Codenstuff.com

Hello,

As you may or may not have noticed, I've been very inactive over the past year or so. Reason being, I've sort of "lost touch" with programming as I hit a major coding block last year and never broke through. To be quite honest, I am still behind that block. It's tough because all the ideas I think I can do have already been done by me or are too easy; but the ones I haven't done look too hard and discouraging.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let me get to the real subject of this post: this site needs a new theme.

I've been visiting tons of forums lately, and they all have these unique themes that are just very appealing to the eye and quite frankly, I feel they make or break the forum's attraction. It may be an investment of sorts, as I expect the nicer themes to cost a bit of money, but they shouldn't be too bad; in fact, I was making a website for someone who spent a mere $69 for a professionally-developed theme (and that was overkill).

I think this investment could bring a huge return if placed right. You just have to have the eye for a theme and the willingness to pay for it.

~GoodGuy17

Hmm #CodenStuff should do some search engine optimisin an get the site redesign aswell

GoodGuy17 wrote:

I feel they make or break the forum's attraction.

I don't think that's really an issue. People who are interested in programming/participating in the community sign up because they find what they need here, and the members who remain active on the site, in my opinion, do so because of the community, not because of the ite design.

I agree, a unique template could help bring more visitors in a way, but would they only be coming for the design, or the content? And would they actully be active members?

In any case, though, Cody has been working really hard lately on site design changes (notably the member profile pages, the video section and the status area) to make information more conviniently placed and get rid of useless stuff here and there.

Needless to say, I don't think a complete site redesign is necessary :lol:

comathi wrote:

would they only be coming for the design, or the content?

I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive.

If you ask me the design looks old witch would make people think that it's not managed.

I don't think the design has anything to do with people visiting/staying on the site or gives a bad impression or anything like that. The primary content on the site is the posts and I think they are laid out in the best way possible by keeping "pointless" content such as avatars, signatures and buttons down to a minimum and focussing mainly on what's contained within the posts because that's what people want to read and look at.

Our most active area on the site is the main forum section which gets over 93% of our monthly visitors/users views and the rest of the site doesn't get viewed much at all. I know a few members here like to view the home page but according to statistics I've seen most people including new visitors who land on the home page rarely visit it again instead choosing to go directly to the main forum area on return visits.

#GoodGuy17 if you have an idea for something you would like to code but think its too hard you shouldn't give up or be discouraged just post on the site and ask for help. That goes for anyone who's in the same situation just ask for help and I'm sure someone will be able to give an example, source-code or an easy to understand explanation on how to get started with what you want to do.

#GoodGuy17 which forums have you visited with layouts you like the look of?

I'm always trying to improve the site with new features and layouts to make things better but it's not always an easy thing to do and a lot of things can take a long time to actually implement. I think the sites design is pretty good and unique in a lot of areas but I do agree that some areas of the site need improving and that is what I have been trying to do lately..but it will take time. A popular trend I've seen with sites lately is the theme has been light and minimalistic looking which I kind of like and I have been experimenting with a similar design but it's a long way off yet and at this stage just an idea:





I am always open to suggestions.

What I would also welcome is if anyone does have any ideas of how to improve the layout/theme of the site or specific areas then why not mock something up of how you think it should look and show us your ideas cooll;

I think what you need here is a couple of really good graphics designers and some spare time. I like where you are going with it in the two pics shown above, my only suggestions would be, a. sharpen the edges/corners, b. change the default graphics located around the site to custom-made icons, and c. possibly a bit of HTML5 involved to do some animating to contribute to the elegance factor.

Members could make few layouts and if community would like it, #CodenStuff & author could work on intergrating layout in excisting site stuff.