nanopubye.freeforums.org

I've had some complaints about the look and functionality of the site since we moved to free hosting. It is true that the site isn't as pretty as it once was, and that navigation and function are in many ways not as good as they were.

If you could change NNPY, what would you change? What colors would be nice? Ideal design/look? What do you expect to see when you hit the front page of a site like this? What's missing, what's in the wrong place, what needs to be changed?

I know I am not around much, but I still care about this site, or I would have let it die when I stopped paying for it. I hope everyone knows that the decision to move here was not made lightly. I no longer had the time or money to continue maintaining it, and regular members will remember that we had security attacks and at times the board could even be a dangerous place to come. I got plenty of emails during the long stretches of time between updates saying that the site was getting flagged by anti-virus software. I have now turned hosting and security over to people who do this for a job rather than a hobby, and I still feel that is a good decision. We do, however, have some design options, I'm sure, so what do you want to see?

What would you do to improve NaNoPubYe?

I have never liked this new site. I didn’t know why, so with this invitation to making comments, I decided to figure out why. It puts me off because of the red color and two shades of gray, lots of white space, and a letterhead-type graphic with a gigantic newspaper and little people who aren’t reading it. They seem to be trying to open it.

The site leaves me cold because it’s uninviting and I can’t really tell what it’s about. The brightest color other than red may be in the advertising bar, but usually that’s drab, too, and most seem to have little to do with writing a novel. The Website’s title, “nanopubye.freeforums.org,” doesn’t tell me anything—but don’t bother to change it. Work around it by adding the meaning of the abbreviation. The next line doesn’t help if the viewer has never heard of NaNoWriMo except to tell what to do with whatever you do there (write a novel?): “Support for finishing, editing and publishing your NaNoWriMo novel -- all year long!”

The font is way too small. Not everyone has a large screen or good eyesight. The old site had a font of 10 or 12 point. This is 7 or smaller. It doesn’t show up well on small monitors or a monitor that is slightly out of adjustment, and it doesn’t work for people with poor eyesight. Just increasing the font size will be an enormous bonus. The reader already has to scroll down, so that is not a problem.

The colors are awful. Red can be a warm color, but here, it seems angry. It’s like a stop sign or a danger signal saying, “Keep away!” Green is a nice color, especially a medium green with shading (like the red has) from lighter on top to darker on the bottom. Pastel greens can replace the grays. Green is cool, refreshing, and inviting. Some blues can be cold. Almost every color has a shade that will set people’s teeth on edge while others are quite nice. Combinations of colors can be either good or bad. One suggestion is to design several combinations and see what the PubYers say.

Add graphics, either across the top to support the letterhead or down the side. Something to let the viewer know visually that this site supports writers. Maybe a series from quill pen to notebook and pen(cil) to an old upright typewriter to a bulky desktop cmpter with an old, oversized boxy monitor to a modern laptop. These don’t have to be in great detail, just enough to plainly suggest what they represent. Other, smaller graphics could be used like logos to announce a place on the site like the Spork Room (a spork, of course).Remember the old site had a variety of skins (I believe that’s what they are called) and my favorite was the spiral notebook. Oh, that reminds me, that site’s brown was a nice, inviting color.

Increase the space between the topics so they stand out. Have them change when new ones are added. The post I made yesterday still is not showing up. “Latest News” should be top center, not bottom center.

There is no easy way to navigate the present site. Nothing to direct the viewer to the Spork Room or Lounge, but the games stand out. This site’s main purpose is not games, but that’s an impression. There are choices across the top. They need to stand out boldly, like the ones on the NaNoWriMo site, and drop-down menus like Wrimo’s would save on space. There are some links, but they seem to be scattered, and because of the tiny font, very hard for me to find.

I hope this will inspire others to say what they like or don’t like. I have listed the “don’t likes”. What do I like? The emoticons are clever and in sufficient quantity. The three-column layout is nice. Maintaining the same style for the members’ pictures is great. Unfortunately and sadly, as far as a visual appraisal of it, that’s all the good I can say.

I think there is some confusion as regards what was possible on the old site and what is possible on the new site.

The old site was designed, coded, and hosted by me. Even when we were using open source content management or forum software, it was heavily modified at the code level, again by me. I was designing websites as a part-time job and had a few hobby sites as well; NaNoPubYe was one of them. I no longer have the time or resources, and web design has far surpassed what I was capable of when designing websites was my job.

Even in those golden days of NaNoPubYe, it would be grossly unfair to compare our site resources to NaNoWriMo's - NaNoWriMo's budget has long since moved into the six-figure range, while PubYe's budget is (and always has been) ... $0. With the exception of a few donations (for which I was always extremely grateful), for six years I ate the cost of hosting the site and did all the work (work for which I charged my paying clients $200/hour) for free. Because PubYe could never be a top priority for me, updates (most alarmingly, security updates) were not as regular as they should have been, and our forum was often broken or outright dangerous.

That was not a sustainable situation.

I gradually passed my sites to other hosts and when NaNoPubYe was the last site left on the server, a decision had to be made: close it down, or move it to somewhere free. We are now hosted on a free forum site (hence "freeforums"). Because the only design options are preinstalled templates, we no longer have the option of making the site look exactly as we want it. The only thing we can do is choose one of the premade templates. I have gone through them just now and chosen to install every one that will work for NaNoPubYe. Users are able to choose which they prefer to use. You will see that none of them are writing-themed. That's unfortunate but there is nothing I can do about it.

I will take a hard look at the navigation and layout options and see how the site can be optimized so that the most important/useful things are the easiest to get to. My options there may be limited as well.

Two tips in the meanwhile:

**Your post from the day before this one is in The Lounge (third forum down in the section called "NaNoPubYe Community").

**To enlarge your font on any web page, hit Ctrl-+ or hold down Ctrl and use your mouse's scroll wheel.

Thanks for your input, Dave!

Lily

Since I have never done any programming, no, I do not know what is involved. I didn't intend to suggest anything that cannot be done, only to say what would be bettr that what is here. I understand your limitations even if I don't know what they are.

Thanks for the hint to enlarge, <control +> It's far easier to see at a larger size.

I found my posts, but still don't know how or where to find recent posts without going to the lounge and others.

Dave