Site Simplification Project & Fish Fry.....

[froglips]

Bas started something and I thought it might be good to ask for input.

What ideas or things do you feel we could do to simplify our site layout?

I'll throw this one out. I think we have too many menus on the top of the page.

We have the blue bar, the navbar, the undernav bar and the floating menu bar. Lots of the same stuff is in at least two of those bars.

Now, I like a bar as much if not more than the next person, but this seems excessive.

For example, the link for User Settings. In my mind, something on the key menu bar on the top of our page should be something a user would use almost every time they visit. I think the last time I went to my User Settings was 3 months ago.

What other things would you like to see simplified?

I mention simplified as a cost containment idea. If we can reduce the complexity, it will help us cut back on volunteer hours to keep things working or updated.

Jim

 

[Travis Porter]

Too many independent things. Classifieds, threads, pictures all seem to be on separate technologies/platforms.

 

[sapwood]

I fully concur there is a lot of duplicity and real estate used for infrequently accessed features, although I'm aware folks take different approaches to site usage.

A couple that come to mind are the boxes for "User Settings", "Contacts", and "FlashChat Usage" on the right side above the ads. However, I do like "Stats" and "Today's Birthdays".

JMTCW,
Roger

 

[Douglas Robinson]

I like the bars at the top and dislike the site navigation on the left hand side. Half the time it opens when I do not want it to.

 

[DaveO]

When's the Fish Fry?????:5obsessed:eusa_droo:eusa_droo


Dave

 

[Bas]

If you look at other sites, such as SMC and BT3Central, our navigation features certainly seem baroque in nature. That's a fancy word for saying bloated. But, in all fairness, we do provide a lot of extras that other sites don't have, like the Photo Gallery (without space restrictions), Classifieds, Link Library etc. So some additional complexity is to be expected.

My thoughts...with the emphasis on "my". There are lots of features some people love and others don't. If we take anything away, some people will complain bitterly..for about two days. And then move on.

• I'm not a big fan of the Contacts function. I wonder if there is a way to track usage. The database should tell us how many users actually have contacts.
• FlashChat sees very little use. 99% of the time, 0 users are in 1 room. The only time I've ever used it was for site diagnostics, and Google Talk/ Yahoo Messenger would work just as well
• We have many "shortcuts" on the horizontal menu bar that do the same thing as the Blue menu buttons, they just go to a slightly different spot. E.g. Photo Gallery->Files, links and photos, Help Desk->Help Desk site issues only. We could consider "generalizing" the horizontal menu bar items and eliminating the blue menu buttons
• The User Settings window is probably not terribly useful to see all the time on every page
• We could make one "information" page that contains links to the lexicon, sawyers, counties, frequently asked questions, member web sites and policies. That would free up a bunch of space. Optionally, we could collapse all these items under one menu item.
• Since we are branching out beyond the web site, perhaps we could do something to integrate the Calendar and Announcements, to be more activity-focused
• I like fried fish
• I rarely use the side menu, I wouldn't mind getting rid of it. But, I have a 23" widescreen monitor, so my pages don't get too long. That means there is very little scrolling to get to the navigation controls. However, if we can get rid of some fluff and shorten pages..

 

[ptt49er]

I do believe I'd go through horrible withdrawals if you took away the floating menu on the left

 

[ScottM]

Fish fry? These better not be tofu fish. :eusa_naug

 

[Travis Porter]

We do have a lot of duplicative menu bars. The blue ones on the top have always seemed like a "hack add on to me.

I do like catfish and flounder myself. When and where is the fish fry???

 

[froglips]

I think the Coast Crawl will be a good time to have a fish fry I won't bring tofu fish as long as there are hush puppies and cold beer!

Love these ideas.

One little bit of history on the navbar. Steve tried to keep that bar at its default settings. That lead to the other bars as a place for our customizations.

On the floating menu, if you weren't aware, you can turn it on/off in your User Settings.

Also, we could look at moving things instead of removing.

Flashchat comes to mind. For several years, there has been a standing Saturday/Sunday early morning chat crew. They share lies, sip coffee and complain about not having enough turning tools.

But, does it need to be on the front page?

Jim

 

[Travis Porter]

Flash chat on the front page is nice to see if there is someone there. At least that is what I used to do. I haven't been in it or watched it in a long time.

 

[McRabbet]

I'd like to see the chat room stay up front so folks can see if it is active. As Travis said, there used to be lots of use a few years ago when Woodguy and many of his colleagues from his classes used to meet almost every day over lunch. The BOD might consider putting it to use if we have an issue to kick around (in a private room). I'm also in favor of keeping the Contacts Box up -- I have all of the BoD members and key staff in my contacts list and I can see when they are on the site. As for the Sliding menu, I rarely use it and perhaps someone shoudl remind members that it can be turned off in their profile. My .02

 

[Bas]

Good, it only took a few replies for wildly diverging opinions to surface.

Flashchat is used _very_ infrequently. But, if we take it off the home page, that will be the true Kiss of Death - nobody will use it because you can't see when someone is in the chat room. When used, it is _very_ valuable. Turning off the sliding menu doesn't help any with site simplification, we'd still have to maintain the menu. But it's not that hard to do.

It all comes down to cost/ benefit analysis:

• How useful it is (can it be accomplished via other means, e.g. different menu that takes two clicks vs. one)?
• How many people use it?
• How complex/ time consuming is it to maintain?
• How much real estate does it consume that could be used differently (main message area, advertisements etc.)?

Perhaps we can let the population at large help us decide, via a survey. Something like surveymonkey would let us do that relatively quickly and anonymously.

 

[cskipper]

I always glance to see if anyone is in the chat room. It seems like the side menu was kind of a replacement to the nav bar that used to be at the bottom of the page.

Is there still a way to search for members by town?