Help Design the new Charas Website

[Uberpwn_w00t]

I'll try my hand at this as soon as possible. I have something in mind.

[Osmose]

Well, I was thinking of more of a rollover drop down. I'm almost certain it's possible. Maybe I'm wrong.

Almost anything's possible. I should be able to do any of the fancy effects you want, like fading stuff in and out, popup menus, etc.

One of the ideas I had and tried to work on with the help of someone else was a background depicting complicated machinery around a base chara, sort've an image of the generator machine, as a background, with content in the foreground. I still think that would be a nifty idea.

[lilsniffs3]

Hmm, how about making the front page in flash? It could randomize a lot of generator body pieces (clothes,) and put them on a conveyor belt in front of the naked body template with blue eyes, stoppingng everytime a piece is in front of the body for a second, then continuing. And everything else could just be clicked to drop down, like Last 10 discussions and so forth. You could also be able to drag and drop the menus, and everywhere everything is  is saved to your cookies, so you can design the page yourself, with color schemes. Also, make it so that you can also set the direction it is in. Do you understand what I mean?

[Osmose]

Flash is out of the question for most things:

• Flash takes a while to download.
• Many people disable flash in their browser.
• Flash is a pain to work in and maintain.
• Requires proprietary software that we have to pay for.
• Cannot update site without re-compiling .swf files.
• Rest of the site is currently in PHP.

Most of your other ideas sound nifty, but provide little to no real benefit to the user. Very few, if any, users will want to customize the Charas homepage to their liking; they're here for the Forum, Generators, and Complete Resources. Custom colors and draggable menus add little to the experience.

Plus they'd be a bitch to code and manage right. I feel bad for declining ideas at this point, but there are considerations. I really think you should look at the sites I linked to that show examples of other websites that have done it right; they are a good reference point for how you should think about a design.

I think layout is less of an issue here as much as graphics.

[HobomasterXXX]

Hmm, how about making the front page in flash? It could randomize a lot of generator body pieces (clothes,) and put them on a conveyor belt in front of the naked body template with blue eyes, stoppingng everytime a piece is in front of the body for a second, then continuing. And everything else could just be clicked to drop down, like Last 10 discussions and so forth. You could also be able to drag and drop the menus, and everywhere everything is  is saved to your cookies, so you can design the page yourself, with color schemes. Also, make it so that you can also set the direction it is in. Do you understand what I mean?

We don't want people sitting there for several minutes waiting for the page to load.
Edit: Oh, Osmose beat me to it.

[lilsniffs3]

• Cannot update site without re-compiling .swf files.

*zips Flash and sends to Osmose*

Also, I see your points. I can't really think of anything else, though.

[MissingName]

I have no experience in PHP.  I have some limited HTML and that's it.

Otherwise, I would probably help.

[Osmose]

I have no experience in PHP.  I have some limited HTML and that's it.

Otherwise, I would probably help.

That's fine, you don't need either.

I'm just looking for people to help think up and make a design. As in, graphics. You can make an entire image like others have in this thread and it can be chopped up and made into a website.

[Bluhman]

What I'm getting is that you want to simply change the way the site looks without really changing the overall layout of stuff, right? Or can we just make a whole new layout in general?

[Osmose]

You *can* make a whole new layout, but the thing I'm specifically lacking are new and shiny graphics. However, those require graphics.

Tell you what. We'll keep the current layout, but I could use shiny graphics for them. Sprited graphics are not out of the question (2x or 3x sized, for example).

[Razor]

Ooooh an interesting thread.

If only I didn't absolutely suck as a design artist.