Neverside

I'm currently working on a new revision that takes into account some of the suggestions that have been made so far. Like I said, though "abrasive", I think some of what Noel had to say is very true, and I'm at least giving it another shot to see if I can manage to make things any cleaner and easier to understand. I'm also removing aspects of the Sidebar that were meant for general demonstration and putting the exact items that I expect will be included on the home page itself, and have made some minor changes to the type. Right now I'm pretty happy with what I've changed in the body area so far today, and am currently working on an alternative menu concept.

Adding to my list of things I'd love to have specific feedback on:
- Ideal width of the site
- Improvements to the sidebar area
- Suggestions for our font choice (so I can at least use the same font in my sample). I've tried Verdana now and think it looks better than before, but let me know your suggestions. I agree, Arial is not a personal favorite of mine.

Anyhow, hopefully I'll have a new screenshot ready to post by sometime tomorrow. I might go ahead and post it tonight unfinished so you can comment on what "is" done, but we'll see.

In the mean time, please keep the comments rollin' in

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-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com

Originally posted by Luke:

Ads do not bother me but when they stick out like a sore thumb and make the design look worse than what it would with them not being their then I think it is an issue. Take a look at deviantart.com and learn some lessons. Ads dont have to sit in the middle of a design and stick out to earn you clicks. With the member support this site has I am sure no matter where the ads are placed you will still make money.

lol, ok. For one, DeviantART is not the place to take advertising lessons from, Spot is a tard when it comes to understanding advertising and marketing so unless you want to do it wrong, sure go learn from over there. Secondly, DA also uses full page ads now for non-logged in users (which is a very big portion of their traffic, logged in traffic isn't that big) so they can afford to place the ads where they do due to the full page ad interruptions every 15-20 pageviews.

Lastly, I do agree that the ad placement is intrusive and generally wrong. It's right under the active tab so it's like "OH, forums... no wait, ads". It's irrelevant to the content and it won't give each area it's own feel, it'll feel rather generic and the ads will be ignored. If you want to put ads up there at least reduce the size of the banner. You don't need to use the full banner w/ text bit, just use the one liner with 3-4 ad links on it that is pretty common for using in random dividers and so forth.

It would also be nice if more of you had a more objective viewpoint on the design, looks like a bunch of *** kissing to me. Don't take that personally or to heart, I think the design has potential and some things are well executed, but there are some things that are horribly executed and all you can say is "I think it's great".

Dave has a pretty high tolerance to criticism, you can be harsh like Noel was or you can fluffy foot it and be afraid to possibly offend (which you won't).

End point is there is too much going on and the AVERAGE user is not going to know what the hell is going on. It's like 'Studio snapshots' and then a holy **** block of JOIN US and then more studio stuff, scroll down some and OH SNAP MEMBER SPOTLIGHT and below that is news and so forth. There's just too much being displayed and shown on the homepage all in one viewing. It needs to be seperated more or reduced.

Best of luck.

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The Audoptic Weblog. It's where the magic happens.

I mentioned that the Studio snapshots on the left should be hideable or maybe not even there. Too much going on with the Studio. You can shrink the main portion in the middle, as in scrunch the bottom up and move the rest up so they can see the newest features? Maybe...I don't know.

And Locke, I personally have crit the hell out of this in basecamp, so I'mpretty satisfied for now. Not saying you attacke me wth the "***-kissing" comment, just saying.

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Neverside - In Development. Expected Release: Unknown.
Tortustudios.com - In Development. Expected Release: Summer 2006.( You can visit it now)

I think there should be front page advertisement for the IRC chatroom. Like a little box to the left or something. On TF we used to have the members in the chat and etc. I think it'd be nice to just display how many users are currently in #central and have a link to it where theyc an just click the link and it'll launch the appropriate application.

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Why are we friends? Srsly...

Sorry all you NS lovers out there, but I agree with Noel completely. It's my opinion and it's not something that you should winge at me for; undoubtedly you will winge though, probably because I'm just being negative. The design is poo. Everything inside the main white area sucks.

The discussions and news blocks (with the tabs) at the bottom look like that newly developed 3-tab advert thing that a lot of people seem to be adopting. Everything is everywhere, the sign up button looks tacky as hell, the gray background doesn't work with the blue near the bottom of the page, the 'welcome to neverside' bit just looks stupid... I could go on forever.

Why bother doing a redesign.. I see far more things that should be higher up on your priority list.

Originally posted by ringpull:

Why bother doing a redesign.. I see far more things that should be higher up on your priority list.

There is something here that you don't understand I'm afraid (even though the fact that you don't understand something hardly comes as a surprise to most of us). The "designers" aren't necessarily the "coders", meaning that there is absolutely no reason to cut down on the efforts in one area just because you want to raise the said in another. I have stated this very fact previously, but it appears to be one that demands an infinite loop.

It just happens to be so that the template surrounding this mock up (the things outside of the "white area" you speak of) was created quite long ago now, in the beginning of this year. Now when Dave has decided to move Neverside to Drupal and vBulletin (an action that was meant to free us all from your odor according to yourself, something that yet has to come true) the template will have to be coded into a completely different template system. Instead of wasting an equal amount of time to recode the current theme, and import that to Drupal and vBulletin, it's a far smarter choice to start working on the new theme for the very same purpose.

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Neversidian, your staff is broken.

odor? What's this?
As I've said before, I'm here to voice my views on your poor efforts... I'll leave when poopal goes live.

That would be odour, for "UK Neversidians" like yourself. And do yourself a favour and never, ever again, make the mistake of mixing up "effort" and "result".

