xith.org needs a new look

[Java Cool Dude]

With a lot more colors, stuff, sections, screenshots etc...
Take a look at ogre3d.org for example...

[Java Cool Dude]

http://www.sulaco.co.za/opengl.htm
Check the dude's layout; amazingly simple and yet so attractive.

/me sighs in pain

[William Denniss]

This it does.

The current look was created in a very short space of time, with the emphasis of functionality over looks.  A DB driven site were people can upload their demos like ogre would be wounderful.

I have created such sites in the past, but I'm afraid my spare time is now spent mainly on coding (and writing the odd tutorial) - and I've already spread myself rather thin on such projects as it is.

If someone would like to have a go at redesigning it, I'm more than happy to let them loose on it.  It is a production site - but it's easy to setup a testing area which can be moved into the real site once it's finished.

The server has PHP, CGI, MySQL and GD amongst other things (although I would discourage using CGI in favour of PHP).  SSH/SCP access can be granted.  No JSP I'm afraid.

Discuss in this thread if you are interested.

Cheers,

Will.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[William Denniss]

http://www.sulaco.co.za/opengl.htm
Check the dude's layout; amazingly simple and yet so attractive.

/me sighs in pain

Simple and sleek is definitly the best way to go IMHO - nothing's worse than a cluttered mess of pictures and links (http://ninemsn.com/ anyone?).  The upshot of this is that it's easier to design too

Will.

[Java Cool Dude]

I think greg is volunteering to give the site a complete face lifting.
/me drools  

[gregorypierce]

Yeah I'll volunteer. Won't promise beauty in the first pass  - but I promise that with your help and feedback that it will be great

[Yuri Vl. Gushchin]

Waiting for results of voting for logo, and after I can ask my designers to prepare some variants, also.

Yuri

[Jens]

I think there is no need to wait any longer and stop you from creating a new design for xith.org.  

I'll close the logo poll now.

[William Denniss]

So what do we want to transform it into?

Design changes are easy to roll out fortunately as I just have a bunch of PHP functions to call the HTML templates.

If we really wanted to transform the site into a truly community driven one (which would be really great) - some added functionality will be needed.  Some sort of DB driven site where people can showcase Xith3D projects, demos, tutorials, screenshots, tools...  I guess there may be some php portal software which we could tweak to our needs?  A news section could be cool too.  The only thing we wouldn't need is a discussion forum as we already have one.

Currently as you may have guessed the addition of tutorials and demos are manual (albeit generated with calls to PHP functions so the templates can change nice and easily).

I look forward to seeing what we can turn this site into

Cheers,

Will.

[Java Cool Dude]

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[jbanes]

I don't know what's up with the dinosaur, but that image is scary. It looks almost exactly like the dinosaur my wife drew for an early version of DataDino. Check it out:



Ugh. I can't believe I ever used such a hippy-ish logo. (The text, not the dinosaur.)

[Java Cool Dude]

Well it took me 5 mins to draw the thing using MS Paint, I thought it would be better than making a simple bump  

We need a better site fo sho

[Jani Laakso]

I'd like to propose a solution for www.xith.org. It's called Mambo. See http://www.mamboserver.com/

"Mambo Open Source is the finest open source Web Content Management System available today. Mambo Open Source makes communicating via the Web easy."

This is all about saving communitys time now and in the future. Note that xith.org needs constant updating by several people, somekind of CMS is best suited for this (imho).

I am not affiliated in any way with Mambo, but our company has spent some evaluation time for various CMS systems and this is one of the good ones, also extremely popular.

I am not going to list all the features here, but I feel this would save plenty of time from Xith people who are currently handling the content of www.xith.org.  I'd suggest administrator gives editor rights to several people  so the site goes ahead constantly. Adding news, pictures, changing content and menu items etc. is quite intuitive.

There exists tons of modules and themes for Mambo, so it's extensible. It's widely in use, so it has been tested quite good.

Some themes:
http://www.mamboportal.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=26&func=selectfolder&filecatid=9

Some modules:
http://www.mamboportal.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=26

For xith, I'd suggest we take one nice looking theme, and modify it to your own needs, e.g. at least add Xith3d logo somewhere. If bigger changes are needed, then edit the templates (html / php).

I'd assume xith.org would like a theme that is simple and quite clean, well there exists these also, just use google to find more themes.

