[Nottingham] NLUG new website: Comments #02

[Martin]

Folks,

After a few days to play and muse, my thoughts are:

>> http://nlug.c25.eu/

I very much like the idea of a new custom Wordpress theme for our group
and for it to be something that all other LUGs could also use should
they wish to (with different colours for their groups!). All good for
Open Source! The rounded sections are a good idea and look much better
than the themes that are more square. Add options to go "Robin Hood"
curvy? Or would that look childish?

The visual contrast is too *stark* and hurts my eyes even on a big TFT.
Add a dark green or pale green (textured?) to the background? Still need
some intensity contrast for those suffering red-green colour blindness
who may see it almost as a black'n'white display...

Good design for keeping simple and clear.

Are there colours that aid power saving on LED monitors or laptops?


What is the minimum feature set that we want?

I think the must haves are:

Front page introduction;
Further details about the group;
Maillist sign-up;
Events listing;
Past events listing;
Other pages for hints 'n' tips and geekie bits.

I think I've seen too many sites where you have the past 10 years of
events trailing down to infinity from the front page! I think the
discrete "next event" widget looks much neater...

Must include RSS and atom feeds? Others?



>> http://nottlug.blogspot.com/

Looks like the sort of standard panels available from a number of
Worpress themes. All ok and fine but nothing out of the ordinary. Sorry,
don't like that particular boarder background. General scheme fits the
RobinTux green nicely.

Include a Nottingham specific or forest background?? Or graded green?

At the moment, that is the NUMBER ONE site from LinuxFormat! So we need
to keep a presence there for a while!!



>> http://nlug.wp.ml1.co.uk/

This was just a first try "quick look-see" that worked far better than I
was expecting. Good clean theme but...

I think the text font is far too slender and must look impossible on
mobile devices.

I've come to like the non-graphical banner and boarders and the "email
comments-like" style to the widgets area on the right.

I'll have a further look around the available themes, or I'll hack the
existing theme to include more green and a more readable font.

The blogging and events features look ok.



In summary, that's an OK for all of 'em. However, I'd like to also see
something distinctive and/or newly good... ;-)

Thrash it out now or make an evening of it over at the next Nav session?

Comments, ideas?

Cheers,
Martin

-- 
----------------
Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
----------------