ZSR Forums

I think it's time to change ZSR up a little. There are a number of things that have been bugging me about the site that I want to see changed, and I want to get them done over the summer.

The biggest of the changes is updating front page.

• One thing most editors have been pushing for is an updated front page that links to the OoT3D and SS sites, and a link to the leaderboards. It should be designed in a way that lets us easily add new games to it.
• I'd also like to get rid of game site specific news and put all zsr news on to the front page, as site specific news is rarely used. The only problem with this is that I don't have any idea on what should fill the space where the news would be. I'd also like to see the twitter feed on the front page.

Second, the css needs a little changing. I made a test page (http://zeldaspeedruns.com/alttp/msb/test-page) to show how things look atm. Headers don't work nicely with the style I want to write pages in, ordered Lists are a completely different color than everything else, and there's an issue with lists with paragraph elements where the paragraph element is padded out too much. I also kind of don't like the current font used. I'd like to see a sans serif font personally... maybe something like this (http://i.imgur.com/8pUnu.png)?

Lastly, and probably least important (but kinda cool) would be to make a more mobile friendly version of the site.

I talked to Cosmo, he's ok with a change as long as it looks nice, so all we need now is a designer. If anyone has any comments, shoot.

I think a link to each games forum next to their name would be nice.

About making the site more mobile friendly: I operate on this site from my 3DS 95% of the time, and I have no complaints about it. I don't know about how it is on a smartphone or other device, but I assume it would be the same. Then again, assume makes an ass out of u and me, so...

Also, a list of what the mask symbols mean would be useful. I've been wondering about those since I found this site. Maybe just a little bar underneath the heart system explanation would do it.

That's all I have right now.

I think some brighter colours would be great as well :}

threw this together in paint, idk

(http://i.imgur.com/FcLoG.png)

I like it Kaztalek

It would be nice if Edits showed up as the latest posts as well. If someone edits a post after several other people have said things (i.e. in any R&D thread), the edit would be easy to miss. Another example is Greenalink's PH run thread. He modifies his previous post many times to tell new things he's found/modifications he's making to the route. If this is implemented, we can see when he modifies his post instead of seeing them all when he puts up a new post.

Kaztalek, that layout looks fine, but I'm not too happy with the color scheme.
Personally, I like the current color scheme, but if we change it, I agree with Cosmo: It needs to look nice.

Editing the last post in a thread should mark it as being a new post.

Well, I edited a post a couple days ago and it didn't show up as a new post. The link to the newest post stayed the same.

It should make it show up as a new post if it's the most recent post. I don't think it's a wanted feature to bump the thread whenever you edit a post several pages back.

I vote for Keeta's design. It looks nice.

Keeta's design is alright, except I kind of feel that the games sites should still be directly accessible from the front page.

maxx, can you change some css stuff for all sites

Get rid of H3's center attribute, and add padding-left: 3px;
Change H4's padding-left attribute so that it's also 3px, and set font-size to 16px

Perhaps if there were a link to the OoT 3D page it would be up to date right now >:(

It would be really funny if someone took the picture keeta drew and used it as the front page image. XD

Seriously though. OoT 3D page needs updates please

So do all the other pages that aren't in the Ocarina of Time section. This thread is to discuss site designs, not outdated pages.

We should redesign the site so the OoT 3D page is up to date

Topic: We should also have a link to the site's YouTube channel, that would be nifty.

Actually, OoT3D isn't the only section that isn't linked. ALttP and SS both aren't on there. Keeping the pages up to date actually takes some time. If someone decides to do it, then it'll get done. I don't think it truly needs to be updated. It would be nice, but still. Also, you've mentioned this multiple times. Your point has gotten across.

Guess you're right... Sorry all. I'm being a brat about that. I apologize. It's just difficult to find good glitches and timesavers in the R&D threads. That's what the pages are supposed to be for. I'll stop posting about that. I apologize once again for being a conceited brat.

I will delete the posts about this that I made here, including this one.

Nah, don't beat yourself up. I don't think it's been updated in a while. No need to delete posts.

I like the idea of not having to manually type in the URL's to every other page I visit on this site as if it was 1994 or something. Here's my suggestion for a more user friendly front page:

(http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/1240/zsrsuggestion.png) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/14/zsrsuggestion.png/)

That twitter feed.

