Prototype for new ERT Look and Feel
Check it out and comment please:
http://layouts.expertsrt.com/prototypes/prototype.htmlThe new look will be the basis for a change of look and feel for the whole site, both the content side and the forum side. The new pages will get rolled out one at a time as I get them done. That approach gives us a chance to deal with problems as they arise instead of having many problems all at once.
Changes and suggestions need to come quick. I am going to start deploying as soon as I put the final touches on the RSS pages; probably within a week. So if you have suggestions, think changes are necessary, or see a problem or spelling mistake let's get it out here in a comment. The new look and feel allows for a lot of flexibility, so if you have thoughts on how specific pages should use the format, please bring them forward. Every page that gets improved puts us closer to a completed site.
For the new look I have gotten away from the metal look; aluminoid is going to be history, and the whole PHPbb look will disappear (along with a lot of crappy code). Instead the trim and highlights will be wood textures; much warmer, and eye appealing. Some of you will recognize suggestions you have made that you thought I was not listening to. Esopo, the collapsible elements in the sidebar are not the same design as you gave me but the functionality is there; and it will be extended to do the forums and topics that way as well; thanks for that effort, you will be seeing a of more of your collapse approach in the forum as well.
The standard navigation is now a top and bottom bar; no drop downs or slide outs. Where sub menus are necessary they will be on the child pages. The menus will be primarily straight text links. There will not be a lot of graphic buttons except where impact is need, like the registration, The forum will use the same menu bar for site navigation, and most of the buttons in the forum will get converted to link. The buttons make it look too much like a million other forums.
As an aside, the pages are optimized for a resolution of 1024x768 or higher. This is the first time I have optimized that way. Up to now I have always optimized at 800x600 or higher, but our stats say 98% of site users are using 1024x768 or higher, so it would be stupid to do the extra work necesssary to support low resolution. The page are usable but ugly at low resolution; and prbably some of them are going to come up broken. We are optimized for FF with careful hack using IE specific CSS overrides and conditional HTML to support the relic. The site will look better in FF but will be usable for IE6... we still have to see how badly IE7 will be screwed up.
The page layout have four sections the banner, content, sidebar, and footer. The banner as you see it including the nav will be identitcal on virtually every page except for the heading text; except where we have to make provisions to support an author's artistic control. The footer will be similar on most content pages, though on some there may be additional credits and the copyright notice will vary on th econtent pages. On the forum side the footer design allows for elements to be both above and and below the nav bar so we will have plenty of flexibility. The copyright notice will always be the last line of all pages. The copyrights for the skin and eventually for PHPBB will disappear, though we will continute to credit PHPBB with a "based on" acknowledgement or something similar.
The content section is basically a big box. The borders will be played with. I have about a dozen different wood textures, and there are any number of images that will work for framing content. The inside of the box is free format, we will lay it out in whatever way is appropriate for the content. That includes the forums. Rather than complex nested tables, we will put each category in a content box as collapsed divs, and when a category is expanded it will have its forums listed in a collasped layout. The forums will be independent tables, containing the topics.
The format of the topics will start out resembling the current layout, but we can experiment and customize each of them independently, so Mentors can get their forums to a look that suits the taste of the members active in the forum and reflects the kind of content the forum has. In other words the forums do not all have to look the same, and in fact, topics within the same forum do not have to look the same. They will start out looking the same, but because they will be CSS based, we can do a lot with custom presentation. The first few might take some effort, but then it will like everything else, we will discover the easy way to do things. We are not going to get held up or avoid customized presentations because they look hard to do.
The side bar is the catch all. Anything can go there; links, widgets, news feeds, notices, submenus, lists, cartoons, jokes, external bits of eye candy, even bits of content too small to warrant their own page. That holds for both the forum and the content side. Smilies will go in a popdown layer. Member contact information will also go in a popdown so we get rid of the clutter of buttons. Almost all the little PHPBB graphics will get replaced by text links and CSS. For the few icons we retain, they will get a new look based on the wood paneled theme.
All the support pages will also go to the warn wood look, and they will be seperated from the forum by eliminting the common header, and footer. Stand alone pages for registration, FAQ, members list, cp, etc will make it easier to maintain those if they have their own header and footer without being restrict to what the topics and forums need in them for navigation and admin.
All content pages will start carrying (as RSS) the list of latest forum topics, and will have a registration button to try and move some of the content traffic to the forum.
You will nottice in the sidebar I have brought in some external content. The dictionary stuff is free, right now the page we are going to is ugly, but there are a bunch of different options I can do off that widget, and there will be a number of variations on other pages. The satelite weather is not only free, but we are now partnered with Accuweather When you select a region, the page they present with the map is branded. There is a small banner at the top that says "Welcome visitor from Experts Round Table" and there is a link back to our home page. Notice these have been brought in without having to put up ads. There are hundreds of sites with specialty content that are hungry for traffic, and as long as I can get good content for nothing more than a link; I will grab good stuff. If any of you run across something that will fit in on the site, that is free without ads let me know and I will see what we can use.
