Wireframe - Revision 3 - Please Comment!

very interesting. and if I dislike it ill go back to classic violet ZIO...

what will the giant gray space at the bottom be used for? below twitter above advertisement

Dark theme please.

Not much else to say at the moment, but dark themes are always superior. Plus basically all the current message board themes are dark, so it goes well with that. (Vibrant has that gigantic bar of eye-burning on the top that's white for some reason though.)

looks very tight. bit darker wouldnt hurt.
Im wondering, the image shows the forum selected but it looks more like a frontpage than the actual forum

Shadic said:

Dark theme please.

Not much else to say at the moment, but dark themes are always superior. Plus basically all the current message board themes are dark, so it goes well with that. (Vibrant has that gigantic bar of eye-burning on the top that's white for some reason though.)

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Yes, please. Are the current skins staying on the forums while just the homepage changes? I need my Smash Blue.

The Paprika Killer has a point, even though forum is selected, it looks nothing like a forum.
Which concerns me somewhat, I like the way the forum directory is right now.
It's REALLY easy to navigate in my opinion.

I also have a question about the "guides" tab, because most guides would be in their respective forum, and there literally could be a guide on anything which would be too cluttered to be organized.

It's also a tiny bit too bright, I like the "rankings" idea too, because it's there, easy to access and I assume it'd have one for regions, as well as the respective smash games, and it would be updated on a weekyly/ monthly basis ?

If so.. this looks like it's going to be good ^-^

I like the rankings page.

Question about the calendar: will it act just like our current one, just with major events/streams highlighted?

AlphaZealot said:

Theoretically - is there something else you would like to see?

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As far as I can think of right now, not really.
The best thing I can come up with is similar to what Scar mentioned with streams having tags for players/regions, and you can set up your account to have certain tags for you to follow.

I just really like the calendar. And having it viewable on front page is great.

Can you please make the smashboards arena (for wifi players) easier to notice? so it can become more active.

Shadic said:

Dark theme please.

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dark theme masterrace

Would it be possible to see what the forum page would possibly look like ?

Looks very promising but please don't make it too dark, some of the Smashboards themes really hurt my eyes.

v-k said:

looks very promising but please don't make it too dark, some of the smashboards themes really hurt my eyes.

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everything black
including the font

And the avatars

Oh yeah, let me mention that I do not want gif avatars if the update does allow it.

I do not ever want them.

Ever.

.gifs consisting of black squares only
you can upload custom avas tho
so long as they are black square .gifs

theoretically I would like to see a chat room

And also, regarding to the suggestions thread, it would be nice to add in a 3DS FC# in the "about me" section.

Looks pretty great.

Looks really clean, nice and easy to navigate. Big step forward.

Couple of questions:
I have my doubts giving these twitter acounts such a prominent spot, why not place a twitter stream on the side and then instead place the highlighted player accounts in the current top twitter spots? If your looking for someones twitter then you'll probably look for their account anyway. Your more likely to follow a twitter name if you see it's frequently active.

Whats upcoming event info? You already highlight the upcoming tournaments so how does this differ?

How do vid's show up in the widget on the right? Is this curated or does it scan vid discussion somehow?

It would be nice to have a live stream button next to the tournament. Perhaps an icon that links to a updated thread of the tournament since these are always made anyway.

Have you considered a newbie introduction page? With the arrival of smash 4 your bound to get a lot of new players still inexperienced with the game.

Wouldn't it be cool to embed the current top live stream on the top + chat(under the header ofc). Only when major tournaments occur.

What's planned regarding a chat? Ever since dc++ I feel everyone scatters over numerous chats and only really enters big chats during live streams.


Not related to the homepage but to the forum features:
Since I see all the social features, I was wondering if it would be possible to add a rivals option like on allisbrawl. I think if this works well it could provide extra motivation to improve for players that aren't close to top 5 yet.

Thanks for all the hard work.

I'm really interested in the region aspect of it. Is it possible to inform us of smashers in our area or state registered here? and possible a tournament finder aspect that will show a tournament in your state and the date it's happening etc etc. That would really help scenes. And will sub PRs count as well? Like California has a NorCal and SoCal PR.

I'm v hyped abt this. i think this change from basic text based forum to something with actual content will be a big step for the community. major damn well props for getting this to happen.

Loool

BlueXenon said:

Can you please make the smashboards arena (for wifi players) easier to notice? so it can become more active.

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I totally agree with this. Maybe a button on the top saying "Smash Boards Arena".

Also, I can't wait to see the final product of this! :3 Getting better and better! I definitely like the idea of rankings.

I think this is great, I think there are people like myself that aren't really good with forums and this will definitely be a lot less confusing. I'm still crap with forums which is kinda holding me back from participating in stuff, perhaps even tournaments.