Further evidence that Cosmo = ZFG.

They/She/He is/are really crap at hiding it.

M upside down=W :o :o :o

I don't think we have pages for most of those games...

That looks good, but it still doesn't have a link to the YouTube channel. Also, a little bit of color would be nice.

lol dat breaking news. Nice layout Timpz! :)

I know we don't but new games come out all the time and we might even put pages for some of them some day. Especially now when Tompa has started working on Wand of Gamelon we should expect to add more pages in the future ;).

In any case it's just a concept layout, add as many colours you like and take away any game that doesn't have a page. I mainly did that to show if it would work with many game pages, prepping for the future and stuff y'know. But I do believe in buttons with art rather than links or a clickable box over some text. It would be more compact too and could possibly be altered to be more compact if needed in the future without much hassle.

And Norkix, why would we need a link to the youtube channel on the front page when we have it or at least should have on every other trick in the pages? In any case I guess you could put some blue text size ten saying "visit our youtube channel" after the copyright text.

I'd like to take a shot at this since you guys need a designer/programmer. I'll try to cook something I can show by the end of the week since I actually have quite a bit of free time. I'll be sure to take any reasonable suggestions, and I have some of my own things in mind. Unfortunately, I won't be able to be on IRC much, so it might be a bit hard to contact me. For anyone wondering, I do have web design experience and have made several websites. I know this site uses ruby, so any server side code will have to be inserted later by maxx since I don't know ruby ;P

I'm working on getting familiar with HTML and CSS, and if I get experienced enough I'd like to try working on this. Of course that's an "if", not a "when", so no guarantees unfortunately for me...

I'll get working at it though.
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Also, if we should choose a 'dynamic' front page over a 'static' one, I had two potential ideas for how the 'dynamic' part would work:

1st is a Triforce with four buttons on it, which would change tabs between Games, News (including twitter feeds on the side), Leaderboards, and Other (including the rest), and maybe a Forums button below, on a treasure chest (which would be open) (other wise would be in other)

2nd is like a File Select screen, with the spots for the file slots and the tabs for Copy, Erase, and Options items (assuming it is oot file select style) being the buttons for the different tabs.

2 sounds like better flow on the main page to different parts of the site, but 1 would be way less difficult to implement I think.

(http://cosmo.dreamhosters.com/junk/mockupthing.jpg)

Holy shit

Now that's an amazing rendition right there! Originally, I was thinking

•Games
 extends out to show all games in an arrangement like if the games were items
•News
extends out to show news & feed
•Leaderboards
like 'games' but links to leaderboard pages

•Forum
•IRC
•YouTube

But still that is just awesome. I think that my second suggestion just beat my original idea in every way. Still have yet to see what the final result will be, however...
Also once we decide what the buttons will say (if my design is chosen), I'll create and name a bunch of files just to take pictures of them to use, to add more to the feeling like it is directly from one of the games.

I kind of don't like it because I want more focus on the news section. Also, the font on the affiliates looks far too small. I think I like TimpZ's layout the best, but it needs just a bit of tweaking.

Well, the News could always be set prominently in the center. That would be really easy, and would make it more prominent, and better for viewing the news anyway.

Pretty sure that's cosmo's old design idea. I agree that there needs to be a larger focus on news.  This way new users coming to the site can see the latest activity in zelda speed running (WRs, new tricks, etc.) without having to browse Trick Research topics or click through multiple leaderboard pages.

How about this, it does give a large amount of room for news:
(http://i.imgur.com/u9Xt3.jpg)
(incase imgur doesn't save the edit I made, there should be a twitter feed area below the site affiliates)
That's what I meant by prominently in the center.

AAAAAAAAAhh my eyes 8) thats better.
Keep the background black and give the buttons a outline. Looks much better that way.

It was just a prototype for the layout. The colors would still be roughly the same as this: http://cosmo.dreamhosters.com/junk/mockupthing.jpg
I just drafted my picture to give a hopefully better layout for it. And it was in MS paint as I wanted it to be quick and simple (GIMP is slow at loading).

Yeah, I thought it was pretty clear I was just posting one of Cosmo's mockups from 2009.