Have you got 15 minutes to spare?

I'm working on the new LFGSS design... and I've set up a test website which I've gutted (it has no style at all right now).

What I need is some test content. Just people to register and create some junk posts and threads. I know you guys are good at this stuff ;)

It's here:
http://test.lfgss.com/

Note: There is no style to it... I've gutted most of the functionality and am building it back up. So if you're going to bitch about how it looks then feel free but note that I'm working on it and your comments will be dated swiftly.

Note 2: As a test forum it will be destroyed in about 9 days time. You will need to register again.

like the colours

The colours are basically the only thing I've done so far.

The structure looks really bad right now as I'm laying the foundation for it to work on mobile as well as web and stuff.

I'm closing it whilst I'm off to sleep... will re-open it tomorrow morning. What you should do when it's open again is change the browser window size. It looks awesome when narrow (for mobile).

night, night!
x

Oo, that will look awesome.

i kinda like the current site - it's dull looking enough to pass for work at a distance in a busy office. say it aint so pete!

At the moment, none of the buttons above the post work - i.e. cant attach images, make bold etc etc [Mac, Leopard, Old Firefox]
Edit: but they can still be written + parsed by the forum software

Also, all the images are anti-aliased for white backgrounds, looking odd on the grey. Going to try on my mobile now.

And the home page seems to be a bit lacking in contrast? Lovely for design, not so much for usability.

And when I'm on new reply, the teal strip from the LFGSS logo disappears, so does not go all the way across the screen

Seems slightly squished on the mobile. But plenty legible :)

[Also, yay member number 16. Can we keep these pretty please :) ]

At the moment:

• All javascript is broken
  
• All styles were deleted from the vBulletin system
  
• Only the home page is being worked on (to get the skeleton of the site right)
  
• Everything is subject to change
  
  

The colours you see are correct though, and whilst that will be launched first I will also offer a black on white scheme afterwards (but moaning about it now will delay it as I'm fairly stressed).

Oh, and I'm actually trying to do away with a lot of the JavaScript. There's so much that is simply unnecessary and things like rollovers and drop-downs just don't work on touch interfaces like mobile devices and tablets. So I'm basically going back to basics.

The type on the home page is a bit dark isn't it? I can't really read it and I know it's not my monitor.

Tynan won't like it.

I'm colourblind and had problems registering, couldn't see the 6 numbers/letters until the 4th try...

The type on the home page is a bit dark isn't it? I can't really read it and I know it's not my monitor.

Yeah, Wayne hadn't specified the colour for "Read" items so I've made it dark. That bit is subject to change.

I'm colourblind and had problems registering, couldn't see the 6 numbers/letters until the 4th try...

The captcha system is the same as the one on here (or if it's not, it will be).

Seriously though. This is VERY early. I'm sitting here coding and changing things constantly. So nothing that you see on there should be taken as being done.

Hmm if you ignore the "Click a quick reply" and type something, then select a quick reply and try send it... it won't let you just keeps saying you need to select a quick reply link...

How come you can't just type a reply to the thread ? That will need changing ;)

It might be because it uses some javascript, which has been turned off.

Hmm if you ignore the "Click a quick reply" and type something, then select a quick reply and try send it... it won't let you just keeps saying you need to select a quick reply link...

How come you can't just type a reply to the thread ? That will need changing ;)

Oh, and I'm actually trying to do away with a lot of the JavaScript.

The bit it's expecting, doesn't exist.

So I kinda like the minimalism of the home page at the moment.

Got to add the search box to the header, but aside from that I'm liking it.

Things I like:

• I really never saw the point in knowing the last post per forum... I just care about whether there are new posts... so blue links are new, grey are old.

• I never saw the point of knowing that there were X thousands threads or posts... that's just penis size stuff. As long as someone new can gauge that the forum is busy and it's worth participating (stats at the bottom of the page) then we don't need to go into useless details all over the place.

• This one page looks great on a mobile and a small monitor. It's perhaps too sparse on large monitors. Try it on your mobile, let me know what you think.

• That one page has no JavaScript (unless you're logging in, in which case it has the MD5 script to hash your password), only 1 CSS file, and only 1 image file. I'm currently seeing the whole page delivered and rendered in less than 120 milliseconds, and that's with the no-cache headers turned on.

• It's HTML5 baby! Breadcrumbs are marked up, links to people are marked up. One day browsers will know what to do with this.

• Top nav is free of anything except the stuff that was used the most.

• Footer nav provides links to pretty much everything on every page.

Things I don't yet like:

• It feels a little too sparse

• I've strayed from BDW's design to make the nav work across mobile, tablet and desktops

• The font stack isn't yet sorted.

'It's all about the ride' bit under the LFGSS. Mega cheesy. Rest looks and sounds great.

'It's all about the ride' bit under the LFGSS. Mega cheesy. Rest looks and sounds great.

I like the idea of changing that. So if you're in the polo forum it would be "It's all about the polo".

I also think the threads look a bit too complicated and it's kinda hard to work out where each post starts and ends. And the quick reply there is like a go advanced on here.

It's bloody horrible

Yeah, I haven't got there yet. Really only tweaking the home page right now... just the header and footer to get them right.

It's bloody horrible

Damn right.

I won't defend it until it's done.

It's like walking into a build site and declaring the whole thing shit as the brochure clearly had a finished thing and there's rubble everywhere at the moment.

This thread was not an announcement of done, it was a "right now I need some fake data so that I can see things functioning properly".

OK.
I can't quite get into the constructive criticism bit yet because I think the whole thing is nasty at the moment. Really not a fan of dark colours, I know it saves energy and that..but this forum is so clear to see and use (remember some of us have colour blindness and other eyesight issues)

I remember. I'm colour blind too.

As said above... the dark colour scheme will launch first, a lighter one will follow. I hope that it wouldn't be more than a month between the launch of one (and loss of the light scheme) and the launch of the other.