[Contest] Site redesign contest

[Morrus]

Site redesign contest -- I'm thinking of redesigning EN World's layout in view of the increasing amount of info, menu items and other I'm having having to cram into the main page. However, it occurs to me that many of you may have your own ideas on what you'd like to see, or the best way to do it, so I'm holding a site-redesign contest. Here's how it works:

• You need to redesign the front page in whatever way you think best. You can leave off things you don't feel are so important (note - tha ad banners have to stay!), or add things that you feel should have more prominence. The only real limitation to what you can do is that I want to keep the same general colour scheme - other than that, you can redesign as much as you like (put the menu at the top, or the bottom, or bang in the middle of the page, or whatever!)
  
  [*]You must host this revised web page yourself somewhere and send me a link to it.
  
  [*]It is OK if you include scripts or bits of code that will display some of the automated info from elsewhere on this site if you're up to the challenge. Most of the automated stuff is ASP. As you don't have access to the code, just use html to diplay how the output would look, and the code can be added later if your design is chosen. However, the more complicate dyour design is, the less likely it'll win, because I'm not very technically inclined and will be choosing a design that will be easy for me to maintain/update.
  
  [*]The closing date is the end of this week - I will be posting the results on Friday, so you need to send your link to me by midnight Thursday (US Central time).
  
  [*]The prize - a selection of $50 worth of stuff from the EN World online RPG shop. The winner will be able to choose anything up to $50 worth, but it must come from this shop so that I can easily order it for you.
  
  [*]Note - although I might choose a winner, there is always a possibility that I won't actually use the winning design. It depends on whether I prefer it to my own design. You'll still get the prize, though.
  

 

[Judas]

Quick question. Some people prefer tables to frames, and some people absolutely hate frames. Do you care for frames or want just tabled designs?

 

[Morrus]

I must admit that I'm a frame-hater! But that doesn't necessarily mean that someone couldn't come up witha frame-based design that preferred to the non-frame based designs. It would just have to be very elegantly in order to convince me.

Note - I will test any entries on a whole slew of different browsers.

 

[Aaron L]

Now if only I could write HTML.

 

[Harlock]

For what it's worth...

I like the layout you have now. It's easy to read and find information on. Of course if someone comes up with something better, I'm all for it.

 

[Psionicist]

Sounds fun! I will start working on one tomorrow! I already have a killer idea!

Edit: Morrus, do you mind if I split up the frontpage in different files for the ease of updating and managing everything? That is there are one files for the "news", one file for the "left menu", one file for the "right menu" and one index file that add all these small files together into a whole? The visitors won't notice a thing, but you don't have to manipulate several hundred of kilobytes of code and text in one large document to change something small and trivial like a link. When you add a news entry, you just opens the "news" file into your editor, perform the changes then upload the news file and that's it. This will keep the massive code blocks in one file and the text with formatting/links in separate files.

Edit 2: Ehh what the heck I will create two versions for you. One plain HTML and one puzzle

 

[Aeolius]

and here I was thinking of something with a nice aqua interface and lots of colorful tabs

 

[Morrus]

Psionicist - you can do that, sure. Alhough I'm not so sure it'll be easier for me to update (I just edit the one page once a day in a WYSIWIG editor and upload it - I don't think you can get any simpler than that!).

Aeolius - well, OK, you could do something like that, but it'd have to be pretty darn spectacular yet clear to convince me to change my current scheme. I'd say that those who stick to blacks and greys stand a best chance, but I'll reserve judgement until I see what I end up with. Tabs, however, don't necesarily need an aqua background or an array of bright colours!

 

[Darraketh]

Morrus which WYSIWYG editor do you use?

 

[mirzabah]

... The only real limitation to what you can do is that I want to keep the same general colour scheme ...

Damn! This is the thing I would most like to change. Black backgrounds - urgh