PSO-World Site Upgrades

[Selphea]

Have you tried any of the other themes? Do you find them difficult to read? Do you have any specific suggestions for improving Cosmic?

Going to throw out my wishlist here, realistically I'm not expecting 100% but do whatever you think makes sense and is time efficient.

1. Space it out

Check some of the fan forums of newer games like

http://www.titanfall-community.com/
http://tamrielfoundry.com/forums/

It's not just about wider space for text but more generous vertical space too.

2. Declutter the navigation

There's a few options that are redundant IMO. Probably clutter that happened over the years migrating between different forum versions. So the idea is to look through each option and decide what's really needed, or look at Google Analytics and check what people are actually clicking. Every clickable item from the very top at the welcome bar downwards should have a purpose, so you'll have to go through each one and ask yourself questions like:

• What's the difference between "New Posts" and "What's New"?
• What's the difference between clicking "Private Messages" vs clicking "Notifications" then "Inbox"?
• Should "FAQ" and "Rules" be at the top or bottom?
• What's the difference between "Albums" and "Gallery"?
• Do I really need to click on "Who's Online" if it's right at the bottom of the forum index?
• Do people need to see "Replies: X, Views: Y" in thread listings? Or can it be condensed to a "Replies" header with number of replies as a simple number below?
• Is the star rating for threads useful? To me it's just report/no report. Star rating doesn't do anything if a 1* flame war or troll thread still gets bumped repeatedly with no penalty.

Some of these go to different places, but do they serve the same end function? If they do, would it make more sense to merge them or kill off the lesser used one? But this is not easy especially for a site with a long legacy.

3. Modern Aesthetics

Take advantage of faster connections over the years to use pictures where appropriate, e.g. showing the poster's avatar next to Last Post or their started topic.

CSS is also a lot more flexible especially with Google Fonts opening up a lot of new font choices. Consider something like Lato or Open Sans to be easier on the eye.

Also, get rid of the gradient in the top navigation. The original intent of gradients back in Web 2.0 days was to add texture back when connections were too slow for elaborate backgrounds to load. Considering you already have an elaborate background, might as well do away with the gradient.


4. Standardize colors

The colors don't have a consistent meaning. For example, when I click "PSO2 General", I see "Forums: PSO2 General" as the header in white. Up to this point everything clickable is white, but this white header isn't clickable. And then at the bottom of the forum the header color for things like "Currently Active Users" is actually blue.

On the other hand, in the post editor, "Attachments" and "Subscription" are white but not clickable. The "report" button is in very faint grey but clickable.

The "by the books" approach is that since your rank and file text is grey, use something with a hue for links, and then use white and varying shades of grey for text emphasis in headers. Of course rules can be bent and broken but it has to be in a way that still makes sense.

5. Emojis

The vBulletin smileys look really dated! http://emojione.com is free. Just yoink all the yellow circle faced ones or something.

[Sirius-91]

Maybe a friendly reminder to remind people when they're replying to a post that was last replied a few years ago?

[Blue-Hawk]

Wow. I HAVE been gone for a while. When did this happen? Kind of like th new look. though.

[TheLadyRena]

Nothing is green.

Like that's it, that's my only complaint - I can't make the forums my favorite color anymore due to the theme list change.

Other'n that, I'm quite pleased, amazing work, 10/10.

[Ryna]

@Selphea

Thank you for the response. That is the type of feedback we're looking for.

To address a few specific points.
1. When you refer to vertical spacing, are there any specific areas you are referring to? I just want to make sure we're both looking at the same things.
2. Building a new navigation system for PSO-World has been an interesting experience. Trying to tie together 15 years of content and several disparate sections has been challenging. We went through at least 5 unique Navigation system designs during our testing process spanning everything from fly-out sidebars to more esoteric options. The testing group liked the current one best. We also spent a lot of time trying to remove as much navigation bar clutter as seemed as possible. There are some navigation options that maybe moved/removed when we start looking at the analytics.

The question I have for people is: Are you having a hard time browsing the site and finding things?

3. We tested swapping the thread status icons out with the user avatar. The problem with that approach is that the forum software didn't ofter any options for indicating thread status if you make that swap. While it did look nice, we didn't want to impede basic forum functionality. We also tested having the user avatar appear in the "Last Thread Post" column. It was felt that change added to the visual clutter on the thread listing areas.

I do plan on investigating Google fonts.

4. The blue is a "subcategory header" color. The problem is that vBulletin doesn't use it in many places. It mainly shows up in the footer, Gallery, and on the Profile settings page. I'll take a look at the places you mentioned.

5. The current icon set is a hold-over from our original 15 year old forum software. It has been retained since we didn't want to break the icons in older forum posts and since there hasn't been much demand for replacing the icon set.

Is anyone else interested in seeing a new set of emojis?

Maybe a friendly reminder to remind people when they're replying to a post that was last replied a few years ago?

That is a good idea. We tested something very similar, but it ended up failing our cross-browser compatibility tests. I'm still looking for a replacement.

Wow. I HAVE been gone for a while. When did this happen? Kind of like th new look. though.

Welcome back Blue-Hawk. The upgrade happened over the weekend.

Nothing is green.

Like that's it, that's my only complaint - I can't make the forums my favorite color anymore due to the theme list change.

Other'n that, I'm quite pleased, amazing work, 10/10.

Thanks for the feedback. What would you think of a green version of Midnight Blue?

[TheLadyRena]

Thanks for the feedback. What would you think of a green version of Midnight Blue?

I think that's basically the theme I used to use anyway, which sounds pretty nice.

[SolRiver]

Definitely a surprise for me. I was like wth? did i click wrong link? XD

[Sirius-91]

Is anyone else interested in seeing a new set of emojis?

Yes.

Thanks for the feedback. What would you think of a green version of Midnight Blue?

Double yes.

[SilkaN]

Is anyone else interested in seeing a new set of emojis?

No. Just keep it the old way.

Edit

Also, having to click on "quote" and "Reply to thread" twice before I can get past the quick reply is somewhat irritating.

[Selphea]

@Selphea

Thank you for the response. That is the type of feedback we're looking for.

To address a few specific points.
1. When you refer to vertical spacing, are there any specific areas you are referring to? I just want to make sure we're both looking at the same things.

The space per topic in the thread listing and between navigation elements. The latter will need to be decluttered if you want to space that out though.

2. Building a new navigation system for PSO-World has been an interesting experience. Trying to tie together 15 years of content and several disparate sections has been challenging. We went through at least 5 unique Navigation system designs during our testing process spanning everything from fly-out sidebars to more esoteric options. The testing group liked the current one best. We also spent a lot of time trying to remove as much navigation bar clutter as seemed as possible. There are some navigation options that maybe moved/removed when we start looking at the analytics.

The question I have for people is: Are you having a hard time browsing the site and finding things?

Yep x.x it's functional, just feels like some options are repeated. This is really down to personal judgment.

Is anyone else interested in seeing a new set of emojis?

Try posting this as an announcement poll pinned across all forums. I have a feeling it'll be close, because people used to the old design are reluctant to switch, while people used to mobile and modern chat apps want a new look.