I expect it to take some time to get the pages rolled out and new functionality implemented, but I knew it would be mostly a work in progress for the first year. The rollout will be prioritzed based on where the traffic action is. The pages that are getting the outside traffic will get improvments and upgrades first, and priorities may change as we grow, if that causes changes in traffic patterns.
And we are growing! Inspite of what looks like a very slow growth based on the number of new members in the forum. We used 85% of the bandwidth allocation for March. I am going to be upgrading in the middle of April to triple our bandwidth. Here are some stats to bore you or maybe encourage you; as it does me:
In March, we delivered 15,914 pages to 4,239 unique visitors who came from 422 different referrers. I know where about 300 links are. I have not had time to try and track down the other 122, but we are getting treated very favourably by other sites it would appear. The referrers include hits from del.icio.us and stumbleUpon, an some community type blogs. Also a couple from Wikipedia where I posted a link to ERT in the similar sites catagory for EE entry (which is little more then spam anyway). I can than VGR for that idea.
I track traffic using the server stats, and two different tracking services where I have code on the pages to determine where users came from and how they move around the site, I also keep an eye on Alexa for how we are trending. I do all 4 because I do not want to be mislead by an error in a single source. There are some differences in detail, but the trend for all 4 is exactly the same; we are on a steep up trend. We got a big boost in the middle of the Month when Alf's site made Digg. We got a big boost because he has our link on his site. I expected it to be a spike, but it wasn't. We were trending up when it hit we went up like a rocket for 5 days, flattened out for three days;
and then continued up. We should all thank Alf for the help. It was worth about 800 or 900 hits. We also got over 1400 hits from Google, and some from MSN. Yahoo has done a crappy job of indexing us. Even AOL delivers more.
The hottest pages on the site are Matt's articles, especially the PAR and timezone pieces. The other hot thing is our topics. Google appears to have us fully indexed, including the topics, and we are coming up high in the SERPs for both the topics and the content. Not just near the top. We are getting page one hits every day. We are coming up NUMBER ONE in searches every day. When we compete head to head with EE we come up ahead of them 60% of the time. (Google recognizes and rewards quality). We don't have near as many threads as EE, so we are not going to get the traffic from Google they get but WE ARE VERY COMPETITIVE not just with EE but with all the major forums and help sites. It is not just one or two topics, but right across the board. The kind of comments we have posted are hitting the nail on the head, and we are current. The other biggie for us has been the RSS feeds. Ours going out is consistently among the top page requests every day. The stuff coming in on both the home page and the tech page are giving us causal and indirect hits.
When Google indexes those pages they include the content of the feeds because I generate them once an hour and put them into the pages as static content. All the key words in the feeds get treated by Google as being in our pages. So, when someone searches on one of those news stories we frequently come up in good position and get a visit. About half of them see we are not what they are looking for and leave. The other half, look at what we have, and sometimes stay a while. As we expand our content, more and more of those visitors will find what they want. As we push the promotion of registering in the forum, some of them will decide to ask about what ever news story they were tracking.
It all works. It's all coming together the way it was supposed to; but somethings like registrations are a little slower then anticipated.
A couple of more items:
- Adsense ads, will start later this month on a small scale. I have looked at other cheaper options, but Google is just to effective to not go with them. It will be small to start. The tracking has given me a good idea of what low competition key word phrases should be effective for us, but I am going to be cautious. It is better to take a little time, and avoid wasting a lot of money; with out getting any traffic.
- Email. The host has installed a new email UI (Horde) and it is first rate. Those of you who are using an ERT email you will need to change your url to https://supremecenter25.com/horde/imp/login.php to get the new interface.
The new interface is clean, fast, secure and seems to be pretty robust. There is virtually no spam because I control the spam filtering levels and there is individual user control for filtering, plus a blacklist and white list. As soon as I am sure it is stable (remember when they upgraded PHP) I will make free email WITH NO ADS OF ANY KIND abailable to members. I have about 30 accounts available now and after I do the upgrade later this month I will have 1000 mail accounts.
- Personal web page hosting. Will be a reality withing about 2 weeks, I am just working out some mechanics. I have 20 subdomains but that will go up to 200 after the upgrade. The number of virtuals we can do with personal folders is virtually unlimited.
- New content. The key to getting up in the rankings is a flow of new content. On the forum side we are able to do that by commenting on topics as they get posted. However on the content side it is more work. There is a little bit of stuff in the pipe line, but we are going to need more during the month of April. I appreciate any effort you can make if you have something you are woking on, or if you can take some of the great topics and convert them to articles/tutorials. So far we have been a small community and some of you have done a lot of work; hopefully we will start to see enough new members coming in over the next couple of months to spread the load.
I don't think I say thank you often enough; if I fail to see a contribution please smack me with a board and point it out. I know what it is like to have effort ignored, and if I do it to someone else, please let me know what a moron I am.
T H A N K S Roy
