Openpandora Website

[PoisonedV]

I like your design, but that's not the pandora's logo.

yeah, seriously, what is up with people always trying to change the logo?
i think some people took the "community handheld" aspect too far

 

[adsharma23]

i like the design which is an improvement over the site we have now (just change the logo to the actual one)
to bad evildragons "acquaintance" had to be taken out

 

[TaG]

Andy, it's not a bad first shot, my reservations are:

• Wrong logo and font for Pandora
• Does not look good on widescreen
• I'm not a great fan of white on black, not always easy to read after a while
• Not a significant improvement over current
• I don't like the 1-6 business, it can also be a pain when editing

I think the biggest 'problem' with the current site is the devs getting round to editing it on a regular basis. I wonder if that has led to the design as it is? For example, one option is to only put recent news and press on the front page which would de-clutter it but require more maintenance as older items would need to be relegated.

 

[quadomatic]

I was actually thinking that redoing the Pandora's website would be a VERY good idea. I think the site could certainly use a facelift.

I was hoping I could help with something like that, but I wasn't sure if anyone else was interested, and I'm really bad with making images. I'd be able to do the CSS layout and code the rest of the page for the most part. Also, I could write a PHP Content Management System backend that would be sufficient. I don't have much Javascript/AJAX knowledge at all though.

So, if Craig and the others decide they'd like a redone site, let me know, and I'll be on board to help in any way I can.

I would give you an example of my work...but the gfx are always not so great since I'm not great with Photoshop or GIMP. I did a website for the Web Application Team competition for Business Professionals of America, but my team pretty much fucked me over and the person who was supposed to do gfx did next to nothing, and the other ppl that were supposed to learn PHP never did, so I was on my own. So, the backend works, but the site is kinda ugly.

I like the mockup, and if it is in fact JUST a mockup and you haven't coded it yet, if I was given the images, I could help slice the layout in CSS and code the backend.

 

[grif]

i am fairly handy in photoshop, i know my way around pretty well.

I dont know how much i could be of help to your guys though, since i am rather busy at college at the moment.

 

[andymangold]

I like your design, but that's not the pandora's logo.

yeah, seriously, what is up with people always trying to change the logo?
i think some people took the "community handheld" aspect too far


I realize that is not pandora's logo, I did not have a decent resolution version to work with so I just made some random cube thing to take the place of it for this ROUGH mock up. If I had the logo, it would be there.



I agree with almost all that is being said here: the fact that the website is not updated as much as possible is certainly one of the larger problems, if I were to code anything it would certainly be fluid width, and I think the website deserves as much attention from this community as the handheld itself does. From your feedback already, it seems that many of you have opinions and ideas that could be used to make the website a better resource for all of us.

I understand that most of the admins and devs are quite busy with the hardware itself, which is why I am volunteering to put some time into the design and maintenance of the site.

P.S. TaG: The 1-6 would be automatically generated by CSS with an ordered list in this mock-up, so it would be painless editing.

This is not my only proposed solution, nor am I married to it, its just something I threw together on a slow night a few weeks ago. I would like to work closely with this community to develop something that satisfies everyone's needs and does so efficiently and beautifully.

 

[cowai]

The thread starter knows what he's talking about. He's our guy.

 

[hessiess]

So long as the site remains table free, I don't rilly care what it looks like. I have firefox set to not load background images, set backgrounds to medium gray and text to black. its so much easier to reed.

 

[andymangold]

So long as the site remains table free, I don't rilly care what it looks like. I have firefox set to not load background images, set backgrounds to medium gray and text to black. its so much easier to reed.

I can promise no tables in the layout and that is some very efficient browsing you are doing there...

 

[grif]

So long as the site remains table free, I don't rilly care what it looks like. I have firefox set to not load background images, set backgrounds to medium gray and text to black. its so much easier to reed.

not a lot of people have such a set up, which is where there is a problem.

the more i look at the thread starters mock up the more i like it, its a very nice looking concept. Everyone has already labeled the problems it has.

 

[realyst]

I must concur with the majority, here. Threadstarter's got a good eye for design.

