Feedback on the new site

FANTASTIC!
THIS LOOKS WAY BETTER....

the slight colour difference in the background
makes it easy on the eye also.

For better or worse lads here is me thinking ...
Remember now...
I love each and every one of you crazy kids!....

The BIGGEST issue with the site is that I think ye are all so close
to the trees ye cant see the wood.

The HEART, THE LIFE-BLOOD, of the IFAS site are the FOURMS!

Just sit back and look at the main page as if with new eyes.
HALF of the main page is taken up with this:



IFAS - Home of Irish Astronomy
Welcome PDF Print E-mail
Written by Administrator
Friday, 16 May 2008 09:47
Welcome to www.irishastronomy.org . This site is run by IFAS, the Irish Federation of Astronomical Societies. This site is currently in the midst of a major renovation so please bear with us while things are a little messy.

If you are experiencing any issues with the website, please email the Web Team at webteam@irishastronomy.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Last Updated ( Saturday, 06 September 2008 13:45 )



IT IS AN UTTER WASTE OF SCREEN SPACE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You have to scroll a whole page width down to see the
latest posts section.

Rule no.1 in web design: Keep It Simple Stupid!
Rule no.2, Give them a reason to come back.



Hell, we all come back nearly every day...
not to see whats in the 'blog' section...
not to keep up on the 'classifieds'
WE COME BACK TO THE ONLY CONSTANTLY UPDATING
ACTIVE part of the site...THE FORUMS.

HELL HELL..
ALL of the feedback has been about the FORUMS.

Sooooooooo
If someone at home on the pc logs onto the IFAS site and sees
INSTANTLY and OBVIOUSLY that there is an ,active, chatty, friendly COMMUNITY
it shows the site is LIVE, CURRENT, INTERESTING, etc...

WE NEED TO HAVE THE ENTRANCE INTO THE FORUMS SECTION
WAY MORE VISIBLE.

For example.
On the left we have the Main Menu.
THE FORUM link is FOURTH in the list!
IT SHOULD BE 1'st - Actually - IT SHOULD BE ABOVE THE LIST
with its own little bar like the MOON PHASE has.
there should be an image underneath to donate a web forum or something.

(did I mention there that the Fourms section is important?)


ALSO.
Purely speaking in terms of design.
The main page has a double collum style.
THIS IS TOTALLY A NO_NO in web design.
I'm not trying to blow here but I have a degree in fine art / graphic design.
They really need to have PARAGRAPH style.
I've said this before (in the feedback section) , I even spent a bit of time and
posted up images of what I was talking about but I'm not sure did anyone take it seriously.
In fact I got a destinct ' ara it'll be grand' vibe.

Seeing as the page width is sorted

if the:
Asteroid Davemcdonald,
Whirlpool Star Party,
news bits in in paragraph style one over the other then you could fit
all of the page neatly into one screen without any scrolling down - almost.

BUT BUT BUT BUT!
I do love the idea of the site growing and the sections on the
left are interesting and a good resource...
You know the way we are always getting asked.
Beginner - What scope should I buy?
How do I begin in Astrophotography.
How do I use registax.
Where are the dark sky sites near me?
etc...
Is there a place for those somewhere on the left?
Like Beginner FAQ's or something?
We have a huge database of advice at our fingertips to
compile the greatest hits from.

Anyway as Kent brockman would say..
my 2 cents

Frank,

While you may be right at the moment, the most active part of the website is the forum.
We believe the website has a lot more potential and would like the website to become a portal for irish astronomy and not just stop at a forum.
One of best new features we have installed is the calender and this will inform more people when club events and star parties on. This feature is being actively used by quite a few clubs.
We want to remove some elements from the forum, like moving the buy and sell section into the classifieds and moving the links section into a weblinks setion on the website so that they don't detract from useful conversation.
We would like for people to start using the bloging features for observing reports and we might looking into changing these features to better support observing reporters.
We have the ability to handle newsletter management for any club if they wish to use it.
We also now have maps and we can add marks for new observing sites/dark sky sites if anybody knows of them.
Any member can write on a article on any subject they wish and we would love to see some users contributing some articles.
I am currently looking at a FAQ component and will install one in the next while.