I'll be honest, I would really like to go ahead and show you exactly what once made me awesome at dealing with people like yourself. But it just happens to be so that we all know very well what you want out of this, I too would be disappointed if I multiple times got turned down due to a complete lack of ability when offering my help to a site on it's bare knees.

Now, let's stay on the topic.

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Neversidian, your staff is broken.

I like it, regardless. It's a change, so I'm not complaining. It's definitely better than what we have going on now.

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Signature Guidelines

Yey my image is on the homepage! :P Any how, it looks "ok", i think it looks like less of a community, more of a business venture in that design. I also think you should concentrate on some of the more original tabs back when there were the CodeBase tabs etc over a year or so ago. Although the studio feature is nice, there are bigger and better services which do just that, so implementing other features will be a big plus. I don't know if anyone remembers the old school Melonn.com but it did what i just described very nicely, it was a "web dev" community (coding, design, photography etc etc). Anyway thats my 2 cents. Keep up the good work!

Originally posted by Simon:

That would be odour, for "UK Neversidians" like yourself. And do yourself a favour and never, ever again, make the mistake of mixing up "effort" and "result".

It's a result when it's finished, and as you've already had to tell many people, it's not finished.

Originally posted by Simon:

I too would be disappointed if I multiple times got turned down due to a complete lack of ability when offering my help to a site on it's bare knees.

I offered to help twice, both times I didn't hear a response. To be honest, I can't wait to see neverside fall flat on it's face. It deserves nothing more.

Plus, you say "lack of ability". I can code fully object oriented PHP, web 2.0 applications, CSS and VB. I have a CCNA and have worked closely with large network organisations. I think you'll find that's more than you and the other staff members combined.

What gives you the right to act like a staff member? You've done nothing more than poor attempts at design.

Ringpull, seriously, this is not the place to bicker. Same goes for you Simon. If you want to argue, then PM or just drop it. This announcement is for constructive criticism on the design in a way to make it better. If you had tried to ask to help and was turned down, I can guarantee that it wasn't you're lack of ability but for you're lack of positive attitude. If you want to help, then by all means, head over to the Suggestions and Feedback forum and start posting. Being sour about a positive change for Neverside and condoning failure for people who have put time, energy, and money into this is nothing but a waste of your time and ours, from reading.

Can we get back on topic now?

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Neverside - In Development. Expected Release: Unknown.
Tortustudios.com - In Development. Expected Release: Summer 2006.( You can visit it now)

ringpull - I already apologized to you for not getting back to you in a timely manner back then, and I believed you and I were on good terms after that - but as soon as the announcement about Drupal, you became very upset and outspoken about everything we're trying to do.

I am notoriously bad at responding to emails and PMs at times when I'm overwhelmed with more tasks to do that I can manage. When life is at those times, responding is sometimes the first to go - this also stems from a time a few years ago when I was completely the opposite - responding in depth to every one of the emails that came to me, no matter how many... which quickly lead to a serious and painful case of carpal tunnel syndrome that took me over 2 years to overcome. I'm sure I have some kind of psychological block/fear against allowing that event to reoccur in my life, and I know I avoid typing whenever I can now.

Anyhow, Brandon is right. Several times I was about to write to you and welcome your help, but at every instance I suddenly saw you make negative comments and and show through the things that you said that your attitude wouldn't be condusive to the teamwork needed to get the project done. And so I held back. I wanted to give you a chance though to prove me wrong - I would have definitely contacted you at the slightest hint of positive teamwork. We had also just entered the stage of choosing Drupal, and so priorities changed at that point. I'm sorry I didn't contact you, and I've apologized before as well. Please, will you accept my apology and allow this to be water under the bridge?

You've seen that I have taken some of the harsh criticisms made by Noel and Shawn to heart and am currently working on improving the design - though I personally prefer to work with people on more amicable terms, I'm willing to have a thick skin about it and extract the good from under the surface. It would certainly be easier if we could all be positive and constructive, but if that's not how it will be then I will make the best of it.

The new design will not be posted publicly at this point until further work has been completed - I believe I was premature to post it here, but was just excited that progress was being made and wanted to share. I knew it was incomplete, but thought putting it before the eyes of more people would help dig up new ideas.

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-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com

I'm sorry too Dave. To be honest, it really has nothing to do with my staff application.
To be quite honest, the first time I applied I had never been negative towards neverside. But ever since the Drupal news and this, I have been negative, simply because in my eyes, it's not the right way to go. And would you blame me for it?

At every opportunity you ask for comments and criticisms. And I'm sorry if mine are harsh, but it's just the truth. Again, sorry if you can't take that.

So basically, because you only want nice comments, I will shut up for you.
Not for Simon though. He's too damn proud of his work, it's like there's a screen blocking him from anything but the glory.

Oh, and to those who give a ****: I decided that if I leave, thats one more of the handful of members gone. So it's better if I stay until Drupal, whether I piss you off or not.

You can't piss me off Ringy! And while you're absence will be missed, it will not slow our progression towards our goal. I can say, and I think I speak for the rest of us, that you're activity is needed when we move to Drupal. But once you're gone, good luck and I hope to see you lurking around sometimes.

Now, Dave, about that middle section. Is there a way to display a bit of everything Neverside is about? Currently it only displays the studio. I know that there are discussions and things at the bottom, but the Studio placement is more prominent than everything else. I think we need something in the middle that shows all of Neverside.

Also, poopy!

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Neverside - In Development. Expected Release: Unknown.
Tortustudios.com - In Development. Expected Release: Summer 2006.( You can visit it now)