Advice on my template...

[zhono]

Not sure if this is the right place for this thread or not. I don't really need help with my template, just suggestions/advice.

I'm rebuilding my template again and was looking to see what people think about what I'm doing with it, before I completely redo everything. My site: anime-themes.net

Everything that is green is from my original design, which means mostly everything is still the original. So far I've only redesigned thumbnail_bit and category_bit. I've modded the thumbnailer so that is crops all the thumbnails to the exact same size. If you look at the New Wallpapers section on the homepage, you'll see that each thumbnail is a perfect square. If it is new, it adds a flashing "New" logo in the corner. Every thumbnail has a curved arrow in the bottom corner to tell people to put their mouse there to "flip" it over. So when you mouseover, the thumbnail fades out, and you see the information about it. Now if you scroll down, have a look at the categories. It looks similar, but instead, it's a random thumb, and the category name is displayed on top of the thumb. So, do these look good? Do they seem easy to use and whatnot?

I was going to make the details part of the thumbnail_bit look nicer, with a nice table made with some graphics, and put more information about the image. But then I thought about instead, putting the details on top of the thumbnail, like I did with the categories, and get rid of the part that you get when you mouseover. Which way do you guys think would look better? And if I keep the mouseover part, does the arrow look okay, or does it look bad with so many arrows all over the place?

And as for the rest of the template, a few people told me that the green was ugly, and I should change it. I was just wondering what other people thought about the green colors. And what about the rest of the design in general? Any parts that you think look good or bad? And tips on things you think I should change? Like I said, just want to see what people think of it before I rebuild everything. Thanks to anyone to takes the time to have a look a tell me what they think.

*EDIT*

Oh, and I already know that the colors in the news section at the bottom are all messed up. I haven't fixed them yet because I might not keep the news section.

[budduke]

Interesting site...
I am sitting here at work bored out of my mind so I asked a few people around me what they thought also so here goes...

everyone loved the "new" in the corners, nobody noticed the arrow in the lower left. I though it was part of the design of the wallpaper when I first looked at it. The mouseover is OK if that is what you are wanting. I was able to trick it from time to time by having 4-5 turned over because of the speed I was sliding over them but they fixed themselves when I went back over them. I would have the info displayed without hovering over because I could not get to the image to look at it without clicking on the actual name on the backside when hovering over. I think it would be better to take you to the image when you click anywhere on it. Also, I would have less new wallpapers showing on the main page with a link to see more new ones,  because I did not even see you had categories because I had to scroll down so far.

Not just your site, but allot of gallery sites out there put so much at the top that with wide monitors, every time you click on anything you have to scroll back down to get anywhere because of the large graphics at the top. But I have seen that is the trend because of the ads and stuff that you want everyone to see.

The category part of the main page, I would, if possible, make the thumbnails smaller to fit more across so you know you are not looking at more new wallpapers and make the title "categories" more noticeable (bigger?center?)

The color? I was never a fan of green, but then again, my site is fushia/purple http://www.budduke.com
Looking at the drop down login/register area being all in black. You should go with darker colors so things will pop out better?
The hardest part is liking ans staying with whatever choice you make no matter what anyone says because all the graphics take time to get just right to have to do them all over again. Me? I would go with a dark purple or blue (my favorite if you have not noticed by now) with light colored lettering so your login area fits in much better.

But, impressive work so far...

[zhono]

Hey budduke, thanks for the reply.

I noticed that too, about the mouseovers sticking on the info if you go over them really fast. I spent like 40 minutes yesterday playing around, trying to see how many I could get to stick.

You mentioned blue with light text. That template is actually a template I originally built for a custom CMS I put together, and it was blue with gray text and white links. I then converted it for 4images and made it green. The two sites were meant to be used together, originally. You can see it at crimsonanime.com Is that kind of what you mean? I also made a purple/pink version for a third site, but I won't link to it since it has hentai/adult content.

I was definitely planning to make the Categories label bigger so it would stand out. And as you point out, I also thought about making the category thumbnails smaller. But if I did that, any category name that is too long wouldn't fit in it's place. Maybe if I just keep them as 4 across, but make them shorter, so you don't have to scroll down so far?

As for the new images part, I hadn't really thought about that much. You have a good point. Maybe instead of making the category thumbnails smaller, I can remove the new wallpapers part, and have each category thumbnail be the newest wallpaper instead of a random one. And then you can simply click the category link to view the category, or click a separate spot on the thumb(probably a "View this Wallpaper" link) to go directly to the details page for the new wallpaper that is displayed there.

