I’ve gotten a lot of work done over the past few days, and finally hit a milestone — my first presentable mockup for the forum! I’ve got a full-sized preview after the jump, but first, a look at some of the awesome banners you guys have sent my way for the Banner Contest:
As you can see on the Banner Contest page, I decided to post 12 entries today because they’re still coming in at a pretty steady pace :O Again, if yours doesn’t show up, please be patient; I’m posting them in a totally random order, because that’s the easiest way for me to do things right now.
Forum Mockup!
Anyway, on to the good stuff — I’ve got a forum mockup I’m ready to share with you guys! Please look over it and let me know what you think. I realize that not everyone will like it (it’s not very flashy), but I think once people get a chance to start using it, they’ll appreciate all of the details and small usability features I’ve built into it.
A few caveats:
- I didn’t list all of the forums (too much work/time). While we do have some changes in mind, the forums and categories will stay intact for the most part.
- I decided to use the space at the top to push our store/affiliate/donation links, instead of some giant ad. There might be ads in the topbar on other forum pages. There may be some google ads on the rightbar…not sure yet.
- The categories and forums will, as you see, be collapsible, so you can hide the ones you don’t really care about.
- The categories and forums will, hopefully, be rearrangeable. No guarantees on this yet, but if all goes to plan you’ll be able to rearrange the forums/categories by clicking+dragging their forum icons.
- As indicated by the ‘Awesome Posts’ list at the bottom, I’m hoping to implement some very basic voting (thumbs up/down) so that great posts get more recognition. We may have to drop this feature (or one of the others, like rearranging the forums/categories) if time gets too tight.
If you have ideas for rightbar boxes (or for any part of the mockup, for that matter), I’d love to hear your thoughts, so please feel free to leave a comment! I may not have time to respond to everyone’s comments, but I do appreciate them, even if they’re not positive (as long as they’re constructive).
I’ve still got several more forum mockups to create, including the topic listing and post listing pages, so there is plenty more design work to be done. I’m not sure, but I may go ahead and create the XHTML/CSS for this so that ROFISH will have an easier time with the development. Speaking of which, he’s been working on stuff too, I’ll let him post on here and explain it himself whenever he’s ready.
Internet-Savvy Banker :: War-Loving Hippie…
On the business side of things, I’m still searching and talking to CPAs/accountants. I actually went into Chase bank on Friday and spoke with them about the possibility of a business loan. They said that, since I haven’t incorporated yet, I’d have to run the loan through Reidesign and present a business plan, a PNL, and a balance sheet. In the end, I’m guessing that it would still be very difficult for me to get a decent rate.
It wasn’t until I was in my car driving home that I realized they were talking about an unsecured loan. Don’t I feel dumb? I’ve got collateral I can use to back up the loan and totally forgot to mention it. Oh well…I honestly don’t know if I want to bother going through the bank. I could use a service like Prosper, or I could just sell off my Apple stock. However, if I get enough people interested in investing, I might not have to worry about getting some huge loan, so we’ll see how it turns out.
That new forum design is awesome! I mean, it might not look all that flashy, I can tell from the new features that we’ll really enjoy the new forums. Also, I happen to like the simple clean interface. Keep up the good work!
I love that design! I don’t think it would be too hard to ajax-ify those sections and make them rearrangeable.
It smells like Web 2.0 fancy time!
Seriously, I just like how unique it looks. It looks like the future! Truly a forum for the 2010s.
Well, how much do you need, Reid? I think you could get investors to put a lot into this, that forum design looks pretty sharp, too. So far, from what I’ve heard, you’ve got a solid plan, and you’re lacking in only one area, the particular games you want to expand into. You’re also missing a little on the historical side, since it’s unknown if there’s truly a commercial market in game-fanboyism. I, of course, think there is, or I wouldn’t be posting right now.
How much do you need? I’ve realized I’ve got more funds available than I stated previously, and I’m very interested in investing. If I were you, I’d ask serious investors to email you how much they’d be willing to put in initially. If the value is substantial enough that you can really kick off the business, and you can also make enough of a living as an employee of your company, I say forget the loans and go for investments. You may have to limit stock available or something, but you should really gauge the private interest here. There may be more than you think.
To me, the mockup seems a little too cluttered and confusing. The list of posted-in topics is definitely cluttered, but it seems that’s collapsible, which is great. But I think I’m seeing most of the clutter form the Forum Spy box. If that can be closed or otherwise customized, it’d be great.
I like it, the colors, the layout, pretty much everything.
the buttons maybe should be rounded at the top corners, “forum rules”, “member list”, etc
maybe you were avoiding such things on purpose though, I’m no designer haha
Thanks for the comments guys, I appreciate them. As for clutter, I spoke about this briefly on the Starmen.Net Forum, but I think that people will get used to the new layout pretty quickly. It might seem cluttered, but as EB Master mentioned, much of it is collapsible. It’s not something that people are used to, but I think it’s a major step up; I’ve tried to eliminate as much chartjunk as possible without making the design sterile.
@Jason: I’m hoping to raise at least $10k. That much money should get us through April; thereafter we may (or may not) decide to raise/borrow more, hard telling right now.
I actually posted a topic in the staff forum about investing shortly before I made this post; I’m currently planning to extend the offer only to staffers, because the more investors I take on, the more difficult/expensive/time-consuming the incorporation process becomes.
Despite this, I definitely haven’t ruled out non-staff investors. If I don’t have many staffers interested/able to invest (I’ve set the bar pretty high), I may get in contact with you and anyone else who is interested. Feel free to email me — reidman@starmen.net
I personally don’t think the mockup is cluttery or anything like most people are saying. The collapsibility is really nice. :) As well, I love the idea of thumps up posts (and possibly thumbs up topics too maybe if you considered that).
The thing that worries me the most is the forum spy and Mother 3 spoilers. What if someone makes a mistake in their post and forget to put up the spoiler tags? Then it’s on the front page of the forum, and people who haven’t played Mother 3 will have something ruined.
reidman, you’re taking a buisness risk here, but listen, nothing good comes out of playing it safe. :)
I’m loving the return of the search!
if there was an option to view full messages on the spy that would be pretty psychedelic
I think the new layout is fantastic and I am looking forward to spending my days on it. :) Simple and easy to navigate with plenty of detailed options for the few who like their forums a bit more fine tuned. Great work Reid!
You need to put up a more obvious login button around here - just now I had to hunt for it (it’s in the “register” page.)