Design and Layout Suggestions

[Nick]

So scattered trees good, mountains bad? That one tuned out nothing like I was originally intending. I always go into it wanting to make a randomland carved out of a rock face and always come up short of that.

[Nick]

Maybe have the snow and a few scattered trees peppering that top banner. Maybe sit the whole thing atop the "news" dividing bar.

That is almost exactly what I was thinking. With maybe a little snow covered cabin on the right end.

[Brad]

Are you working on it now or something? There is an ugly white box at the bottom of the top box.

[Nick]

Yea. Sorry, it will take a few moments before I get things lined up.

[Nick]

Its not finished but its kinda up there. Comments or suggestions? I will work on it more a little later.

[Brad]

I like the house!

[Nick]

Thanks!

[Nick]

I should start working on a spring and summer version. Unless people want to see the wispies come back once the snow has melted.

[Brad]

Seasonal versions would be awesome. Also make sure to do every major holiday and famous persons birthday.

Also, your snow drawing abilities have improved vastly from what I saw when you first tried that Roof Snow Load picture. Your final version of that picture turned out pretty good, but I like the snow in these pictures even better.

[Nick]

Things just look better small

[zourtney]

The new banner is awesome. I like it a lot. I agree that we should have a few throughout the year...but don't go overboard.

I would enjoy something similar for the main site. What can you cook up?

[Nick]

I can cook bacon! I know that for sure. I will see what I can do without losing its distinguished drabness that reminds me of the old department of forestry site. They don't have their own site anymore. Its all been centralized (probably to cut maintenance costs.) I have been thinking about the main site though. I need to find some way to make all this pay me monies. Or find a place that wants to pay me monies to do this kind of stuff.

[zourtney]

It'd be kind of nice if we could set up nicer profile settings on the main site. Right now, the options are just a sour mash of plugins throwing tabs on an already user unfriendly screen. I want something where I can put up a picture, give a little "about me" crap, have a shortcut link to creating a new "blog." That kind of stuff.

[Nick]

You mean the little side bar you get after you log in? That would be good there. I rather don't like the (mostly) useless sidebars we have now. They need fewer menus to stuff that never changes and better ways to find new/interesting content.

Also, blog entries on the front page. Yay, or nay? The default is to have them not. I think that the creator should still promote them to the front if they want. People can use their own discretion.  And what about tech related blog entries? Should we make it possible to attach entries to sections of the site (tech or rec related blog entries anyone?)

[zourtney]

I'm feeling kind of wishy-washy about blog posts on the front page. For me, as a registered user, I definitely care about recent posts. However, as a John Doe stumbling across the site, I would prefer to see a landing page with a sentence or two about why this site exists. As a user of the webbernets, I notice how quickly my interest evaporates, especially when I don't find what I'm looking for in about 2 clicks.

I don't know if you can have different front page settings for registered vs anonymous users or not. Well, I'm sure you can. I mean with the existing tools and modules.