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London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
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@Velocio
Basically, this site is big... big as in #4 in the world for cycling forums big. Big as in 280,000 unique visitors a month. Big as in 250,000+ pages indexed on Google. Big as in the largest website for fixed-gear cycling in the world.
So it's pretty crappy that whilst it's functionally rich the look and feel of this site is at best clunky, and at worst a spaghetti of links which leaves everyone slightly confused as to what they're actually doing.
I get the impression that the site is pretty confusing from the navigation perspective, and looks a bit 1990's from the style perspective (which is probably OK, as that will come back into fashion soon).
What I'd like to do is to sit down with a few talented people and re-design it.
I'd like it to be really elegant code, really simple to use, really obvious, and to have content easy to find.
First thoughts are to re-design the header... make search way more prominent, so much so that it could drive navigation. Put more simple links in the navbar, but remove the dumb ones that just make it confusing. Group things better. Make it look nicer, but take up less room too. Improve the breadcrumb appearance.
To give you an idea of work involved to do the whole site: The navbar is just 1 or 2 templates. vBulletin has hundreds of templates.
So what am I looking for?
My weaknesses are:
1) Design
2) Time
From a design perspective I want to find someone who has experience of designing web sites, who understands template based systems and the constraints that they bring, who gets design metaphors and use of colour and space to communicate them onscreen, and who is adept at creating the under-stated details that make or break sites (edges, borders, icons, colour use).
From a time perspective I want to find someone who is totally fluent in HTML and CSS. To the point that you are able to semantically describe a page and then style it perfectly... you should know how to make forms look incredible, and you should know how to make HTML lists into horizontal lists. You should know when to use a DIV, and when to use a TABLE, and why. You should know how to take a photoshop image provided by the designer and make the semantic HTML that implements it.
I know I can't design for toffee... hence the need for a designer.
I know I can't do every piece of HTML on my own... hence the need for another pair of hands (or two).
What are the commercials for this? Well this site makes no money, none at all. We have enough money to get us through for the next 4 months or so but none set aside to make it look good. So there's no money. I can pay out of my own pocket, but this isn't bottomless and really I'd be looking for people who, like me, are willing to put the effort in with the return being what they get out of the site existing and being a better place than it is today. Should we make any revenue from advertising that produces a profit, then I would be willing to split this revenue so that a part of it goes to re-imburse you for the time you've given.
If anyone is interested, PM or email me.
Thanks.