New Website Beta

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New Website Beta

Postby Fiks » Mon Jul 27, 2009 8:51 pm

Anyone who's looked at the Wavehaven website will know that it hasn't been updated in a couple of years, at least. The site reeks of old school code and tacky frames. And let's not mention the invalid code (go go HTML OCD!).

For my Web Publishing 3 (expert, baby!) final last semester I decided to take some design ideas bouncing around my brain and make a new website for our land. For those who are wondering, I got a full 125 points for the project, and woulda gotten 153 if the teacher hadn't set a hard ceiling of 125. :P For the last coupla months, in between personal drama and work, I've been working on getting a live version of the website up. This past weekend I finally reached what I feel is a good beta point. So I'd like to show off my work and get some feedback, if I may.

http://www.wavehaven.net/

I currently don't have a dedicated domain name for the site (yet) but I'm working on that. Right now it's just a sub-directory under my personal website (which blows). That's on the to-do list (see below).

Known bugs
  • Not valid xHTML on all pages yet. Turns out it's the validator not recognizing new accessibility standards. Not gonna worry about it. So don't mention it, smart-asses.
  • CSS isn't validating either, gonna work on that tonight.
  • Calendar CSS is showing up on all pages... don't think it's supposed to do that. :P
  • Contact form is non-functional.

To-do list
  • Get a Wavehaven domain name.
  • Get the old Wavehaven domain name.
  • Obtain and upload flyers.
  • Obtain and upload sign-in sheets.
  • Obtain and upload BOD/Althing minutes.
  • Tweak styling on CSS.
  • Further flesh out the links page.
  • Make a good personal website.
  • ???
  • Profit.

So take a look, lemme know if you break something. And next Althing or two I'll ask the land if y'all want it to be your website.
"How harmful overspecialization is. It cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding."—Hari Seldon
Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brotha', I hurt people. Bonk!
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Re: New Website Beta

Postby Feanix » Mon Jul 27, 2009 9:04 pm

WOW is all i have to say Fiks. That site is amazing, well done sir :D
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Re: New Website Beta

Postby Mantis » Wed Jul 29, 2009 1:00 pm

I like it a lot. The framing is nice, the side menu contains the thigs we actually care about, the code prerequisites are low, and the page itself is spacious.

None of our web sites have been fully self-contained, and based on your progress the site has the potential to be a full solution, meaning everything a vistor would need to know about Amtgard is easily obtained at this site without further investigation (such as backtracking to google and searching for more amtgard stuff.) If the web page develops into a self-contained experience for the vistor, mission accomplished!

As a potential improvement: the Wavehaven color scheme has been the same since the first website, and the very same color scheme (turquiose, blue, white, black) and the layout of these colors hasn't changed, ever. What can we do to distinguish our site from our previous sites? Perhaps a shade of metallic grey surrounding the buttons or framework, or a white-charcoal-ish color for the body of the pages.

The web page helps represent the development of our chapter, and it would be in our best interests to show it in our 3rd generation web site. That's the only improvement I can think of to date, appearance upgrades. :) Everything else is muy bien.



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Re: New Website Beta

Postby Fiks » Wed Jul 29, 2009 7:42 pm

It's that damned heraldry of ours. Black, white, and turquoise. Each of these lend themselves to certain roles: black text, white background, turquoise accents. I tried to differentiate the new design from the old by avoiding background textures and keeping the layout clean. But yea, there's still some similar colors going on.

I'll take a look at making the either the content background (where all the actual text and images go, currently a light gray-blue) or the body (the white background the page is built on) more metallic-gray. The navigation is simple text atm, and could get styled more... I'll sleep on that one.
"How harmful overspecialization is. It cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding."—Hari Seldon
Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brotha', I hurt people. Bonk!
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Re: New Website Beta

Postby Fiks » Wed Jul 29, 2009 10:35 pm

Griffin, who had put together a website at Keluric's request, has kindly donated wavehaven.net for the new website. Thank you, Griffin! I've got the domain pointing to my site for now, but will gladly point it elsewhere if the land requires. I'll bring it up next Althing. So if you, for some reason, had the old link bookmarked, be sure to update your bookmark.

Note that the wavehaven.org domain still points to the old website. Working on that still.
"How harmful overspecialization is. It cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding."—Hari Seldon
Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brotha', I hurt people. Bonk!
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Re: New Website Beta

Postby Xiaho » Sat Aug 01, 2009 7:06 pm

Fiks Is win. Awesome site man!
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Re: New Website Beta

Postby Garuda » Sun Aug 02, 2009 1:10 pm

I have this project somewhere in my personal production queue for updating our land heraldry to something slightly cleaner and easier to applique, but I must say the version you produced for the top of the navbar looks very nice. If i did go on with producing something new now, it would only be for the sake of applique production. Not sure it's worth it. Very nice job!
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Re: New Website Beta

Postby Fiks » Sun Aug 02, 2009 1:27 pm

Garuda wrote:I have this project somewhere in my personal production queue for updating our land heraldry to something slightly cleaner and easier to applique, but I must say the version you produced for the top of the navbar looks very nice. If i did go on with producing something new now, it would only be for the sake of applique production. Not sure it's worth it. Very nice job!

One wave is all that really happened there. I was looking at the heraldry and realized that if I cropped the bottom of the shield out, leaving just the tower and the "rays," it'd make a nice top for a column.
"How harmful overspecialization is. It cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding."—Hari Seldon
Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brotha', I hurt people. Bonk!
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