Frontpage update

UPDATE: Although it was nearly finished it came to my attention that people had different ideas to waht the front page should look like compared to what I thought, my idea was for a quick update to the already made frontpage that kept the sameish theme and made the whole thing smaller.

However a few people have been saying in chat that the current theme (or rather the updated theme) doesnt look star warsy enough or represent the guild as a star wars guild.

Now I personally dont agree with that as I think with the large scale of SW anything could go and the current design was based around a computer terminal anyway which I'm sure have no real "star wars" layout in the universe thousands of years in history

BUT my opinion should only be only taken as one opinion, the guild should decide the look of the guild and I'm not 'not' going to make something becuase its not what I designed (its just alot easier to do what i want to do ) so I'm going to stop making mine for now you already have a good idea of what the final thing would look like and allow you guys (and Dy) to decide what look you want it to look like if you want it changed at all.

So I'll leave it to you to come up with the plan and I'll give my imput, unless I get made design chief or some crap like, then you can respect ma authority!

UPDATE: well I couldn't just leave it it lol (obsessive compulsive ) so i finished my version, http://prioryjk.fileave.com/front%20page%202.swf

or in here

Quote :

Although not a huge project I'm going to tinkering with the Front page to

a) make it smaller in size so it loads alot faster
b)Make it a bit better looking, it'll stay a similar motif (green ) but will be a bit sharper overall

I'm not going to divert too much time to it I still have my RP commitments which I've been neglecting but I'll be working on it over a period of time maybe a month who knows

Anyway I was wondering if anyone has some suggestions on what improvements I could make to it or what you'd like to see ?

• Tando has asked for guild news to be displayed on it
  
• Possible guild leaders info and guild info tabs?

Work in progress link, this will update as I work on it it'll stay on the same link, http://prioryjk.fileave.com/front%20page%202.swf

Newly replied topics maybe?
But beyond that I don't see anything needed for the opening page.

Nice idea Soude but I dont think that would be possible and if it was not by me lol

I think what we want from the opening page is nice looking gateway into the site for any members or guests to leave a good impression and sum up the idea of the guild, so it won't be sithy or republicy so they can tell were independant and secreative.

But from a practical standpoint it could be used as a links page for us and a way to give other allied guilds info on upcoming events and raid times etc quickly without trawling through the forums We could also highlight cetain aspects of the guild were proud of like the RP stories and artwork by LW and Dy with a link to those.

So the plan is to update the current design so the title remains as well as having a better functionality for these things, I hope

oh yeah I'm trying to make the colouring better and i need someones help if they know anything about complimenting colours? we really cant just have green and black

Dear PJK,

You suddenly gave me an idea for the frontpage... a "map", with Coruscant in the middle and other planets around. Coruscant's being a link to our forum, around coruscant Starships each one linking to either the important topics of the forum (recruitment thread, Roleplaying section) or even other sites we like (allies, SWtor, wikis...)

Whut d'ya think 'bout that, huh?

Do you mean like the header sort of?

Thats actually very similar to a banner we had before we changed to Harewoods and it looked very good, hmm it could be done, the banner could sit over coruscant like before and the ships planets could have their descriptions drop down when rolled over
although it would mean I'd need a few png/jpgs in the file which would bump up its size.

Great idea Soude

Sort of banner, yes... more a much awesomer homepage ^^,

I said Coruscant because it's our homeworld due to the fact Hyperion and azure tower are located there.
- Rolling over the empty space would show this kind of message "Welcome above Coruscant, please clic your destination to start landing or hyperdrive procedures..."
- Roll over coruscant would bring this: "Landing Coruscant, via Agents of the EPOCH private pad..." and redirects to the forum index.
- Starships (middle sized) on either side would bring a text like that: "Following this ship will initiate Hyperspace jump toward Mandalore System." and will redirect to Kymerous' home page, various other starships would send to allies website.
- Smaller shuttles would direct into our forum Roleplaying section, recruitment thread
Hugest capital starship would redirect to database websites like Swtor.com or Wikias

As for the size... I bet with an awesome portal like this... nobody would matter how big it will be ^^,

Great idea but I do have one reservation...

Soude wrote:

As for the size... I bet with an awesome portal like this... nobody would matter how big it will be ^^,

These flash files can get pretty huge (just ask PJK!) and the larger it is, the longer its going to take for me to get in to the site when I'm at work because I'm logging in with my phone. Even the new banner priory has put up takes a couple of moments to load so for the sake of little old me (and anyone else not on a great connection sometimes) please don't make it too big!

Would doing it in one or two part help it for low connection people? With a part A and a part B, for example?

I don't get the new banner on my IPhone

I got the banner but not the iphone...

Tando's right. I was viewing the site occasionally on my iPhone when I had no laptop, but when I logged on for the first time on a computer today the new banner was there. I've tried deleting cookies & browsing history to no avail..