On the usability front, all of us on the web team have extensive commercial experience with web design and we have taken from the best usability guidelines out there.

As we have said before, please help us by writing an article, it doesn't have to be big, as long the topic as astronomy related, we'll take it.

Darragh

Once gain I'd have to agree with you Frank.
I think the forums are the site, the rest are little used extras.
The forums button should stand out alot more then the rest of the main menu list.

Any chance you can rename "Events" to "Events Calender"

darragh wrote:

While you may be right at the moment, the most active part of the website is the forum.
We believe the website has a lot more potential and would like the website to become a portal for irish astronomy and not just stop at a forum.

I just cant see any other sections become anything like as important as the forums. It certainly should be at the top of the main list!

darragh wrote:

We want to remove some elements from the forum, like moving the buy and sell section into the classifieds and moving the links section into a weblinks section on the website so that they don't detract from useful conversation.

WHY??, it works well.
We currently have the for sale forums still active so there are now 2 active methods of selling stuff, there should be only one means of doing this. So either remove the for sale forum or remove this new for sale section. If we stick with the new "for sale" section is there a way of importing the adds to this new section, it would be a shame to loose all the history in there, the new section looks very empty but I can see this working.


darragh wrote:

We would like for people to start using the bloging features for observing reports and we might looking into changing these features to better support observing reporters.
We have the ability to handle newsletter management for any club if they wish to use it.

I just cant see this working, people are still going to post away in the observing reports forum. Observing is astro objects orientated more then it is observer specific. In the forum format, it is very simple to see the recent reports on what's been seen, ask questions, get replys and expand on it, there is interaction, an article section wouldn't have that, it works, why change it?
I can see very very few using this blog section.

darragh wrote:

Any member can write on a article on any subject they wish and we would love to see some users contributing some articles.
I am currently looking at a FAQ component and will install one in the next while.

I'm not sure this is worth the effort, people will either ask a question in the forums on a topic they want to find out about, or do a google search, there is a myriad of articles out there for people to read. Articles such as equipment reviews will be posted in the equipment review forum where further Q&A can be put up, not possible in a article section. I suppose people can go ahead and write up Essays on certain topics, I cant see many doing it though, and many haven't.
I've seen the iceinspace article section, very impressive, it would take alot of work to be on a par with it.

BUT, can I ask why are the above topics been implemented when there has not been one, not one thread asking for them, why are these been focused on when there are other issues on the site ?

so to summarise, I'm just thinking outloud here, how about considering that on the front page we...
Delete the news button, the links in there can be placed into the link button section.
Delete the links forum and put all links in the links button section
Delete the article button, it duplicates functionality available in the forums as stickys, if its gonna stay then maybe put in links to interesting article type threads in the forums here, it is borderline functionality duplication IMHO.
Delete the newsletters section if after 6 months it is still empty. I can see literally one user who will possibly use this.
Delete the classified button, leave it in the forums.
Delete the blogs, it is going to get infrequent use (maybe) and it's content is accommodatable in the forums

Can we use a very similar format to the iceinspace method of having an events calander on the front page, there is a big gap below the left column where it would stick in well.

It seems like an effort is been made to take forum types such as "for sale", "observing reports", equip reviews" and the beginners section out of the forums and put it elsewhere, I cant see any advantage in doing this. The only reason for this I can think of is that so that every thread starts off with a question, as opposed to "Last night I saw..." Parsing up the forums is a big mistake IMHO.

I'm not telling anyone what to do, I'm just engaging in conversation, Just my thoughts.

btw, what happened to the Ireland map on the front page with all the clubs on it ???
this is absolutely vital, it helps promote IFAS clubs which is what IFAS is about.

It's in the About section under "IFAS Maps"

Darragh