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Please test our new website

By -
Those of you who follow us on twitter @gamingonlinux will know I have been working on a new website for us for many reasons

It is now ready for wider testing: www.prxa.info

Please tell me of any bugs you find and give your suggestions.

I am aiming to have it live by the end of the month.

Features not in:
Editors can't yet auto post to front page without the post going in my admin queue.
No share to social networks on articles.

Ignore:
Ignore messed up bbcode styling on home page articles, it's from the importer from this software which i will clean up as i go (not doing it now as it will be wiped and re-imported before it goes live)

I need from you lot:
More logos! At the moment we are only using one logo the christmas themed one but usually we have 3 in rotation, I want more so submit them if you fancy getting your work on here!

Why?
The website is not for me, but for everyone, can we make it a group effort? Either way this current website has to be replaced due to:
1)The software costs money
2)It's hard to style and extend as i don't know the code
3)It's not being updated by the authors for security fixes, bugs etc
4)The software itself may not be legal, vbulletin is suing xenforo Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Misc
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About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
See more from me
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21 comments
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Anon Dec 7, 2012
Just regarding the look, I feel like it's a step back compared to this. I can't say how to improve it, but the current site just looks better.

Regarding bugs, clicking on the GoL link at the top doesn't take me back to the homepage but to ./index.php, which means that if I'm in forum it doesn't work.
Liam Dawe Dec 7, 2012
You are the first one to say they feel it is going backwards so far everyone has said it's cleaner and easier to use. What exactly would you miss from the current setup? If you are going to say it doesn't look as good there has to be reasons.

I have implemented a lot of suggestion on it over the past week so if you can give feedback regarding styling I do appreciate it.

Thanks for the bug report - now fixed :D
Xpander Dec 7, 2012
i dont like the comments in news... too small or something dunno. News should be integrated with the forum like we currently have.
other than that.. looks clean and solid.
Hamish Dec 7, 2012
Regarding how the comments work - will you still be able to post them from the forum interface, or will it just be a regular type comment section?

EDIT: I see me and Xpander were having the same thoughts at the same time...
Liam Dawe Dec 7, 2012
Agreed I will make the comments have stuff like avatars :)
Alex V.Sharp Dec 7, 2012
If you want, I could try my hand at some re-skinning and send you a draft?
Anon Dec 7, 2012
After thinking about this a bit more, here's the styling stuff that bugs me:

      font size - it seems to small generally, and also I think there's an issue with quotes there
      colouring - too uniform, it's all blue! - I thin a little variance could go far, for example categories, headers. Perhaps a slightly darker shade of blue (closer to what's now)
      the side bars seem mostly unimportant - a bit different ordering and such, remove the redundant ones (why a second menu?) and maybe slightly more colours - to emphasize headers, activity on articles and important links (e.g. submit articles). Also, the width seems to make some of them useless (twitter)
      top bar's links are not the clearest because it's white on light blue
      nothing you can do anything about, but I'm getting Windows ads, so I'm placing the blame on Google and their lack of targeting

If I think of anything else I'll mention it. But generally, it just seems to loose a bit aesthetically.

And a separate issue, the captcha here/there sometimes doesn't work, and I have to copy the text I wrote and refresh the page for it to take.
Liam Dawe Dec 7, 2012
Font size is that an issue for everyone else? It's the same size as currently on here for me.

Colouring - yeah i do actually agree there as well it does need some variation.

Ads - yeah blame google :P, you must have looked up windows recently heh, captcha works for me everytime and i've tested it countless times, do you wait until you complete it and it tells you its okay until you hit enter?
Liam Dawe Dec 7, 2012
I changed article headers to the same style we have here now and i agree it looks loads better thanks for the tip!
Anon Dec 7, 2012
Font size is that an issue for everyone else? It's the same size as currently on here for me.


In posts it's smaller than here by about 2 points for me.

Ads - yeah blame google :p, you must have looked up windows recently heh, captcha works for me everytime and i've tested it countless times, do you wait until you complete it and it tells you its okay until you hit enter?


I do wait and it simply tells me to do the captcha first. Then I refresh and it's fine again. This only happens sometimes though, like one out of five.

Oh, and some thing’s wrong with the avatars for comments, they appear for the wrong person, the one behind. Although generally I don't like their look, but I've no idea what would be better.

And a small suggestion, a more human readable date?
Anon Dec 7, 2012
I changed article headers to the same style we have here now and i agree it looks loads better thanks for the tip!


Just an idea, maybe the background should be coloured according to the category? I can't say whether that'd look good, but might be something interesting to try and decide on.
Anon Dec 7, 2012
Sorry for triple posting, but just noticed a bug - the images are shown far too big to make any sense - the McDroid one takes more space outside the postbox than inside.
Liam Dawe Dec 7, 2012
No need to say sorry for triple posting it's acceptable in this one I want to get it sorted ASAP and I think you are right the text is smaller but checking my style and this forum both have 13px so i don't get it hrmm.

I also removed the redundant Main Menu block as well since it didn't really serve a purpose as all other links are in the nav anyway now. Saves some nice space.

Text - changed to the same font we use here it's a bit bigger now and more familiar :)

Avatars for wrong people fixed on comments.

Dates are now parsed nicer as well - awesome idea.
Xpander Dec 7, 2012
also the marked "headers" could use some work:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/28788188/Screenshot-562.png

maybe different color for text and slightly smaller cuz it seems too big atm.
Liam Dawe Dec 7, 2012
Hmm thanks chrome bug it seems.

Edit > Fixed that now.
Hamish Dec 7, 2012
Agreed I will make the comments have stuff like avatars :)


About that, I have a few concerns with that part of the new website in general. I usually much prefer websites where you get a base article and then go to a separate forum thread where you post comments rather than just a standard comment box. It tends to cut down on garbage posting and actually allows for more proper discussion on a topic (or in the case of Phoronix, it makes it so that the discussions are not 100% pure gobshite).

I like much of what is going on there, especially as an (occasional) content producer as what you are doing does make it look a lot more friendly and professional for potential article/review/interview writers. But that point does concern me a bit. I do not know if anyone is with me on that though.
Liam Dawe Dec 7, 2012
Well it wouldn't be hard to implement I will have a think on it, a lot has been improved already.
Hamish Dec 7, 2012
Well, you do what you think is best. :)
berarma Dec 8, 2012
Its looks are a lot less polished than the current site and the color scheme isn't very pleasant neither. Anyway, it looks promising. Still, I wonder why none of the opensource forum/portals was good enough, it takes a lot of work and time into creating your own.
Liam Dawe Dec 8, 2012
You probably saw it whilst i was nuking the layout. It should look much better now since the side and content properly fit on the page now :).

All the current ones where far far too bloated for what i wanted and made it difficult to import the current content.
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