And converting current site to Mambo is pretty easy, just cut (ctrl-c) page content from old xith.org and paste it to wysiwyg editor on new xith.org (the links are preserved).

Comments?

[William Denniss]

sounds like a great idea to me

lets try and prevent it from looking like every other site which uses a CMS by keeping the design sleek but simple - and with some customisations

Unless anyone objects to Mambo - lets discuss some potential themes and also get some volunteers for and admin team (and maybe someone who wants to help customise the design).

here's a site with some more links: http://shew.jp/mambo/Mambo_Links.html

Will.

[Jani Laakso]

lets try and prevent it from looking like every other site which uses a CMS by keeping the design sleek but simple - and with some customisations

Agreed, if any artist / html specialst want's to tune any existing theme, be my guest Well, minor modifications should be pretty simple for anyone.

Unless anyone objects to Mambo - lets discuss some potential themes and also get some volunteers for and admin team (and maybe someone who wants to help customise the design).

Here's a test site:
http://jani.colib.com

It's default theme is coffeerings_lite. It's quite sleek and simple.

I uploaded some themes there (zip packages, easy install) that you can try out. Note that if you change theme then anything might broke, it's just a test site.

[Jani Laakso]

Unless anyone objects to Mambo - lets discuss some potential themes and also get some volunteers for and admin team (and maybe someone who wants to help customise the design).

I'd suggest that all registered users may add news, links, even content to some of the xith.org pages by default. These are not published directly to the site, someone with higher privileges (e.g. admin or main publisher) needs to accept the changes and publish them.

Mambo does content management quite easy, you can login as admin and then see all pending changes on a list. You can then evaluate the changes by clicking them, and if all seems good then select all changes and click "publish".

Some bunch of people (editors) could have an 'on the site' editor access. This means that all content get's an "edit" icon and editors can change these on the fly. This can be published implicitly also, or needed to publish by the admins.

No CVS hassle or html editing, you just click and edit with wysiwyg UI.

Hope this sounds good for everyone..

[Jani Laakso]

Here's another clean theme that should be easy to customize, check:

http://jani.colib.com

[William Denniss]

sounds great to me

And I like your sample template (some of the other templates are rather mean and make you delete the cookie if you want to change it back again but).

I feel this will really transform the site into one which is truly community driven

Will.

[Yuri Vl. Gushchin]

Only question about Mambo is a license type... Do somebody know?

Yuri

[Jani Laakso]

And I like your sample template (some of the other templates are rather mean and make you delete the cookie if you want to change it back again but).

It's me being mean I haven't used time to set up that site correctly, I'm just clicking and testing and tweaking in a flash.

I feel this will really transform the site into one which is truly community driven

Heh, I hope anyone does not object to Mambo because it's CMS, you can get rid of CMS styled things by clicking setups or editing the templates.

[Jani Laakso]

Only question about Mambo is a license type... Do somebody know?

Yuri

Taken from the www.mamboserver.com footer:
Mambo Open Source is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL License.

[Java Cool Dude]

Maaaaaan...
Even though those sites give the current xith's look a serious spanking, it's still looks too simple for me :-/
I guess we need to some pictures here and there, more color etc..
Still I'd take that anytime over what we got so far.
Also I have this huge favor to ask;
Can I have access to my demo page?

[Jani Laakso]

Maaaaaan...
Even though those sites give the current xith's look a serious spanking, it's still looks too simple for me :-/

Hope you are not referring to jani.colib.com, it's a five minute example of what can be done with Mambo, nothing more. Whole site is a test where I have experimented Mambo only.

The question was to offer simple yet extensive content management system, this would give community some tools to express them easily.

I guess we need to some pictures here and there, more color etc..

Of course. That's something that site content mangagers woudl do.

Still I'd take that anytime over what we got so far.
Also I have this huge favor to ask;
Can I have access to my demo page?

E.g. mambo can offer your own "area" where you can do whatever you wish, if the admins choose so.

[Java Cool Dude]

Winner

[William Denniss]

thanks Jani for doing the leg work on this

Well then, who wants to help design it?  No point everyone complaining and nobody volunteering - JCD ;-)  

Will.

[Java Cool Dude]

<-- doesn't know Jacksh*t about webdesign  

[Java Cool Dude]

A friend of mine is doing me the favor of building a simple design for my demos page.
You can check it out here.
I'm waiting to get full access to it though so that I would stop annoying William about every update, new demo I put up there
/me notices that Water cube map ain't on the demo page yet