALL have to agree to it.

Sorry, Did I Just Burst Your Bubble?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wM Marshy

SO.... all agreed on letting Hutch back into ATK. Agreed!

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This has been discussed many a time. The time will come when there will be a community vote where everyone will have to agree.

Well, aslong as Oric is in the community, is there any point voting? :)

This is really going off-topic. Close?

might as well, a good point has been proven.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darkeagle

Well, aslong as Oric is in the community, is there any point voting? :)

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Not really, and I am going to be here for a while. End of. No more He Who Must Not Be Named talk.

Ahh.. come on! It's been ages i hardly think he is going to do it again!