Hi Lauren,<br>The new design looks nice. I do have a few suggestions:<br><br>1. The contrast between the green in the background and the font colors seems to be less. The<br> background color is a little distracting, and takes the eyes away from the text. Either the background<br>
could be a lighter shade, or the text needs to be darker/bolder to stand out.<br><br>2. I think the content on the web page must be much less than what it is currently - we only want<br>the page to be perused by people who expect to join, and we perhaps could do with just telling<br>
them why they should join, along with a link for how to join. A minimalist message may drive home<br>the point much faster than having to wait for a info tab to slide into the view.<br><br>The link to join must be bolder for sure - and possibly be something like a big button near the center of<br>
the screen like so one just can't miss it.<br><br>For instance, <a href="http://www.mailchimp.com" target="_blank">http://www.mailchimp.com</a> 's design makes the join/sign up button so prominent. Also,<br>most of their content is below, and needs to be scrolled into view for someone who is interested. For<br>
most, the temptation to click on the sign up button right away is too much to resist :)<br><br>Certainly my suggestions are influenced by my own preferences/prejudices, so please feel free to<br>ignore them :) I think that over the past few years, webpages have mostly moved to a "less is more"<br>
interface for at least the home page - the contrast between yahoo's homepage and google's homepage<br>for example.<br><br>I do like the 'join or die' picture - I think a newcomer(perhaps not so much for non-US citizens) would<br>
surely find it funny.<br><br>Thank you for volunteering to design. <br><br>Avinash.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 1:36 PM, Lauren McNees <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lauren@hcoop.net" target="_blank">lauren@hcoop.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">Hello Hcoopers,<br><br>I created a draft new website for hcoop. I'd like to know what people think and if you don't like it, what I could do to make it better/different. Once we agree on the appearance of it, I'll start plugging content into it. Thanks!<br>
<br><a href="http://hcoop.net/%7Elauren/hcoop_redesign/index.html" target="_blank">http://hcoop.net/~lauren/hcoop_redesign/index.html</a><br><a href="http://hcoop.net/%7Elauren/hcoop_redesign/second_tier_page.html" target="_blank">http://hcoop.net/~lauren/hcoop_redesign/second_tier_page.html</a><br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div></div><div>On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 8:36 PM, Clinton Ebadi <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:clinton@unknownlamer.org" target="_blank">clinton@unknownlamer.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div><div></div><div>
<br>
(changed subject)<br>
<br>
Lauren McNees <<a href="mailto:lauren@hcoop.net" target="_blank">lauren@hcoop.net</a>> writes:<br>
<br>
> On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 4:15 PM, Clinton Ebadi <<a href="mailto:clinton@unknownlamer.org" target="_blank">clinton@unknownlamer.org</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> If you'd like to work on a better design for the <a href="http://hcoop.org" target="_blank">hcoop.org</a> please<br>
> do. It's one of those things that would be really nice to have<br>
> <a href="http://hcoop.org" target="_blank">hcoop.org</a> is pretty ugly as it is, but that I at least am utterly<br>
> incapable of.<br>
><br>
> If you want to do something about the design just let me know what you<br>
> need! A good starting place is<br>
> /afs/<a href="http://hcoop.net/user/h/hc/hcoop/public_html/" target="_blank">hcoop.net/user/h/hc/hcoop/public_html/</a>.<br>
><br>
> Just to avoid confusion, its <a href="http://hcoop.net" target="_blank">hcoop.net</a> not <a href="http://hcoop.org" target="_blank">hcoop.org</a>, right? Or is there a<br>
> <a href="http://hcoop.org" target="_blank">hcoop.org</a> in the works that I don't know about?<br>
<br>
<a href="http://hcoop.net" target="_blank">hcoop.net</a> yes.<br>
<br>
> What is the hcoop website and members portal currently powered by? Its<br>
> database-driven with css right? If I attempt to create a new look for the<br>
> website, should it just be a simple html/css template type thing that the<br>
> admins could drop the database programming into?<br>
<br>
The main page is static html: ~hcoop/public_html/Makefile generates the<br>
sites by calling a script:<br>
<br>
- `hcoop_html' cats /etc/hcoop.header, the page body, and<br>
/etc/hcoop.footer together<br>
<br>
The header just contains a basic <html><head>...<body><h1>$TITLE</h1><br>
...<br>
<br>
And the footer closes the <body> and document. We are most certainly<br>
*not* tied to doing things this way--I suspect the static site is<br>
generated this way as a quick hack.<br>
<br>
I copied hcoop.{header,footer} into ~hcoop/public_html so that you can<br>
view them.<br>
<br>
The domtool manual (<a href="http://hcoop.net/domtool/" target="_blank">http://hcoop.net/domtool/</a>) is automatically<br>
generated by domtool itself. It does, however, use the same css as the<br>
main site so any style improvements to that would apply to the domtool<br>
manual automatically. If needed I can adjust the code that generates the<br>
domtool manual to produce html more amenable to any changes to the<br>
style.<br>
<br>
The portal uses MLT which just embeds SML into HTML ala<br>
PHP. <a href="http://wiki.hcoop.net/DaemonAdmin/Portal" target="_blank">http://wiki.hcoop.net/DaemonAdmin/Portal</a> has some information on<br>
how it works--I've only done minimal work on the portal so far and I'll<br>
have to get back to you on the specifics of restyling it. I CCed bpt--at<br>
one point he did hack together a static mockup of a new interface for<br>
the portal so he may be able to assist.<br>
<br>
That's the gist of it, I'll start working on a wiki page with more<br>
details soon.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
"Karen loved animals. Unfortunately the cheetahs betrayed her trust,"<br>
Libot said.<br>
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