I really like how that looks, but I'm not sure how much it fits Smash Boards.
When people think of Smash Bros they generally think of just one of the games, not all of them mixed together. And that's a good thing, it's super cool how unique each one is so far.
But on the front page it's all of 'em jumbled together and I don't see any "Brawl" or "Melee" buttons to go to that section of the forums. That should be the first priority, as, I'd imagine, most people don't go to see everything at once.

If I were designing it I'd put the featured news at the top, 'cause there's always news and people need to stay informed, then under that there'd be three squares. Each one would represent one of the games, (IMO going Brawl, then Melee, then 64.) Even though 64 is barely discussed, it still deserves a spot on the home page. It's the start of something amazing, after all. Oh, and each of the squares would say the name of the game, then have links to the sub-forums (General, character discussion, Media/Mods/etc.)

Of course Smash 4 is coming soon and I'd imagine with that Smash is going to become a more discussed topic, and we'll get more people coming for it. I'd just add another box, all the games still being in reverse chronological order. If adding Smash 64 at the end is too much, which is definitely understandable, I'd put it in a tiny box, and add Project:M under it in another box.

I'm biased towards Project: M as something I want on the front page, as I play it a ton, but it's probably too much to be right at the top with the other big games. At least for now.



If I typed in SmashBoards.com and that white and grey web page showed up I may think I'm on the wrong website. The black and orange theme is beautiful, please keep it ;-;

Oh and a link to an IRC chat on the front page can work wonders. It's scary to make a post on a forum, it stays there for ever, constantly being judged as the writer worriedly awaits a reply.
Stuff of nightmares, right there.
And, no matter how well your website is designed, people will always post in the wrong place, often asking for something that's just a click or two away. An IRC could fix a lot of that, allowing people to ask there instead of spamming up the forum.

These are all notes, the redesign looks great so far, there's just a few things like game distinction that needs to be shown more.

hamyojo said:

The black and orange theme is beautiful, please keep it ;-;

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WOT!? What black and orange theme!? :o Sounds interesting. I want to see it!

But really, I have no idea what you're talking about when you say black and orange theme.

the only theme I can think of that has orange is oen of the DR skins but that doesnt really have black in it...

Yeah, let's get Project M noticed. It hasn't stopped having tournaments, so it's a worthy addition to the main page. PM is huge for the community, and if TF players come here after EVO out of curiosity, we need to show that PM is important (or at least will be soon) too.

Please at least have a light option. I absolutely hate dark themes and it's one of the reasons I visit SmashBoards less often than I used to. And if there's no light option, I think following the principles would be helpful: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/08/the-dos-and-donts-of-dark-web-design/

I personally don't believe dark is the right option given how the wireframe looks and what the purpose of the website is going to lean towards (content-heavy).

I think a lot of current users are used to this, but SmashBoards will continue to grow -- especially with Smash 4 -- and I think going with the option that the majority of the internet prefers is better than going with the familiar option.

So...anybody else questioning the usefulness of having a poll on the front page? I don't want that facet of AiB in my smashboards.

Orngeblu said:

WOT!? What black and orange theme!? :o Sounds interesting. I want to see it!

But really, I have no idea what you're talking about when you say black and orange theme.

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Flowteau said:

Yeah, let's get Project M noticed. It hasn't stopped having tournaments, so it's a worthy addition to the main page. PM is huge for the community, and if TF players come here after EVO out of curiosity, we need to show that PM is important (or at least will be soon) too.

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!!! My bad.
Er, I always thought the orange looked great with the default theme.
http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/1809/smashboards.png
See? Orange is there.

Firestorm88 said:

Please at least have a light option. I absolutely hate dark themes and it's one of the reasons I visit SmashBoards less often than I used to. And if there's no light option, I think following the principles would be helpful: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/08/the-dos-and-donts-of-dark-web-design/

I personally don't believe dark is the right option given how the wireframe looks and what the purpose of the website is going to lean towards (content-heavy).

I think a lot of current users are used to this, but SmashBoards will continue to grow -- especially with Smash 4 -- and I think going with the option that the majority of the internet prefers is better than going with the familiar option.

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This is a completely valid point. But a darker theme is just... more fun. It just is!
There's no valid reasons to change the current colors of the site. They're good colors and many of us know them well.
Let alone the face that most sites have white back grounds, so why conform? Not to be a hipster, but that's just no fun.

I was thinking the site could take inspiration from whatever Smash 4's box art could be. But who knows what that will be, let alone how it'll vary from region to region.

MK26 said:

So...anybody else questioning the usefulness of having a poll on the front page? I don't want that facet of AiB in my smashboards.

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Dude.
Polls are the ****.
Everyone loves those things.

Yeah, no front page polls. The polls in-thread are better.

Also, what about mobile pages?

phone friendly=/= tablet friendly
just know that and design two if possible