Redesigning and re-branding EN World

[Psionicist]

I will try some different colors to see how things look.

 

[Morrus]

I like it, too Psionicist. Now it's got me thinking about combinations of that, an includes file for the news, and 2-3 differnet index pages eith different colours. Only problem is, I'd only be prepared to do the one page in different colours, not the whole site - duplicating every page 4 times would be a bit much!

 

[CRG]

Again, I like black.

Black is snazzy. Difficulty reading is less driven by color than by brigthness / contrast. And I'm a traditionalist.

If any of you are old enough to remember the days before MS Windows, WordPerfect and a number of companies did a few human-factors studies that (at least at the time) showed that (1) color themes are good (2) contrast and brigthness are more important than the base colors chosen.

They went with a blue background, because the white basically washes everything out over time. White lettering on a dark blue page was supposedly easier to read than black on white. Then again, it was also easier to read than white on black as well.

Maybe I'm insane.

I still like black.

Have you tried one of the charcoal colors you use on the message board? Either light-gray and black text, or dark grey and white text? The advantage to the darker background is that obviously your color highlights will show better.

 

[Psionicist]

Here something completely different, almost

http://psionicist.online.fr/enworld/index2.php

Morrus: I have built that thing so it's easy to maintain. There's one index which is the "core" no one have to care about, with the looks and code. Then we have the "menu", and different "submenus". The menu is one file, and every and each sub category has their own file.

This is the sub_misc.php file for one:

[color=#FFFFFF]<!-- Note to self: The title MUST be on row 2 of file
Miscellaneous
-->
- <a href="?submenu=sub_misc&sektion=contact.html">Contact</a><br>
- <a href="?submenu=sub_misc&sektion=advertising.html">Advertising</a><br>
- <a href="?submenu=sub_misc&sektion=logos.html">Logos</a><br>
- <a href="?submenu=sub_misc&sektion=supportenw.html">Support EN World</a><br>
- <a href="?submenu=sub_misc&sektion=aboutrus.html">About Russell</a>[/color]

Look at the &sektion=blah.html part (it is really spelled section, but the board will format & and sect to a paragraph sign, as per standard HTML, but without the ;... nevermind), when you click the link, that file will be included in the main box (that is you will always be at the index.php file, almost). You don't have to change anything except for maybe highlighted colors, as well as you have to remove the HTML, HEAD and BODY tags.

 

[Morrus]

Very spiffy.

Hey, here's a thought, Psionicist.

1) How complicated would it be to let users have different items appear depending on their preferences? That could be a series of index pages (index1, index2 etc.) and they just bookmark their choice. Some might have more stuff (e.g. latet review, an extra menu etc.) and others will have less.

2) I know nothing about stylesheets and stuff. Would they be the thing I'd need to to let people chosoe thier colour scheme?

 

[Harlock]

Psionicistesessss,

I like this one a lot better. I just despise white.

 

[Psionicist]

Very spiffy.

Hey, here's a thought, Psionicist.

1) How complicated would it be to let users have different items appear depending on their preferences? That could be a series of index pages (index1, index2 etc.) and they just bookmark their choice. Some might have more stuff (e.g. latet review, an extra menu etc.) and others will have less.

2) I know nothing about stylesheets and stuff. Would they be the thing I'd need to to let people chosoe thier colour scheme?

That's easy to fix

The index.php file does not contain ANY content, just the design and code that process information from other files. This means I can create an infinite ammount of different designs and layouts based on that one file if I keep the code that include files back and forth, because that's the ONLY file with the actual design. The files included are just plain text formatted with font tags and lists

Try this: http://psionicist.online.fr/enworld/sec_news.php .
and http://psionicist.online.fr/enworld/index.php?section=sec_news

The "section=" part includes the sec_news (the code adds an .php extension itself for security and design reasons) in the big content box. It's very nice and simple when you know how it works.

 

[Harlock]

Psionicist

I dig the one that had the full news on it. But what happened to the nice beige? That white is back! Other than that, I prefer the version that was not full screen, oddly enough, considering I griped at you earlier in the irc channel because it wasted a third of my screen. Go figure.

 

[snimmo]

I like the layout Psionist, nice and clean.

This is sort of what I was talking about, though the strength in slashdot and similar sites is the integration of the comments with
the articles.

I have a feeling they maybe technical hurdles though, not all hosting sites support PHP.

regards,
Scott

 

[Psionicist]

Okay, try this: http://psionicist.online.fr/enworld/index.php

You can choose three schemes now (but only one look nice.) It is saved in a cookie too.

Edit: The server is a bit slow right now but it will calm down in some hours.

Example of color scheme file:

[color=#FFFFFF]
<?
// dark color scheme

$bgcolor="#000000";
$boxbgcolor="#888888";
$boxbordercolor="#FFFFFF";
$textcolor="#FFFFCC;";
$linkcolor="#FFFFFF";
$visitedlinkcolor="#BBBBBB";
$activelinkcolor="#005500";
$hovercolor="#AA0000";

?>
[/color]