And yeah, I kind of thought the arrow looked like part of the wallpaper design too. I'll probably remove it, and it won't be needed anyway, if I get rid of the mouseover info. I'm trying to get it to look nice, while still making it easy to tell where everything is, and how to get to what you want. Thanks again for the tips.

[budduke]

Yes, the blue looked good, but I think I would go even a darker blue.
I googled what color compliment black and most people said the red colors look best with black (the drop down for your login)
If I was going in the red arena, I would go with a dark maroon. For your anime sites, I would think that would look pretty cool.

[zhono]

I'm reviving this thread, because I will be releasing the newest version of my site soon, and I would like suggestions before I upload my new version.

I've built a completely new template, added many mods from users here, and created many of my own mods. Almost every core file has been edited for this. Here a list of what my new version has so far.

Entire site properly skinned with dark and light versions, 8 color various for each version, and 13 background styles. User can easily select which appearance he likes best.
Complete Facebook integration, thanks to budduke
Jquery show categories based on the first letter, animated
Jquery sort wallpapers on category page by color, animated
Reply to comments, and threaded comments
User avatars, thanks to v@no
If user has Facebbok connected, he can choose to use his Facebook profile image as his avatar instead.
Use favorites/lightbox as a screensaver, with full settings panel. My own mod, not the old KurtW version
Edit the order of images in favorites/lightbox(also changes the screensaver order). I hope to make it drag and drop soon.
Fancy user profiles, like on social media sites. Shows users latest comments, uploads, favorites, visitor messages, and more.
User can click button to make all his profile items editable, right on his profile page(a.k.a. inline editing or wysiwyg editing)
Admin can click button on details page to edit all fields directly on the page, no need to go to the admin panel.
Search images by resolution/dimension, color, and more.
Ticket system(I forget who made it) to allow users to report images/users, to apply for ad space, or become affiliates
Various other things that I can't remember right now.


I'm also working on a custom news system. I don't like the ones available in the forums.

So my question is, does anyone have any other suggestions? I want to do as much as I can before I release the new version to my users. You can take a look at the current version of the site for ideas, but just remember that much of what you see there has already been rebuilt, and will look very different when I'm done.

[zhono]

It's looking awesome. but release is going to take longer than I thought. Decided to build my own forum add-on for 4images. Also have to build a custom member profile shoutbox, since the existing one doesn't work with 1.7.11

Also wondering about a feature, if anyone thinks it's a good idea. I'm thinking about having revenue sharing on my site. If a user uploads image, he can also enter his adsense ID in his control panel. On the details page for his images, the ad would use his ID for, maybe 10% of the time(every 10th image hit). So he gets a chance to make money on adsense from his own images. And if he buys a VIP/donation membership on my site, his ads would be used more often, like 50% or even 100% of the time.

I've also setup a Mature setting for images, so if a mod tags an image as mature, google ads are not shown on that image details page. I've already have my site banned from Adsense because there were some pictures that they said violated the adsense terms. Just got my site unbanned and don't want to kill it again. lol

[zhono]

Finally up! I've left out the stuff I'm still working on, like the forum and the friend system(might just use the existing one from here). But it's coming together.
Before now, no one was posting comments and such, so I'm linking to specific categories and images that I've filled out all the extras on, for demo purposes.

Main page:
http://anime-themes.net

Categories page(to try the "sort by color." I have to manually edit the image's colors in the AdminCP, and there are over 15,000 of them lol):
http://anime-themes.net/categories.php?cat_id=220

Details page (also demo comments):
http://anime-themes.net/details.php?image_id=13139

Member profile:
http://anime-themes.net/member.php?action=showprofile&user_id=1

I've also made a demo account so you can test out the lightbox drag and drop order, comments, visitor messages, see what options are available in the edit-profile page, and other user features. username: 4images   password: 4images

A big "thank you" to anyone who can check out the site, and post back here to tell me what you think, make suggestions, or report any bugs you might find while looking around.


*EDIT* And just like magic, things all over the site are broken, when they worked perfectly fine on my test server.

There, fixed. My tip of the day: Never comment your Javascript with     //My comment
Always use    /* My Comment */   or your site will break and it will take 3 hours to realize it was the stupid comments all along.