Looks like we're off to a great start. Herko has a good plan to get the part of the process moving forward.

kurafire looks nice, and has some good ideas.

I also like some of the stuff over at stopdesign.com. If you dig around you'll see some of the things all of us are talking about.

I like the idea of different looks for each page depending on content. I do think it's important to keep a common thread of recognition throughout the site. Changing the color, textures, widths would be a nice touch, and possible disguise any boxy 3 column layout.

Would there be a possibility of a user defined column or content area? MSN allows the user to layout the users homepage. So you get to see what you want where you want it.

don (el paso)

An option to display the page for low or high bandwidth would be nice. That would allow for a graphic rich theme.

don (el paso)

How about couple of these sites?

They are portals, they look different and interesting at the same time, they have a lot of information on display on first page.

http://www.res72.com/

http://www.moluv.com/ (Three column, with a difference)

http://k10k.net/ (another interesting 3 column layout)

http://www.styleboost.com/

http://www.lookom.com/

http://www.crossmind.net/cnt/news/news.php

http://www.isolate.cz/ (5 column and still looking good)

If it was me that was designing the framework, I would seriously think about what type of content you want displayed initially. List out items in order of importance. Make the items that should be displayed predominantly on the initial page, be there. The others, I would leave up to subsequent menus and links elsewhere on the page. I think the idea of getting away from 3 column, layouts or the CMS look is a huge step in the right direction. You can have columns, but making them appear something other than the a-typical column is the key. Most themes available today have this ability. I personally like the way that http://www.blogger.com/start this site looks. Very clean, well organized, and easy to look at.

Just my two cents.

That's exactly what this project forum is for. To decide what content needs to be made, and what is important to have on certain key pages.

Herko

I hope no one gets insulted, but after reading through the posts in the thread and looking at the links suggested for themes, it kind of looks like what's being discussed is a theme for an Art Gallery rather than a theme for a Content Management System.

Quote:

This might not be a bad thing, if people feel that this could be easier to navigate and more appealing. This is a good opportunity to think "out of box" and compare different alternatives. As in an brainstorming session, all ideas are good :)

I would also suggest to look at the top commercial websites, Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, etc., since they spend TONS of money for usebility testing, so we definitely could learn something from them.

What I would like in an innovative, very efficient, visually appealing, unique and easily memorable Website portal. Something that when users come in, they will remember the look of it, but will also love the easy navigation and content organization. The WOW effect would be very nice!

Maybe here we could find some ideas:
http://www.worldbest.com/gold.htm

Are there any other Websites evaluating Web designs?

One point that I didn't see mentioned here is about accessibility. Maybe, any theme, should have the possibility to change font size...

Accessibility aside, I would like to suggest 2 possible visual approaches:

1 - Simplicity and images. Something that combines simplicity such as plone.org theme, with visuals of a gallery.

..and my preferred choice:

2 - JMorris and Biteronboard (on the [content] The framework thread) suggest that we might be more flexible and let users change themes as they might wish.
I think this is a very interesting approach because it will add interest in XOOPS as a whole by making use of it's visual design capabilities. It will show visitors in a very intuitive way, how flexible themes can be.
More over, we could have something like "theme of the month" competitions, winners will get to be the 1st theme users see as they come to the site. I think this will envigurate activity and excitiment about xoops... (...Such a solution might also save this re-design project from the possibility of being cluttered by a long process of consentual choice of one particular theme...)

Best wishes,

Aharon

I think a design with nice blending colors would be nice, but easy to look at specially for the community portal or developers where you can spend hours reading and it wouldn't be so nice with colors everywhere, a new navigation is very necesarry and concepts that are being delt with in the Content Redesign Forum need to be taken in mind during the design process. Design and Content need to blend in harmony, it is more the Design that has to adapt to the Content. For example links to other 2 XOOPS Portals should occupy an important space. Maybe have several menus, a left one, a top horizontal one (maybe with dropdown links) and links to the other 2 XOOPS main portals somewhere in the header.

I am talking about the community portal. Will the developers portal and product portal have slightly different designs using Theme Changer? If so, shouldn't there be then a forum to treat the design of each portal?

Each portal design should be focused to the community of users that will use it, that way maybe the Product Portal can handle more graphics and be more colorfull, while the developers and community portal be more light weight and not so graphic.

I am not so sure a fixed width would be good for the community portal and if it were fixed width would it be better a fixed width for people that view at 800px resolution or for people that view at 1024 resolution?, I don't know if it is because it currently gives the impression of being cluttered up that it gives the sensation that it needs more breathing space everywhere. For community portal I think a 90% width is good and for the product portal a fixed width.

A nice block distrubution would be good, blocks can help different modules look different activating different kinds of blocks throughout the modules with related content to the pages. Also maybe have the right column active only in the homepage or have the blocks that are in the right column change content according to the sections.

Here is a layout contribution based on JMorris's version which was based on Herko's layout.


Click here for large image

It is an experiment to see what happens if the left column goes away completely. Like in this site XOOPSDesign.com is currently working on: http://www.elcielorec.com which is resulting to be special.

I definately agree that the font size control is a good idea.. and the theme chosing ... could certainly be good indeed - as it would show how flexible XOOPS can be for theme control.