Ooh look, the site’s been redesigned.

Posted on by simonminter

As you may have noticed – because you’re looking at this – the site now looks different to how it used to. This is the first step in several enhancements and improvements that will be made in the coming weeks/months/years/eons, and I need you, dear readers, to help make MusicInOxford.co.uk better and better.

Please leave comments about the design on this thread, and I promise to bear them all in mind during the next steps of this process. First up, I’ve already noticed that the search results page doesn’t look right, so I’ll get on with sorting that.

What else should the new design do? What else should the site do? Do you like it? Does it work?

Bear in mind that I’m a sensitive soul, and love to be loved, so I want you all to say nothing much more than “cor! that looks great!”…

  • Bryan Day

    Hi Simon, I really like the design. An evolution from my previous effort. I’m glad you’ve kept the orange and the logo. Cheers, good job

  • Colin

    Very nice, Simon. One thing….the headline text on the home page is very large. Rather in your face. Is this a good thing? On the one hand, it’s striking, on the other it may feel a touch out of proportion. Any chance of lowering the fontt size a bit?

    Other than that, very pretty!

    Cheers
    Colin

  • http://www.gappytooth.com gappy

    Another top class Minty design! I think it looks very nice. My only slight concern is that the text column is too narrow, slightly, it makes the reviews look interminable, & reduces the “value” of paragraphs a bit. I wouldn’t want this site to start descending into “micro-paragraph” internet hell, as the writing is generally very good.

    However, unlike CMac I love the chunky links.

    Is there going to be a logo designed by someone? I think the site could do with one.

    Final question – not really desgn related per se. What’s with those tags on the right, they’re completely static. Can we have it set up so that there’s an updated set of tags, or a random selection or something?

  • Big Tim

    Site looks great!

    I agree with Colin & Gappy’s comments – the headlines seem a little disproportionately large, and the layout lends itself to people with massive monitors/high screen resolutions. When you scale down the windows size, things get quite scrunched up. Maybe set some of the column widths so that things keep a certain minimum size, rather than being infinitely re-sizeable.

    Top work though chaps!

  • colinmackinnon

    Quick bug to look at, Simon. When I posted up the latest record review, the front page dates it as February 2010! Actually, all the dates look a bit muddled up.

  • colinmackinnon

    Oh- one other thing Simon. How hard/easy would it be to put in a hit counter? Woudl be nice to know what level of traffic we’re getting.

  • http://www.gappytooth.com gappy

    http://www.statcounter.com. Free facts & figures, & you can have it displayed on screen or not, as you prefer.

  • http://www.spiral25.com/ Joe

    Yes, excellent stuff. Nice one.

    Hit counters:

    Counting ‘hits’ is pretty meaningless and misleading. 1 person can hit the page refresh button a million times and make it look like there’s loads of traffic. It’s better to count ‘visits’, defined by IP address, browser type etc, rounding the time. This data is normally provided by hosting companies but may need interpreting. I suggest setting up web logs or a web stats package and producing a report every month which would give a better idea of usage and that can be turned into something meaningful with which to target things. Knowing your ‘referrers’ is exceptionally useful. It can show you where on the internet people most find links to your site and help you get better search engine placement.

    Contact email addresses:

    I think they might be a bit out of date? I didn’t immediately see this thread and ended up contacting Bryan instead.

    Links:

    I suggest some Twitter, Last.FM etc icons in the banner area at the top of the screen to link to other Oxford bands accounts on those sites. Encourage people to use those sites unless you want them to die.

  • http://www.fouriertransform.com simonminter

    Some updates for a Sunday afternoon:

    1. Search results page has been sorted out
    2. Smaller heading size on homepage etc
    3. Larger measure for content column
    4. Dates now show properly on homepage
    5. Social bookmarking links on content pages
    6. Twitter updates in sidebar (but not Last FM, as it was kind of stupid)
    7. Removed the tag cloud from the sidebar
    8. Site stats now being collected (but that’s for our eyes only, so we can monitor you).

    Some stuff that it’d be good to get further comments on:

    1. The homepage – what else should/could be on there?
    2. Contact page – Col, if you’re out there, drop me a line with up-to-date info for this
    3. Photo/video/downloads – should these be killed or resurrected?
    4. Links – currently there are links to Nightshift and OMS. Should there be others – to venues, and other things?

  • http://www.spiral25.com/ Joe

    Busy! Looks great.

    On links:

    I would welcome more links. Perhaps the site would get even more use if people were able to use it as a sort of ‘hub’ to Oxford music?

  • colinmackinnon

    Hi Simon,

    Excellent stuff.

    Joe: You’re right- more links would be good, perhaps to promoters’ websites etc. I guess we don’t want to clutter the frontpage, but some targetted links would be good. Will have a think and a chat with Simon about it.