Nice
Simple
Mobile friendly
Likely Pandora browsable.

As long as you stay way from ASP(for the poor server monkeys keeping the site afloat) or bad vbscript(for any sane person with a browser that doesn't suck) and keep 'purdy javacsript thingers' away, that looks like a kickass page to load up.

 

[Spirit]

I like the current site's looks a lot. They are unique. Not generic like http://fc05.deviantart.com/fs32/f/2008/226...andymangold.jpg (which, if I may say so, has terrible font readability, very weird line spacing, the headlines for the months are not quite useful like that, that blue gradient must be a mistake)
Also it presents all the facts clearly and in a nice overview.

You say the current tabs "allude to an old 2.0 aesthetic", well your design "alludes to whatever looks are trendy now". It lacks any memorability and character.
Those dark looks try (to me) to create an atmosphere of exclusivity and expensive blingbling. That's something Mac customers bait, but not much so the audience of the Pandora I guess?
For myself a site like that would have not "conjured" any interest, instead I would have probably thought something like "some posh college kids want to pretend their product is shiny". Also I doubt I would have felt welcome (being a geek/"hacker"/nerd like I guess many Pandora-fans).

And SEO? Duh... That's hardly something the Pandora site should care about.

Enough ranting.

 

[grif]

I think SEO is something to care about, the internet is one big thing that pandora has going for it, thats how i imagine 90% of the people here found out about pandora.

Dont tell me you dont want pandora to do well, SEO generates some traffic.

 

[andymangold]

I like the current site's looks a lot. They are unique. Not generic like http://fc05.deviantart.com/fs32/f/2008/226...andymangold.jpg (which, if I may say so, has terrible font readability, very weird line spacing, the headlines for the months are not quite useful like that, that blue gradient must be a mistake)
Also it presents all the facts clearly and in a nice overview.

You say the current tabs "allude to an old 2.0 aesthetic", well your design "alludes to whatever looks are trendy now". It lacks any memorability and character.
Those dark looks try (to me) to create an atmosphere of exclusivity and expensive blingbling. That's something Mac customers bait, but not much so the audience of the Pandora I guess?
For myself a site like that would have not "conjured" any interest, instead I would have probably thought something like "some posh college kids want to pretend their product is shiny". Also I doubt I would have felt welcome (being a geek/"hacker"/nerd like I guess many Pandora-fans).

And SEO? Duh... That's hardly something the Pandora site should care about.

Enough ranting.



I appreciate the feedback, and while we all have different opinions on aesthetics surely you can agree that a web presence that is more frequently updated and at least partially in the hands of this community would be more effective.

Also, keep in mind that mockup is made in photoshop which anti-aliases fonts much differently than a web browser. And i don't think ANYONE should ever ignore SEO; its not necessarily a matter of drawing a tremendous amount of traffic from search engines, its just a matter of arranging your content in a way that crawlers can interpret it and present your site in the best and most accurate light possible.

 

[hotblack]

Spirit, I think you underestimate the modern geek/hacker/nerd. You can be both technically minded and have an appreciation of design. And even keep things looking old-skool if you want Good design goes beyond the aesthetic and I'd say that form and function have been aspects OpenPandora has continually strived for.

I understand and in some ways agree with your points, but I also feel that if a community project dismisses making things look good and work well simply to remain 'geeky' or niche, its doing itself and it's members a disservice.

Why shouldn't OpenPandora care about getting hits and having a good pagerank? It may not be the primary aim of the project, but surely the more people who hear/see and get involved the better? You get a positive cycle of development and developers and hopefully a successfully project.

Enough ranting from me too I see what you're saying, but I've seen too many communities actively dissuade people who could help them through an affectation of 'geekdom'.

 

[logokas]

I like this guy. Let him have a crack at it.

Also, it would be nice if a new Pandora layout came with an additional forum skin, since separate parts of forums can be skinned separately with Invision.

 

[Spirit]

The bit about SEO was mainly that I wonder what search terms would lead up to the Pandora site because of SEO. "what handheld should i buy"? Gettings hits, being well presented, clean coding, good markup are not bound to SEO.

