So, what do you think of Gleemax?

[Connorsrpg]

So when can someone from Wizards jump on here and tell us what we are supposed to do. Any forums page still does not load for me....this is very frustrating and how do you tell them when you can;t use this Gleemax.

Now I am weeks behind on the blogs, whereas I was reading them daily. Not a good move for advertising 4E at all!

C

 

[Plane Sailing]

As a web designer I think it is appalling. The layout is horrible, it is difficult to get into things or find things, it is difficult to see where you are and get back out to other things (haven't those web designers heard of 'breadcrumbs'?). Discoverability of other interesting things is lousy.

I used to read the 4e designers blogs on a daily basis when they were based on the old forums. It was just the ones I wanted to see, you could tell how much they had done, whether they had updated since I last visited, the whole shebang. At the moment on gleemax there is a blog post which randomly lists WotC staff. If there is anything better I've not noticed it yet.

I don't know whether they are writing their own forum community software or implementing a package from someone else, but at this point I'd think they would be better ditching it completely and going for something with better basic functionality - I've never seen less attractive and less functional blogging software, anywhere.

I'm disappointed because there is so much interesting content, and now I can't find it!

 

[Kesh]

I'm just annoyed there's no RSS feed for the blogs yet. Apparently it's coming, but still...

Aside from that, I'm curious to see where it goes.

 

[(contact)]

For me, usability will trump the content -- I want to read the designer's blogs, but once I bump into the suck at Gleemax, I go into "life is too short" mode, and just refresh ENWorld.

As a web designer I think it is appalling.

I've never seen less attractive and less functional blogging software, anywhere.

QFT.

I'm also a web designer, and I also think it is apalling.

I do get that this is an "alpha" site (itself a bad idea on so many levels), and as such isn't intended to be final, but the look-and-feel and usability design is so poorly done, I'm not sure anyone involved can make it better.

In D&D terms, when you take 10 and get a 7, you've got the wrong PCs making that skill check.

 

[Mortellan]

So far it's everything I thought it would be. And that's not a good thing. At least WotC didn't let me down

 

[carmachu]

Its very clunky right now, at least for me. Navigation is a pain to find anything.

 

[helium3]

It's not just a basic HTML site. That's just what your Browser gets to see.
I haven't looked at the site codes in detail (read: at all), but I assume most of the pages are server-generated. This means, everytime you click on a Gleemax link, your computer connects to the server, the server checks reads the link and gathers what you wants, and creates a HTML page - on the fly - to give you the content you asked for.

In this Alpha state, I assume they concentrated more on the Server giving you the correct content and having sensible strategies for handling multiple requests, getting information out of their data base efficiently and so on. They apparently did care less about the templates that are used to generate the "look and feel" of a site and formats the content in a nice format.

That's not saying that they couldn't be a lot better, but at this point, they haven't just gone around doing it. Maybe the clever web designers are still developing good templates - or they are still busy with other stuff, because there are no designated designers just for the look & feel (it would certainly better if there were some, but this depends a lot on the budget and time constraints they are under. And maybe they are just not enough to have finished their designs at this state, and are still trying to work out to combine their cool design stuff with the content in a clever way.)

That's a good point. It hadn't occurred to me that they're still working on the data retrieval portion of the website. I guess I figured they would at least have ironed out most of the kinks in that part of it.

 

[helium3]

Hahahahahahhahahah!!

Reading this thread spurred me to actually go to gleemax. Yeesh. Has it actually gotten worse in the last few days?!?!

 

[KoshPWNZYou]

I used to read the 4e designers blogs on a daily basis when they were based on the old forums. It was just the ones I wanted to see, you could tell how much they had done, whether they had updated since I last visited, the whole shebang. At the moment on gleemax there is a blog post which randomly lists WotC staff. If there is anything better I've not noticed it yet.

It just dawned on me as I read this that I haven't read a designer blog in a few days. I too was reading every new blog post every day when they were posted to the forums -- a simple, neat, organized list presented in a mostly plain-text format. On Gleemax, the designer blogs are mixed in with fan blogs (which, I'm sorry, I'm not interested in), and I can only see the last couple of hours of posts with no clear method of accessing older posts. I gave up trying to sift through that rather quickly, and now I just rely on the reports here at EN to learn about the latest developments.

I'm not sure the fact that it's only in an Alpha stage is an indicator that it's going to be improved. I've always thought the WoTC homepage was an organizational mess. It just seems to me that whoever WoTC has hired to develop their websites is (like a lot of webmasters) more interested in look than function.

 

[Odhanan]

As a web designer I think it is appalling. The layout is horrible, it is difficult to get into things or find things, it is difficult to see where you are and get back out to other things (haven't those web designers heard of 'breadcrumbs'?). Discoverability of other interesting things is lousy.

+1. I'm not impressed so far.