Interlopers.net Forum - Half-Life 2 News & Tutorials

Chaps,

I'm currently (with the help of Jasard) planning to re-design Interlopers completely. I'm hoping it will inject some life back into the site and I'm sure we're all pretty tired of this design by now.

Basically, I'd like your input with regard to things that could be added/removed or left alone (content as well as looks). I already have an idea of what I want but your opinions will shape it.

The main things on the list at the moment are:

• Cleaner, easier to read design. The site is very text based, so it should be more joyous to read
• Responsive design. For those unaware, this is the concept of a site working on all platforms (phone, tablet, desktop). See this site for examples.
• A bunch of other tweaks

Serious suggestions only! Cheers

I like the way it is now. I've seen too many sites/forums fall into making things look cool and design-y that the usability drops. But, that's just what I've seen happening elsewhere.

Can't wait to see the concepts/sketches of new site design though.

I would like to see replacement for the phpbb imageset. Se the forum itself doesn't look so... stock phpbb.


I'm all for it, I doubt it would be any worse than what it is now(not saying the current style/theme looks bad).


I would like a more mobile-friendly(both phone and tablet) versions of the site. Kinda a pain to navigate on my phone as it stands right now.

bekey wrote:But on the other hand, I know you're better than everything and everyone else.

Damn right.

I was wondering if you might also go for a night theme as I tend to browse the forums at night the blinding white can sometimes be a little too much.

Considering how awesome the first redesign was, I think I trust your skills with this next one.

Though, I honestly do miss vanilla Interlopers (or at least what the site looked like when I first joined).

I like the light tones and simple lines of the current design so I wouldn't want to see that disappear. I do look forward to checking in on my mobile though! As far as ideas for other changes go:

The Map Spotlight often seems to gather dust, so perhaps it could be selected democratically by the community using some sort of kudos/rating system, so the highest rated new map at the end of a month becomes next month's spotlight?

Tutorials could be culled a bit, or at least the more outdated ones could be updated.

You should make more of the Errors Page as I think that's one of the most unique and useful things the site has to offer. I haven't seen one anywhere else, anyway!

Perhaps in addition to the 'Forum Latest' panel on the front page there could be a 'Forum Sticky' panel that always has threads like Map Pimpage etc?

i'm a fan of minimalism. take (inb4 flames) google and youtube's redesign, for instance: get rid of everything that's not absolutely needed, and hide most of everything else. solid colors, bright colors, sparing use of gradients and shadows, etc.

thanks, blink!

Hallo,

Some useful views thus far.

It certainly won't be going the way of some sites of over complicating and bloating. Quite the contrary. The idea is to clean it up, get rid of the unused stuff and make the more used stuff more pleasant to read / use. All while catching up with the times and making it shuffle and bend itself so it is nice and usable on any screen size (device).

The forum is one of the main things that needs to be more responsive to smaller devices.

I think Blink is keen to hear any ideas in regard to new features, or whether Interlopers should expand in new directions.

Lets go back... http://wayback.archive.org/web/20070615 ... lopers.net I'm always down for redesigns as long as they are better then the previous version... I would suggest for the home page more places for custom content or viewing of past contests etc...

This is the only forum that doesn't feel like some stock phpbb recolor, if it stays like that I'm sure a redesign would be great!

I'm all for a re-design as well.

- The edit, quote x, !, ? buttons should only appear when you move over a title bar
- Forum links (like private messaging, jumpto's, mod tools) should appear in dropdown menus. Basically the whole 'Forum home ‹ General ‹ General Discussion
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- For phones: remove signatures (or add option to do so)
- For phones: minimise user info (ie only image and username) but allow user to view more userinfo and buttons by hovering over/clicking the users' avatar
-for non computers: allow more widescreen shape (its not even covering half right now ). You can even decide to put adds to the right of the forum in those grey columns instead of at the top and bottom

thats all i can think of

I'm all for a new site!

Sounds great to me! Keep us posted on the design