Author Topic: NSF News Site Redesign Update (WORK IN PROGRESS) - September 2017 (Read 22310 times)

Chris Bergin · « **on:** 09/13/2017 07:41 PM »

Here's the latest development screenshots from the ongoing Work In Progress on the news site revamp, led by Mark. The goal is to keep familiarity, but to totally update functionality and appearance.

Feedback is welcomed and encouraged, noting it is still being worked and refined.

Desktop screenshots from the development:

Note the article view is an example (thus not a real article) and an actual article will have specific sizing and layout....but as WIP....I know most of you don't like the current version of images in articles

Click or open in new window to see it in full view.

Chris Bergin · « **Reply #1 on:** 09/13/2017 07:42 PM »

A screenshot from the mobile news site, still WIP as above.

gongora · « **Reply #2 on:** 09/13/2017 07:58 PM »

Looks nice overall. The spacing of stuff in the Active Discussions area seems a bit off. Are there other sub-sections farther down the page under "SpaceX"?

NSF Webmaster · « **Reply #3 on:** 09/13/2017 08:04 PM »

Quote from: gongora on 09/13/2017 07:58 PM

Looks nice overall. The spacing of stuff in the Active Discussions area seems a bit off. Are there other sub-sections farther down the page under "SpaceX"?

The 'Active Discussions' list is still being worked on (alignment,padding) so yes

The other content/sections are listed below the SpaceX section but those can rotate depending on the section we want to highlight. The list of 'Latest Articles' as present on the current site is also present below the featured sections

Chris Bergin · « **Reply #4 on:** 09/13/2017 09:13 PM »

Added a fourth slide to the opening post.

Note the article view is an example (thus not a real article) and an actual article will have specific sizing and layout....but as WIP....I know most of you don't like the current version of images in articles

Click or open in new window to see it in full view.

pippin · « **Reply #5 on:** 09/13/2017 09:36 PM »

Quote from: Chris Bergin on 09/13/2017 07:42 PM

A screenshot from the mobile news site, still WIP as above.

Would tablet/iPad be a mobile layout or use the desktop layout?

NSF Webmaster · « **Reply #6 on:** 09/13/2017 10:18 PM »

Quote from: pippin on 09/13/2017 09:36 PM

Would tablet/iPad be a mobile layout or use the desktop layout?

tablet friendly

pippin · « **Reply #7 on:** 09/13/2017 10:21 PM »

Niiiice!

Andy DC · « **Reply #8 on:** 09/13/2017 11:04 PM »

Been a long time coming, but looks cool especially as a working progress! Looks like articles allow for video and various content additions with the text not wrapped around, which is awesome.

Will the forum modify to this format, like the current site does with the header?

Great work!

NSF Webmaster · « **Reply #9 on:** 09/13/2017 11:45 PM »

Quote from: Andy DC on 09/13/2017 11:04 PM

Will the forum modify to this format, like the current site does with the header?

Great work!

Thanks! Focus is on the news site first, the forum will follow afterwards but yes the forum will also adopt this design/style

RichAM · « **Reply #10 on:** 09/14/2017 12:18 AM »

Looks really great and clean. I know there will be more things added, but it'll still look bright and clean. I wonder what the other items to add can be, like if there's anything people have seen on other news sites that would be cool to this site? Like I wonder if we could have a next launch in the top bar of the news site, it could be fed off the forum launch calendar?

Articles are going to look so much better with this new site.

KEdward5 · « **Reply #11 on:** 09/14/2017 12:27 AM »

Already looking awesome even as work-in-progress! Can imagine some of Nathan's renders as article lead images making it look even more awesome.

Coastal Ron · « **Reply #12 on:** 09/14/2017 12:50 AM »

Not sure what your goals are with the redesign besides updating the look of the site (which does like more modern) - is anything planned to be done on the SEO side of the house?

For instance, do you plan to use Schema.org tags or other SEO markup systems?

pippin · « **Reply #13 on:** 09/14/2017 06:50 AM »

The one thing I’m really missing on the current site WRT articles is being able to click images to show them full window/full screen sized.

NSF Webmaster · « **Reply #14 on:** 09/14/2017 07:12 AM »

Quote from: pippin on 09/14/2017 06:50 AM

The one thing I’m really missing on the current site WRT articles is being able to click images to show them full window/full screen sized.

Consider that fixed

NSF Webmaster · « **Reply #15 on:** 09/14/2017 07:14 AM »

Quote from: Coastal Ron on 09/14/2017 12:50 AM

Not sure what your goals are with the redesign besides updating the look of the site (which does like more modern) - is anything planned to be done on the SEO side of the house?

For instance, do you plan to use Schema.org tags or other SEO markup systems?

SEO optimalization is definately on the radar, but first we'd like to finalize the design. Thanks for the suggestion !

SteveSpace · « **Reply #16 on:** 09/14/2017 02:23 PM »

So good! New site, but still feels like NSF. What else are you currently thinking of adding to the news site? Seems like there's plenty of room for more cowbell!

TerryNaylor · « **Reply #17 on:** 09/14/2017 02:51 PM »

Definitely the cleanest appearance of a site I've seen, knowing there's more to come. I was going to say it's too clean and could use more things, but it's the general design, so that's great.

Also like the idea of a launch alert style clock/counter/widget on the front of site. There's lots of App people on here who can add things, but yeah, not too many things.

Superb work.

incoming · « **Reply #18 on:** 09/14/2017 03:22 PM »

Looks great.

One of the unique and valuable assets this site has vs other news sites is the healthy and active forums. I've always thought there could be a little better integration between the two, while also maintaining the editorial separation between curated content and community content.

Two suggestions to take or leave - Having the active topics area helps, and of course it's helpful when articles link to L2 content. But how hard would it be to have a contextual active topics window when you open an article? That way, when you open an article and see something you want to discuss, you can see if there are active threads you want to join on the topic already.

Second, and along the same lines, I think it would be good to have a launch calendar that's kept updated by some combination of the mods and the community, again with links to relevant discussion threads. SpaceX launches are particularly hard to pin down, and it takes a while to dig through the forums to try to figure out what's happening when, what may move, etc. I think all of the information is here already, it just takes an awfully long time to dig through and find.

NSF Webmaster · « **Reply #19 on:** 09/14/2017 03:34 PM »

Quote from: incoming on 09/14/2017 03:22 PM

Looks great.

...

Thanks! And thank you for your suggestions. When the news part of the side is done we'll shift our attention to the forum. As of now, the current forum software is not very equipped to integrate with other systems in a '2017ish way' so we need to take care of that first. More integration between articles and forum discussions (as a concept) is already on the roadmap but the way we are going to make it work is still to be determined .

Mark