    Photo/Video/Download: These are things which could be resurrected, without too much bother. I certainly don’t like photos/vids with 2008/2009 dates attached to them. MAkes the site look moribund, which is the opposite of the truth. MAybe Stuart coudl help out here by getting Flickr more involved.

  • http://www.fouriertransform.com simonminter

    Links: How about a ‘Resources’ page with not only links to Nightshift/OMS but also venues, promoters, labels etc. etc. That could be good.

    I’m also wondering whether recent comments should, on the homepage, be in the main content column, to add to what’s in there already but also to get that page acting more as an easily-digestible ‘latest on site’ overview.

  • colinmackinnon

    Hi Simon,

    Could you take another look at the dating on the homepage, please? The Stornoway interview was defo not that recent! Thanks, colin

  • Big Tim

    Are the “newly added” headlines going to be the only ones on the main page? You could also display the previous two or three articles from each section, with their respective headlines in a slightly smaller font, beneath the most recent ones.

    I mention this just because the right hand column is getting nicely populated with generated content and is filling up well, wheras the main body section looks quite empty with just a few headlines on it. Displaying older headlines in there too will give a bit of history and fill it up more.

  • http://www.fouriertransform.com simonminter

    More stuff:

    – intros to articles now featured on homepage, to fill out the content area more
    – dates on homepage should now be correct!
    – new ‘Resources and links’ page. If you’ve got ideas of things to go on here, use the…
    – new ‘Contact’ page with a nice form and everything

  • Alex

    Could maybe have a “latest article” section on the frontpage as well, so that people can see the most recent article thats been writing across any of the different categories (reviews, live etc.)

  • http://www.gappytooth.com gappy

    I’ve noticed that the quality of the photos randomly selected is quite low – I mean the digital quality, not the photographic art! It’s all blocky and horrible. Could they be higher res?

  • colinmackinnon

    And while we’re at, who on earth are The Caper?

    Thanks to the excelleent Johnny Moto, I now have a bunch of jpegs of current Oxford bands. Might there be a case for using these, rather than Flickr feeds? Will take a while to upload them all, but maybe they will be higher quality. What do Simon and Stuart think?

  • http://www.fouriertransform.com simonminter

    No – the photos are best drawn from Flickr as then they’ll run themselves with no manual intervention ever needed. If we put photos on ourselves they will gradually go out of date and start becoming repetitive.

    The image quality is due to restrictions with what can be drawn from Flickr by a remote website – but I will investigate what can be done.

  • jamess

    i really like the redesign but am getting slightly zzzzzzzzz with the caper photos.sorry,but….well, no, not really sorry at all.

  • http://www.fouriertransform.com simonminter

    In that case, young Jamessssss, take some photos and add them to the Flickr group!

  • jamess

    mmmmm – that’ll involve me becoming a non luddite and also finding a non-work computy that’ll allow me to download pics, or find an internetty cafe that’ll not saturate me with hungarian donkey porn when i go online……
    i’ll try -i promise!

  • Alex

    A couple more things that could possibly be added:

    1. Maybe a section where people can start their own discussion threads? For example, I am always looking for an opportunity to say that, ever since I made the pilgrimage to the sweat-stained underworld of the Bullingdon Back Room to watch their first gig (I went because I thought they had stolen my nightmares and put them on myspace), I have not understood a single second of the glorious Thin Green Candles. And I love them for it. But as of yet I haven’t found a situation where it would be appropriate to say that…so maybe people should be able to start their own discussion threads (as long as they are not too rageful)?

    2. A page listing current Oxford bands, a one-line description and a link to myspace etc? Any Oxfordshire band who wants to be could be featured on it, which would both allow them to get a bit of exposure and for people to get a more comprehensive idea of whats about on the local scene.

  • http://www.gappytooth.com gappy

    “A couple more things that could possibly be added:

    1. Maybe a section where people can start their own discussion threads?”

    Well, there’s the Nutshaft board – in fact, that has a resource that fulfills number 2 on your list as well: http://nightshift.oxfordmusic.net

  • johnny moto

    flick take your copyright and the qualitys bad i and many others despise the whole philosophy.
    thats why i dont use them [except for the guardian comp].

    i sent colin some of my best pics quality and vison wise.
    would you put an article on here just to fill the space?

    photographs should be vetted if you want quality [and i mean mine as well if they arent good enough you can allways tell me] why use an out of focus poor blurred photo,just because its free?

    there are some very good ones on your flickr [not mine]those are the ones you should use.

    please dont add mine to flickr.

  • http://www.spiral25.com/ Joe

    “I have not understood a single second of the glorious Thin Green Candles. And I love them for it.”

    It almost sounds like you went out looking for a meaningful relationship and came back with a transvestite crack whore on Meow Meow who just ran away from the Circus.

  • jamess

    “It almost sounds like you went out looking for a meaningful relationship and came back with a transvestite crack whore on Meow Meow who just ran away from the Circus.”
    …which is about as close a description of TGC as you’re likely to get!