And having just read the above back it looks like some of the letters are mauve/grey on the white background and some black- I hope it isn't my eye sight!MC

The latest refinements to the font and colours do make a difference. On another tack completely, and this may be very personal, but I've never liked too many boxes in a page design whether print or online. The home page and group pages look a bit Jenga, the name of the website itself would be better without a frame at all, and the frames around the member avatars/icons would be better with fewer frames: at the moment they have a white border, surrounded by a black line, and then have a shadow added. One or at most two of those would be enough ... I think.

I'm really struggling to read this now

Would it make things too busy if you added a date/time stamp to the updates in the activity feeds on the home page? It might just help returning visitors see at a glance whether anything new has happened since they last looked. Would probably have to be in smaller or paler type or something though, so might conflict with readability again. Still, a thought.

Edited by calliaphone at 14:01:00 on 04 January 2014

Ooh, i really like this bolder, new look.

Some other thoughts on the new home page:

1) The sections in boxes running down the left hand side almost echo the structure of the horizontal links menu at the top ... Except that "Courses" are missing, and the order is different. If it's going to replicate the menu, I think it should stick to the same order and content, else people like me (i.e. nothing better to do/easily distracted) will sit there going "wait, what?" instead of being instantly immersed in the content.

2) I think the existing order of the links menu over-emphasises the importance of the Archives section, relative to the other parts of the site. What comes first should presumably depend on what you want to impress on people most/have them click on first. My guess is that's probably community stuff first (groups, forums, members, not necessarily in that order!) then the resources stuff (jobs, directory, interviews, courses, perhaps with the stuff that's most often updated going first), and only then the Archives.

3) Someone else mentioned it, and now I'm wondering too - what did happen to the blogs? They seem like an important part of the site!

4) To avoid it seeming like you've just got 2 identical menus on the same page - one horizontal text only, one vertical with icons - the vertical menu could maybe have more content? I was thinking it might be cool if, when you click on any one of the boxes, it "unfolded" (like a drop down menu that only folds back up if you click the header bar again, or on any of the other menu items) to reveal a bit of dynamic content, eg. "Latest", "Featured" and "Random" picks. Is that clear as mud, or making sense? I'll hope for the latter!

The font in the reply boxes is tiny compared to the surrounding text. Surely it should all be the same size, bar headings. I use 125% zoom and everything's out of balance. I don't need to see instructions; I need to see the text I'm typing, as I'm typing.



Edited by NMott at 17:35:00 on 04 January 2014

Like the colours, but dislike the boxes. Having boxes around everything feels like I'm back in primary school and having to read / write on lined paper. Unboxed looks more professional.

For some reason I can't access work uploaded on the new Synopsis & Query Group. It's telling me I need to join the group, and it's sending me to the archive.
Hopefully it's just a temporary glitch.

Is it me but I was unable to paste work onto forum. Have Welsh instructions! Perhaps that's my end but tried to paste on a Welsh word that represented paste with no joy. Yes, it looks good apart from the above comments which will be worked out.

Back again. Tried to post this earlier but wouldn't go. Anyway, I'm unable to read my own work on my home page nor can I read my work on poetry forum!! It reads I must be a member on both also there a numbers above the page. But I can read others on the forum.

sorry about that - I've reset the viewing work pages to the old version until I work out what's going on

I like the lime green reply buttons, it is making my eyes happy!

Hi David

If you click on one of the links to the groups in the Home page All Activity list when someone has 'liked' it rather than commented, it gives a 404 error.

eg:

http://www.writewords.org.uk/forum/forum66.asp
HTTP Error 404.0 - Not Found
The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

I've been away from the internet, and just caught up with this. Yes. I like.

Especially like the font used for WriteWords.
I also like that white has been retained for the background.
Well done, David.