Perhaps its something to do with the way the iPhone integrated browser views flash files online?

It loads up fine on my Blackberry and animates and all, it just takes a little while to load.

yeah Iphone has no flash on a side note I can't stop looking at the new Banner.

a interactive front page would be great if you can pull it off.

Well for all you guys, Apple dont support flash anymore becuase its a closed file type which you have to buy the program to get, unlike their ipods which dont let you trnasfer to other devices and lose your songs and dont allow you to redownload them !!!

As for the Banner i'm wondering if flash is the best thing I should have done with tbh, yeah it looks nice but it isn't that compatible up there, I'll bring this up in the thread about it as I might just change it so people can see it as just a jpg and remove the animation :/

Frontpage wise heres my concern, size the banner is about 0.66 MB big by itself and contains only 1 jpg and 2pngs and the frontpage is 1MB as it is, now we could make yours soude and I'd like to but size wise it might be huge and we wouldn't know until i made it :/
My idea for the redesign was to get rid of all the jpgs and pngs that I had in it and just make it in flash which significantly reduces the size of the thing, I could in theory get it down from 1MB to 0.1MB and make it look alot better.

However this isn't my desicion really I'm making it for the guild and you guys should choose, I mean the only problem here is size thats it the ideas great and I can do it its just it could be like 1.5+MBs big, what might be interesting to look into is if we could host both, and have a "public" and "Secure" versions, Soudes would be the public face of EPOCH and mine could be the Secure one both.

Both would load but mine would load faster and come up pretty sharpish and the soudes could come up and people could choose if they wanted to see that one?

Aye I was thinking of that idea and about to suggest a prompt for low and high connections so you may chosse between a JPG and an animated version

I'll remind all of you that if the frontpage is to big people can just swap directly onto agentsoftheepoch.org/index.htm as I daily do from work...

I'm putting up my new concept for the frontpage as I showed it last night anyway, Link! anyway its alot more complete then it looks (this is an old version), but is still missing some elements like the title will have a black background so you can see it etc.

Anyway this is just my concept and Soude has one as well so we'll have to decide somehow which one to use, however this frontpage is fairly small at about 20kb estimated size so that means we could do both homepages and have them as a "legitimate front" and "secretive" versions.

Soude voiced some concerns over its look and anyone else can as well, if you want something changing or have an idea for it plz voice it and I can probably alter it, especially if you have ideas how to mix up the colour scheme

@Harl and everyone it might be cool if we include the Guild logo now if we can sort it out

Though I'm the only b****** who criticize the look of it, I'll give PJK three thumbs (yeah got one in my freezer) up for the hard work he's putting into it. Thank you PJK!

lol don't worry soude I was just faking those tears

PrioryJK wrote:

lol don't worry soude I was just faking those tears

How disappointing!!!

UPDATE: Although it was nearly finished it came to my attention that people had different ideas to waht the front page should look like compared to what I thought, my idea was for a quick update to the already made frontpage that kept the sameish theme and made the whole thing smaller.

However a few people have been saying in chat that the current theme (or rather the updated theme) doesnt look star warsy enough or represent the guild as a star wars guild.

Now I personally dont agree with that as I think with the large scale of SW anything could go and the current design was based around a computer terminal anyway which I'm sure have no real "star wars" layout in the universe thousands of years in history

BUT my opinion should only be only taken as one opinion, the guild should decide the look of the guild and I'm not 'not' going to make something becuase its not what I designed (its just alot easier to do what i want to do ) so I'm going to stop making mine for now you already have a good idea of what the final thing would look like and allow you guys (and Dy) to decide what look you want it to look like if you want it changed at all.

So I'll leave it to you to come up with the plan and I'll give my imput, unless I get made design chief or some crap like, then you can respect ma authority!

UPDATE: well I couldn't just leave it it lol (obsessive compulsive ) so i finished my version, http://prioryjk.fileave.com/front%20page%202.swf

I'm not really sure what to do now really, this basically fit what I was going after, its small (13kb) and keeps the overall asthetic of the origonal, yet I can see what you mean it not being that star warsy

i'll see if LW or SS have any comments, (poke) but I suppose i could mock up a "soude version" or even try and replace all the content in the origonal with flash made stuff so it would be basically be the same but alot smaller size and not made out of pngs hmmm maybe I should have done that in the first place

Finished version is very cool PJK and once more thumbs up for your good work. I fear I'll anyway keep my position since this is not Star Warsy enough to represent a Star Wars RP-PvE guild for the most recent (when it will be released) MMO.

Now if you want to give a try to the "soude version" feel free to do so I have good hopes in you bringing my idea to a good (if not excellent) result

Soude flattery will get you.....a slap

okay heres a quick thing i made form the banner materials its pretty large but its a start, soo is coruscant too big, too small?

http://prioryjk.fileave.com/soudes%20idea.swf