New Layout for IF - Feedback required - Page 3

firstly congrats for such a wonderful layout... 👏 👏 it looks great!!

personally i think the new one is better than the old one..and simpler too..not all the members check everything on the homepage..so its better highlighting the main points and leaving the rest to "more" 😳

infact....i have a suggestion...why not have only the channel names on the homepage and...when you click on the channel u get a list of all the serials ..... instead of listing out all the serials of each channel on the homepage??😳 that would give alot of space for other stuff...

i agree with the rest...telly buzz and bolly news could be at the side..giving more space for GA's..

having GD sections too on the homepage is very refreshing and gud for the sections too... 😃

overall the layout looks fine so far... 😃

First of all thanks to all for giving their input and its really appreciated.

I wanted to show the design before implementing as that way we have the option to make corrections. And right now we can take in all the suggestions.

Lets discuss the points raise:

a) The childsafe advocates is a banner space 😊 and has nothing to do with our site policy. And may be some other banner keep showing. As you know we cover all our servers expenses, site development, tellybuzz through the ad revenues so we do need to give an attractive spot to our site advertiser (we have to be fair with them too as they help us run the show financially).

b) Yes I know with time we all have got used to the current design and start finding it simple to use. But the problem is that when I asked many people to give their feedback about India Forums they first didnt understood what it is all about as half people feels lost (and other half do not believe people can chat so much about Television shows and start giving wierd faces.)

c) The idea is now to make India Forums a safe social networking site which has a lot more to offer then just television discussions (where we are already #1). We want to get the same recognition for Bollywood too and other interest areas like Sports, Poems, Books and much more.

d) The changes suggested have been informed to the designing team:

- To highlight Global Announcements so that it doesnt look sidelined.

- Bollywood and TellyBuzz section will come side by side.

- We will have Channels pages seperate so that we can have Channel specific announcements too so it will help our Channel Moderators handle their sections.

- The links that you all are seeing missing will soon be coming in the next layout.

e) The login box, intro about IF will only appear for visitors who are coming on our site for the first time so that they get a complete idea of what India Forums is all about and they can easily get them started.


If you have more suggestions then feel free to drop your views here as me and the designing team will be going through them regularly.

Cheers,
Vijay

Thanks a lot Vijay Bhai! 👏 👏

Ooohhh, so the channel logos will be on one page and then we'll click on each of them to go see the forums within the channel? That's interesting, now I can kind of picturise it in my head and it seems quite nice. I like that idea 😛

I do agree about having IF receive recognition for more things, expansion is always good and that's a great idea.

All the changes sound good to me, can't wait to see the newer layout! 😛

The new layout looks great to me!

Everyone has already pointed out the issues so I wont repeat myself! 😳

I am sorry I am late in replying 😳
Thanks Vijay Bhai for the new layout. It looks great.
I just read through all the 4 pages....I had some suggestions but those have been brought up by everyone else.....so like GK said, I won't repeat 😛

Just a question....instead of having the "active users" on second page, can we atleast have dev. team members listed on the front page?? or atleast the GMs...so we don't have to go through pages to see which GM is online 😳

I think my views will differ from all the others. I feel the site will look too dark. Though its user friendly but the colors makes it look like a business website not a place to discuss TV shows, if you see the current one and compare you will know what I mean.

The page looks really busy hence a member wont be able to make up what to look at and what not to look at.Too many tables and sections might confuse a newbie.

I like the fact that there is a greater proportion of the website on the forum sections like lifestyle because those are some of the sections which members visit less.

Originally posted by: ammmu

Ooohhh, so the channel logos will be on one page and then we'll click on each of them to go see the forums within the channel? That's interesting, now I can kind of picturise it in my head and it seems quite nice. I like that idea 😛

I agree with that ^. I think it would be better if only the channels are listed on the Home page.. and to see the diff sections members have to click on the channels.

and to promote GD more .. GD's sections can be listed on the home page. Channels.. for TV shows .. and .. maybe GD's sections can all be listed. .. ?

Originally posted by: vijay

Thanks a lot Vijay and your Team. 👏👏👏 I checked out the new design and must say its great. Though I feel the Global Announcement portion needs to have more prominence, since most of the major happenings reported in this portion catches our attention the most.

Before viewing the design there are few things that would like to point out:

a) This is a demo layout and its not functional. Currently its just showing 3 channels but we will be having all the channels. Probably all the shows will go in their respective channels page which will reduce the loading time for the homepage.

Yes this is definitely a good idea, since every channel is adding on new shows every week it seems and the homepage is burgeoning with these new entries, in addition with the existing ones.

b) We will be even concentrating on promoting General Discussions section so that will also make room on the homepage.

Yes this is very much needed I feel too. So will be interested in knowing what happens with this Section.

c) We will have the Top 10 most active contributors on the homepage too.

But then won't the spammers be on this list?

d) I know many like to see their name on the homepage page of online users but probably we will have to move it to another page as the members are increasing at a very rapid pace and soon it might reach where there will be thousand names just on the homepage. So keeping scalability issues in mind we will have to move it to the next page.

I understand, but sometimes it helps to find out active CMs and GMs in the Forum. So will shifting it to the next page reduce this convenience? Just thinking!

e) I know I had mentioned about the Buddy list changes but this homepage redesign took some extra time and since we are working on a newer framework for IF.

Will surely look out for this.

f) And a lot of features will be similar to Social Networking sites like Orkut, Facebook. Please note this change will take us around 1 months time once we freeze on the design with around 5 people team as a lot of codes will be completely redone.

This does sound exciting.

g) We are also working on changing the logo from the current one as this one cant be copyrighted as it has Indian Flag (as per indian copyright and trademark laws).

This deffo makes sense, but is the top-left hand logo going to be the official I-F logo?

h) You will also notice a "Quick Links" on the right side of the page which is basically a smart customizable slider which slides as the page scrolls down and will also allow members to bookmark their favorite shows so that they can move from one forum to another with ease.

This is surely a good move and will help in easy navigation.

Thats all from my end for the time being.

But I would like to request something, if its possible. Could we have a FLAG button for the PMs so that we can flag the important Pms and delete the other ones easily. I don't know whether it's feasible, just wanted to ask.

Thanks once again.

The layout looks good to me....once its in function, i think i will take time to get used to it but its lot simpler so very helpful.

The design is good for a change, but I feel too much space is used up by the News links - both the Tellybuzz news at the top and Bollywood news at the bottom can be moved to the side and made compact - it looks like the homepage is giving too much info all at once and makes it look cluttered and difficult to find wat you are looking for... Even the recent videos are not actually needed on the home page... The Global Announcements can be moved to the center and made prominent... And more space to individual channels and links to their shows - that is the base of IF... In totally, I think it would mean, mostly retaining the current IF layout but giving it a new look would do fine...😳 I havent read thru the replies, so I am sorry if they are repetitive...