Good design is more than using trendy colors and big headers (I forgot to mention there is a huge waste of vertical space and banner image might go right into "advertising, don't bother looking" for internet-trained people.).
You got to keep the target audience in mind. I am pretty sure the Pandora is more something for the "reddit" visitors than the "digg" people if you know what I mean. Just saying what I believe in and what I feel about it.

A site with (moderated) user-contributed news would be ace indeed, especially once the system has arrived. But that's something different. I totally agree that the current site would benefit from a more clean, structurised and welcoming design. But please a fitting one.

 

[grif]

pandora is a widely searched term, due to the mythological element, and the music service, amongst others.

so it would be nice to be further up on google if someone were to just search for "pandora".

Still, putting that aside, SEO still should not be ignored, as already mentioned just making things nice and easy for google will help the project.

 

[TaG]

TaG: The 1-6 would be automatically generated by CSS with an ordered list in this mock-up, so it would be painless editing.
Most of you replies I am with. I think numbered lists are bad because they get quoted, then when the content changes the numbers have different content and leads to confusion.

I think SEO is something to care about, the internet is one big thing that pandora has going for it, thats how i imagine 90% of the people here found out about pandora.

Dont tell me you dont want pandora to do well, SEO generates some traffic.
SEO is good, but what keywords would you use to drive traffic to the OpenPandora site? If people know it's called then they've already heard of it, so that keyword doesn't attract new people. So what would?

...Those dark looks try (to me) to create an atmosphere of exclusivity and expensive blingbling....
My experience is that although people think white on black looks cool, they don't like using it quite so much for any period of time.

I appreciate the feedback, and while we all have different opinions on aesthetics surely you can agree that a web presence that is more frequently updated and at least partially in the hands of this community would be more effective.
Do the devs want the site to be "partially in the hands of this community"? As it is their link to the wider world, they may want it tightly controlled - it is part of their business.

Also, keep in mind that mockup is made in photoshop which anti-aliases fonts much differently than a web browser. And i don't think ANYONE should ever ignore SEO; its not necessarily a matter of drawing a tremendous amount of traffic from search engines, its just a matter of arranging your content in a way that crawlers can interpret it and present your site in the best and most accurate light possible.

I'm not convinced they spend a lot of time picking SEO friendly words.

...but I also feel that if a community project dismisses making things look good and work well simply to remain 'geeky' or niche, its doing itself and it's members a disservice.
Don't forget OpenPandora is a business that uses community feedback. I don't think that is quite the same as a community project.

Why shouldn't OpenPandora care about getting hits and having a good pagerank? It may not be the primary aim of the project, but surely the more people who hear/see and get involved the better? You get a positive cycle of development and developers and hopefully a successfully project.
I think that there are many developers, but getting fresh blood is always good. But how is the OpenPandora / high page rank going to achieve that? I think more people are likely to find out about it from good / regular appearances on other sites - like Engadget.

Also, it would be nice if a new Pandora layout came with an additional forum skin, since separate parts of forums can be skinned separately with Invision.
Don't forget the forum is not the home of Pandora, nor is it owned or controlled by the Pandora team. The forum is Hando's.

 

[quartercast]

Hey andymangold,

I do think openpandora.org needs a redesign, the multiple text boxes broken up with slightly different shading just looks tacky to me. I'm liking your design. A few points to consider:

1) What is your motivation is behind the dark bg coloring? It looks a bit cold to me.
2) I actually prefer your logo to the current one, it's cleaner. Have you tried using an extended typeface and increasing the line weights a little?
3) Not convinced about the italic serif type next to the pandora mockup, why not keep your sans serif and change the formatting of it to make it stand out

Good luck with that, I was always hoping a fantastic designer would magically appear and make a great looking website and logo for the pandora - it deserves it. I had a quick go at a logo myself (not that I think I'm fantastic or anything). If you wanted that original logo I could probably trace it out and send you an AI file, but you're probably more than capable of doing that yourself.