New Wiki Theme!

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise, after the forums redesign, a site redesign wasn't far off ...

http://www.beywiki.com

About 15 hours work went into this so you damn well better like it! If you notice any problems with it, please mention them here.
yessss it's done

I love it. Better than the other version it had.

It tastes like oranges. Mmmm.
It just looks...AWESOME i love it!!! Smile
That came out pretty nicely. Good work, Emperor!!
Overall it looks great, but now that there is a banner at the top of the page instead of just the logo in the top left, it cuts off part of the two bottom content boxes (article updates, forums) and makes them so they are below the fold. In my opinion, both are important sections and should be immediately visible to visitors fully. You want users to have to do the least amount of work possible to find content, and the article updates section is a important box because of that.

It is also annoying that the Personal Tools are on the left side of the page in the navigation now instead of the top right. They are not that important (at least to me) and shouldn't be the first thing you see.

Sorry for all of the complaints. Unhappy I am sure you worked hard on this, but this is what I think. Seriously, if I scroll down the page to the point where I cannot see the banner, I think that looks better. Don't get me wrong though, I think the banner looks awesome, it just sacrifices too many other things for it being there. The logo in the top left was awesome before because the first thing most people look at when browsing a website, is the top left corner, and once they did that they would almost immediately figure out what the site is about if they haven't already.
(Aug. 11, 2008  5:39 PM)Kei Wrote: Overall it looks great, but now that there is a banner at the top of the page instead of just the logo in the top left, it cuts off part of the two bottom content boxes (article updates, forums) and makes them so they are below the fold. In my opinion, both are important sections and should be immediately visible to visitors fully. You want users to have to do the least amount of work possible to find content, and the article updates section is a important box because of that.

It is also annoying that the Personal Tools are on the left side of the page in the navigation now instead of the top right. They are not that important (at least to me) and shouldn't be the first thing you see.

Sorry for all of the complaints. Unhappy I am sure you worked hard on this, but this is what I think. Seriously, if I scroll down the page to the point where I cannot see the banner, I think that looks better. Don't get me wrong though, I think the banner looks awesome, it just sacrifices too many other things for it being there. The logo in the top left was awesome before because the first thing most people look at when browsing a website, is the top left corner, and once they did that they would almost immediately figure out what the site is about if they haven't already.

The banner is also space for the article tabs and the search bar. The front page will be redesigned to accomodate the new layout.

As for the menu order, it's a priority for that to be corrected. I hate the placement of the personal tools as well.
(Aug. 11, 2008  10:33 PM)Bey Brad Wrote: The banner is also space for the article tabs and the search bar. The front page will be redesigned to accomodate the new layout.

As for the menu order, it's a priority for that to be corrected. I hate the placement of the personal tools as well.

The search bar was perfectly fine on the left side of the page before, and the tabs were fine as well. It was good that they were small because they are not of concern for the most part to anybody who doesn't edit the wiki. But if the front page is being redesigned, none of this will be a problem then. Smile

Alright, sounds good.
Keep in mind aesthetics are an important thing as well!

Usability is one thing, but I don't feel that much is being sacrificed here at all and the site looks much better than it did before. I hate the default wiki layout.
Hot sex Brad, you did it again Tongue_out_wink Keep up the wonderful work, the site looks amazing
Looks fresh.
Just One Question...Whats Up With The Rep Stuff?
(Aug. 12, 2008  4:40 AM)Kazuma Wrote: Just One Question...Whats Up With The Rep Stuff?

This is not the right thread to be asking that, but I'll answer you anyway:

http://forums.beywiki.com/reputation-sys...-1492.html
ugh i hate this look now i hate everything
Much better than the forum theme.
I like it.

It's original too, as far as I can see.

Really well done :].

Was this done from a template or did you code it yourself?
It's done from a template, and I'm changing it now anyway.

Out of curiosity, what don't you like about the forum theme?
The theme has been updated once again. It's a little less flashy but far more usable.

If you are registered on the wiki, you can change your skin by going to your preferences and selecting GuMax.

Also still working on it, so bear with me Confused
The banner is garish, but that can be easily remedied.

Something I don't like about your art in general, however, is your positioning of text. Otherwise, you've become quite the artist. I don't mean to sound smug, but I really think that your designs would look a lot more professional or a lot more, fluid if you observed your spacing a lot more. For example, on your signature, the space to the right of www.beywiki.com needs to be equal to the space on the bottom, the same can go for Beywiki on the top left.

But, I don't want to put you down, because that's not what you asked for.

So, fundamentally I just don't like the clashing of styles with the banner and the skin itself, the overshadowing presence of orange (which is a bit high energy for me) and a lack of synergy between the text font, the image fonts and the banner font. The globes are a bit of a hassle too, they're not compact enough and they just look too bold.

The last theme was a lot more unique IMO.
Thank God BBF employs a far more compact, simplistic, elegant way of indicating new posts:

[Image: forum_new.gif]
The NEW new Wiki theme has been reverted to the OLD new wiki theme while I work out the kinks, but I have to say it looks fantastic right now.
that is a lot more compact though, it has a lot of vspace and hspace

plus, I didn't design the bbf theme, and never have.
OK, it's updated for reals this time! The Main Page has been trimmed down significantly while I prepare to add more content to it.
also i expect to be showered with praise because i spent way too much time wading through css code for this carp