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A few design changes coming to ehMac

6K views 29 replies 13 participants last post by  mguertin 
#1 ·
Had to dust off my graphic design skills for a few design changes I'm doing to ehMac. This is a first draft. All the design changes are mostly for functional purposes which I'll outline below:



- I want the site to be more attractive to visitors (And existing members). ehMac.ca gets 90% of its traffic from web surfers doing Google searches for mostly Mac related topics. Right now, the site has a fairly high "bounce rate" (Users coming to the site and not hanging around) which was mostly due to the layout I had for visitors, but also because I don't think it was really clear what the site was about. The mockup contains some design elements of Mac and iOS products, more clearly showing what the site is about. Front and centre is our beloved friendly mascot and "Canada's Mac Community" word-mark. Later this year, we'll be seeing some more cool ehMac merchandise. :heybaby: :cool:

- Right now, there is sort of two navigation bars, and if technically possible, this will be reduced to one (And the formatting will be fixed to not show up weird in certain browsers.)

- The "content" and posts are much, much higher up on the page with the different ad format and layout. This should get more visitors reading the posts and getting involved. I think the login and registration areas are more prominent and clear as well.

- I know not everyone is into social media sites, but many people are (Including companies wanting to advertise on the site) so there are some prominent buttons to ehMac's social media sites, and for an improved Google search link that will be set to just search ehMac.ca. The feedback I have gotten is that this works 10x better than vBulletin's search feature.

- There will be some smaller sized ads to the left. For members who upgrade their membership, they will not see these ads.

- With wide screens more relevant and lots of content coming larger and larger, we're moving to a wider format version of the site. Those who already use the Liquid theme will feel right at home.

The rest is pretty much the same.

I am going to be bring the "News & Reviews" section back. The forum is going to stay the main page (At least for now) and the news section will be used to post product reviews that I do, YouTube videos and also when we want to have a live chat during an event.

Might be some tweaking yet, but this is the first step in some changes to ehMac over the year.
 
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#2 ·
Looks good to me. Not too different from what I'm seeing now to tell the truth.
Have we considered a different classifieds engine? Not that we would want to turn this into a flea market but that could generate some more long-term users and help fix that bounce rate.
 
#3 ·
I don't ever want to do anything too drastic. That's one thing I learned over the years. :)

We are 100% going to be having a new custom designed, just for ehMac.ca Classified system. This will be approximately 4-6 months of development. Plans on the drafting board:

- Will have feedback system in place again. (And we'll never lose the feedback.. EVER)
- Will give general Canadian location of item being sold
- Will have options to close the ad when sold
- Many other cool features I can't talk about yet. :eek:
 
#4 ·
Might need to lose the red emphasis now that the Harpers have painted the country Con-blue. Lest someone suspect we're communists. ;) Unless you go with red, white and blue. I'll bet the Harpers would like that.
 
#7 ·
Looks good, for the most part.

The ads don't bug me, but the header banner needs some work. You may get into trouble with Apple Legal for having Apple product in the banner (and to be honest, it looks cheap).

A larger text "ehMac" and same size logo would fit the design nicely IMO.
 
#9 ·
Thanks for the feedback.

A few sites I visit like a motorcycle forum has some nice shots of some motorbikes, and other site on luxury sports cars, has some nice shots of cars in the header. I just think it gives a visitor a better idea of what the site is about. I don't think it looks cheap, I think the shots are beautiful and clean. I don't think Apple will send me a legal notice for showing their products off. It may change a bit later when I can afford to hire a real designer. :eek:

I like the logo and text placement as is for now. I've kind of gotten really used to it. :)
 
#8 ·
1. Pics of Apple products on either side of the logo kind of detracts from the whole experience.

2. I wouldn't mind seeing a larger logo. We like the EhMac-man :) At the size you have shown it here, it kind of gets lost, looks like just another ad or something.

3. I may be alone in this; and others may be much more knowledgeable on the advantages, but I for one never ever use the Google box on any website, ever. If I need to Google something I use the Search section of my browser, next to the URL bar. I never realised that this Google bar was to search strictly inside the current website!

4. Your comment on widescreen displays and therefore widescreen EhMac - again, I may be alone in this, but I never use a browser (or any application other than a spreadsheet or a project-management tool) widescreen. My screen has many windows, mostly in the "portrait" orientation. So, I do not know how much your proposed change would detract from my personal future experience of EhMac.

Cheers
 
#10 ·
Thanks for the feedback tilt...

1. Will try them there for a bit. They are very sexy products, so yes, they are a little distracting. ;)

2. I really like the logo to. I was actually going to make a bit smaller to help get the content up a little higher on the page, but decided to keep it the same. I think its a nice balance between being too big or too small.

3. When I place the Google search there, I can change how it behaves. It can either be a search over the whole internet, or a search just on ehMac.ca. I will have it set to being a search just on ehMac.ca. I still might include the old vBulletin search somewhere, just not sure where to best put it right now.

