Suggestion: Website update

[Ethereal Hurricane]

Hi, for a long time now I've been looking at the same website, which frankly, and hopefully no offense is taken, looks like it is depreciated in some areas.

I just had a couple quick suggestions, especially for the main page (the first page everyone sees). I think that should open to the blog, so people can see all the updates and news on the front page, as the current front page is just a picture that says welcome. Kind of a waste, in my opinion.

I think another great idea would be to showcase the cats in world, to have screenshots of kitties on some type of scrolling slide show on the main page as well, just so anyone who does't know what they look like, will have great examples. One easy way would be a Flickr slider.

The top banner could also be reworked as well to something a bit more stylish, the front page one looks decent, but the other ones seem...lacking.. I'm not one to care about color schemes and what not, but I think the website in general should be a bit more colorful. KittycatS is so full of colors and I think he gray theme is rather dull and boring and doesn't do the whole of KittycatS justice. (I SAID NO OFFENSE MEANT RIGHT?)

There is a ton of real estate you guys have created on the left side of the page, which just has simple social networking links, and basically not much else, kinda a huge waste of space, I'm sure things could be placed there, or not, but if not, get rid of it! A big bar on the side of the screen that's basically empty looks unprofessional. Every time I see the side bar, I think it's just a framework, a shell that has yet to be filled in. I've been thinking that for about 2 years. We should do something with it!

One fun way, and what lots of 'community' type websites do, is they have little contests for people in the community to design things, like new banners for the site, or really anything. We could hold some sort of screenshot contest, for best screenshot of your kitties, for the main page, if you decide not to use a flickr group.

I'm sure lots of talented people would also love to create some banners, or other images for the website as well.

Other than that, I think the website as a whole is great, and I can tell a TON of work has gone into it. I just think the website itself could use a nice face lift is all!

[Serena Stroikavskoi]

I love the website, but with a past career in designing websites especially for another popular forum I would love to see a makeover. I see some amazing themes for out for mybb. I would love to see some changes and options to allow us to pick the theme such as color. Like light/dark or maybe some based on kittycats like Siamese, Bengal, Tiger, and such.

[Tad Carlucci]

Themes and such are well and good but, as I said in another thread, first and foremost it needs to be organized.

The prettiest, or trendiest, theme in the world won't work if it doesn't present the information users need.

[Serena Stroikavskoi]

Usually a well thought out theme utilizes organization. I guess it depends on the designer huh.

[Tad Carlucci]

I would put it like this: a well thought-out theme begins with what you want to say. Too often, I see themes that are more concerned with how they're going to say it that what they're going to say. The message gets lost in the design.

[Serena Stroikavskoi]

Absolutely, for an average $50 you have themes that are a dime a dozen and usually only give over a catchy banner and some great color combos. A well put theme portraits the sight in a thought out manner for the flow as well at incorporates code specific functionality to organize the site as a whole. They theme the site, to catch and direct, not just put together some html & graphics. Just about anyone can do that today.

[Winter Phoenix]

And don't play hide and seek with the search bar!

[Serena Stroikavskoi]

lol I know what you mean Winter everytime I have to type in search.php I cringe.

[Tad Carlucci]

Well, I spent the afternoon blocking out a slight redesign. I didn't want to change the major style, but I wanted to make it a bit more friendly, especially to new and potential customers.

I didn't do any work to make it work on non-desktop browsers like iPhone or Android. But much of the KittyCatS site is unfriendly to them so it didn't seem to matter.

I did some simple Javascript to liven up the page, but it works fine if Javascript is disabled. (This does not apply to the scrolling iframe .. it requires Javascript and is an empty box without it.)

I don't like Google Analytics, so I left them out. But there is a Google tracker since I decided to use a web font which pretty closely matches the logotype in the banner.

I was going to post images from all five major browsers, but it is virtually unchanged from one to another so I'm posting a "generic" image.



And here's the page with CSS disabled



I did the development as a single file instead of breaking out the CSS and Javascript. That file is attached. Since I'm doing this locally, I had to use full links instead of relative, and the news scroller won't work because it uses relative links internally. I was thinking about adding some pop-up menu to break down the main-page links a bit more but decided to break it off here because this *is* just a mock-up.

[brodeee Resident]

I would personally love to see the website get a make over. The cattery is a awesome feature as to where you don't have to click on each cat inworld and go back to your browser to see what they are hiding.. My only suggestion for the Cattery is to make it a full page when viewing your boys or girls instead of scrolling from left to right.. kinda like the Cat to SL page.