DOL Website - Dark Theme

[Etaew]

Hello everyone,

I have started my latest round of updates to the Dawn of Light websites, the aim is to simplify and tidy them, my inspiration comes from the clean RUNUO website. I have been working this morning on a prototype home page for DOL and the design will spread to other pages once it has been finalised.

Link
Dawn of Light - Homepage

Background

I've changed the background to be darker, and fit with the current design of the DAOC Portal Server List and Storm herald.

Sections

I've decreased the size and content of the introductory section, made the shards we operate and the software we maintain more prominent, and tried to make the downloads easier to access. News is tucked away under the downloads without a preview.

Could you guys give me some constructive feedback about what you like, what you don't like, and any other suggestions.

[Tolakram]

At first glance it looks really good, can't find anything wrong.

[Tolakram]

I did want to add one thing about the portal page. I think the View Server List link should be larger and bold, so players simply hunting for the server list can mindlessly click it.

[Etaew]

I did want to add one thing about the portal page. I think the View Server List link should be larger and bold, so players simply hunting for the server list can mindlessly click it.

That is a valid point, at the top of the page there is a big link for Servers, which is the server list page, I could rename it. We will see what happens post portal and www merge.

[Eudes]

Hello Etaew,

First of all, congratulations for all your work. I know what it takes to make such a website running

Second point, I hope you will understand everything even with my sometimes not so good English writing...

I think the news panel, on the bottom right, is taking too much place. If you make it smaller, reducing the margin-bottom on the P or even suppressing the "date, by contributor name" (the second line, the date already appears in the Anchor, and the contributor name is visible in the news itself) you could add some more focus on important things.

Same remark about the Download section, upper right corner, where you have 3 lines when everything could fit in 2 ("DOL Server" + "Download" as example).

As main feature to add in the homepage to focus on, I think about the FAQ. There a lot of content introduced in the homepage, it is more then difficult to find a particular answer and a direct link to the general FAQ could be useful for many people.

Last point
I think you could add some margin-right (80px?) to the a#logo (line 137 of your CSS) and some padding-top (10px?) on your div#storebanner (you have to create it in your CSS).

That's all!

[Etaew]

First of all, congratulations for all your work. I know what it takes to make such a website running

Thanks, I appreciate it.

I think the news panel, on the bottom right, is taking too much place. If you make it smaller, reducing the margin-bottom on the P or even suppressing the "date, by contributor name" (the second line, the date already appears in the Anchor, and the contributor name is visible in the news itself) you could add some more focus on important things.

I agree on some points, the margin-bottom on the p element is from the phpbb stylesheet, but I have now overwritten the rule locally so we can test this on the home page. I felt that margin-bottom 0 was squashing the pages too much so I have changed it to 0.5.

In regards to the date on the news article, the date is only displayed on the posts that I make because i choose to add it to the subject, and it can't be guaranteed for anyone else creating posts, including DOLBot. The date indicator I feel is important as you should be able at a glance to see if there is any recent news, however the contributor is not that important, so its a question of, if the line is added anyway, do we leave it there.

Same remark about the Download section, upper right corner, where you have 3 lines when everything could fit in 2 ("DOL Server" + "Download" as example).

A valid point, I have now added the download link next to the title.

The question now is... what should we fill that space with...

As main feature to add in the homepage to focus on, I think about the FAQ. There a lot of content introduced in the homepage, it is more then difficult to find a particular answer and a direct link to the general FAQ could be useful for many people.

We have a FAQ? lol

I think you could add some margin-right (80px?) to the a#logo (line 137 of your CSS) and some padding-top (10px?) on your div#storebanner (you have to create it in your CSS).

The header isn't covered in this update, as this is a site wide change, I will be removing the store banner shortly and reducing the height of the whole top bar. But your suggestions are valid, and are now active on the home page only, thanks.

[Tolakram]

How about a link to the Wiki in place of the "FAQ" I really need to write some wiki articles.

[Etaew]

How about a link to the Wiki in place of the "FAQ" I really need to write some wiki articles.

Do we feel like trying mediawiki again?

[Tolakram]

I like our Wiki, seems to work fairly well.

[Etaew]

I like our Wiki, seems to work fairly well.

Fair enough, I've added a link at the bottom right, until we figure out another place for it.

[Eudes]

Wiki is a great idea! Lot of work by the way, but very good to inform people.

[calunos]

Hey,

Where is the link for Old user file ?

[Etaew]

Removed I gave lots of warning I was going to do it

[geshi]

Removed I gave lots of warning I was going to do it

that's going to make it harder for people who just want to make a server ;/ did you completely delete all the files from there? or the site still exists, just the link to it is gone?

[Etaew]

Only the link is gone, the files if you want to save them should be added to the user files forum