4. I think I'll still have an option for a fixed width, it's just that the fixed width will be much wider than the current 800 pixels. Back in the day, ehMac.ca used to be optimized for 640 pixel screens. :) Most of the entry level screens these days are 1280 pixels now.
 
#12 ·
My 2cents. This forum has a style chooser at the bottom, so why not make the default style whatever the new style becomes and leave the old style as an option? Call it ehMac Classic or something.
 
#13 ·
Thanks for the feedback Ottawaman. The problem I have is that I am most likely going to be working with a new ad agency and I need to have certain consistent ad-zones on the site, which I might not be able to accommodate in the previous style.

Will have a look once things have settled.
 
#15 ·
Glad to hear the site will improve, but there is a fine line between breaking with tradition and improvements to perhaps make things look better (or tinkering for the sake of it). I fully appreciate the need to develop fixed ad areas for agencies. If the site is to prosper from additional advertising revenue, that must be addressed and to be frank, at the risk of having some who will dislike it.

That noted, I find I am siding with those who think the Apple products do little more than clutter up an otherwise great logo. In over 40 years of typography and design, one thing I learned is that white space is your very best friend. Filling blank spots for the sake of filling them produces clutter all too often. To be honest, I am bombarded with enough Apple products by Apple themselves in emails almost daily, I find it refreshing I do not have to look at the same stuff here.

As for the Google search option, it holds no interest or use for me. I learned long ago that the resident search engine here is really not all that good and like tilt, have always used the Google search bar in any browser I use. It is far more productive in results by typing “emac.ca (insert subject here)” directly into Google, so I think it will have little attraction for me. Besides, that way I get to see all the cool things Google does with themes for their logo on special occasions.

As for fixed width, I dislike it. I have always used the liquid option and have no interest in anything “fixed”. For me “fixed” is broken. I use so many different browser window widths in a day that fixed is not even an option I could consider. Depending what I am working on at any given time of day, the ehMac window size moves to accommodate what I am doing.

And finally, anything to improve the classifieds will be a welcome change.
 
#24 ·
In over 40 years of typography and design, one thing I learned is that white space is your very best friend.
True dat. Just ask Google. Everytime they try adding stuff to their white Search page, people get twittery.
 
#16 ·
Calm before the storm

Hi guys, once again, thanks for the feedback.

I played around with removing the products at the top, but I really do like the concept of having some hot looking Mac products at the top to better describe what the site is about.

To address the issue of some folks not liking them, at some point I might have a professional designer make the images more professional looking. I also might make it so that there is an optional version for paid members to not see those images if they chose, but that will have to be a little down the road for now. For now, they'll be a few Apple products at the top of the page.

For vistors to ehMac and those not signed in, there will actually be less advertising taking up the screen. The content will be much higher and visible.

I'm going to include the vBulletin search for those who like to use that as well as the Google search, which will be set to just search ehMac.ca. It will be like doing a search on Google for site:ehmac.ca ________ except you can do it just on the site.

For now, there is just going to be a fluid version of the site that will be optimized for monitors 1024 pixels wide and larger. (Sorry 800 pixel wide monitor users, but time to upgrade) :) We may have a fixed version soon, but for now I'll just be testing out the fluid version.

Hopefully the site refresh will be finished later today and then there will be some cool content added:

- Excellent article from CanadaRAM on Photoshop and scratch disk usage and drive and RAM strategy. :clap:

- Video-Cast on how to create an iTunes Store account without a credit card. (Even if you know how to do this, if you get asked by friend or family how to do this, you can send them link to this movie ) :)

- I'm working on a video-cast review of the Elgato eyetv HD that I hope to have done in the next few days.

Plus more interesting content in the pipeline from myself but also some other "Assured Advertisers" who are experts in their field and have great insight into various aspects of the Mac.

If you are an expert in your field that relates to the Mac or iOS platform, and you're interested in writing an article, please PM me, or send me an email to ehmax [at} ehmac.ca. :)
 
#25 ·
Another feature gone :( Even with the layout bugs and the lack of ability to turn off the notifications I thought it was pretty useful, but I guess all of our "likes" have gone the way of our reputations in the classifieds, all the photos from our photo galleries, etc. It's kind of annoying to have the community spend time and effort on things and then one day *poof* they are gone, bugs or no bugs.
Speaking of changes, the above was posted in another thread - the one about the "like" function. Seem just as some of the nay-sayers, myself included, have begun to come 'round the function has disappeared.... With the upcoming changes are we to expect any more of this sort of thing?

Is the "Friends" feature going to continue?

I have read the mayor's comments in this thread and I think on the whole we are 'moving forward' as opposed to frivolous change.
 
G
#30 ·
Hopefully enough of us will chime in to make it a viable option. The problem I have with adjusting my window width is that I tend to have many pages open in tabs and hate to have to constantly adjust the window size for each tab ... some times I want to see full screen width, and in other text heavy ones with liquid layouts I don't :)

If the layout templates are done correctly making a fixed width version of the liquid layout is literally adding 4 lines of code total (add a wrapper div with an appropriate id/class to the header/footer and a single line of CSS that set's the width limit).
 
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