Engineering the GAE Website

[orion]

First, I would like to apologize for my absence in support and devotion to this project. For the last few months, I have been occupied with other affairs that rendered me unable to work. In one weeks time, I will be on winter break from school and therefore, I will have alot of free time on my hands. Also, If I do this project really well, I can put it on my resume.

What I need from the community....

1) Ideas for a Logo.

2) Ideas for Website themes (colors, textures, styles, etc)

3) Ideas for Web Apps (Forums, email Notifications, etc)

Also, If anybody wants to help or make and contributions, please feel free.

[@kukac@]

How about this as a logo?

Code: [Select]

[url=http://glest.org/glest_board/viewtopic.php?p=20152#p20152]viewtopic.php?p=20152#p20152[/url]
For the colours: Glest has used a lot of brown and yellow, and the GAE is using (currently) the same colour theme.

[mictes]

I voluntered helping with the website, too. But I never got any concrete information or something like that...
So, here I'm again

The website should look like the actually one (glest.codemonger.org - I like it), it just needs to be finished!

My skills:
W3C Valide Xhtml 1.0 Transitional 100%
W3C Valide CSS Level 2.1 100 %
PHP 80 %
MySQL 40 %
Graphics 90 %

[gameboy]

i think the theme should be almost the same as the Glest website, with a few exceptions:
1) instead of the corners being brown it should have a metal look.
2) the link bar or whatever should be metal.
3) and the side bar should have screws in them.
i'll post an example when i have the time.

[daniel.santos]

Orion,
welcome back!

gameboy,
I kinda like that idea.  Orion did a concept graphic a long time ago that had a somewhat similar look and feel to it, but I will let you more artistic types sort that out

[orion]

How about this as a logo?

Code: [Select]

[url=http://glest.org/glest_board/viewtopic.php?p=20152#p20152]viewtopic.php?p=20152#p20152[/url]
For the colours: Glest has used a lot of brown and yellow, and the GAE is using (currently) the same colour theme.

That is a decent logo. One thing I have been attempting for a while now is to create a new, realistic sword instead of the one in the Glest logo (No offense to the Glest developers ;-)

The website should look like the actually one (glest.codemonger.org - I like it), it just needs to be finished!

My skills:
W3C Valide Xhtml 1.0 Transitional 100%
W3C Valide CSS Level 2.1 100 %
PHP 80 %
MySQL 40 %
Graphics 90 %[/quote]

Welcome aboard Mictes. I like the "My Skills" list you just whipped out. I take that as a challenge :?:

PS: I'm going to sticky this topic because it WILL be active for, at least, the next month.

[gameboy]

Here's an example:
[attachment=0:2fx30jcg]GAE Banner.jpg[/attachment:2fx30jcg]

[orion]

That is a pretty decent design, but It is not what I had in mind. Don't get me wrong, if applied correctly, it can make the website look great, but I was thinking of something cleaner and smoother. I just installed the gimp on my linux system and I"m experimenting with that. I'll submit a theme very ver soon

[mictes]

I'll have an intership at a webdesign-studio soon.
I hope I will learn much things we can use here

[hailstone]

Congrats mictes. Maybe use gameboy's image for a button instead of banner?

[orion]

Good idea hailstone. I can think of alot of ways to use that for a button. Thanks Gamebody, hailstone.

I was thinking of adding a menu to the enter page. This is what I came up with. The only thing that obviously is wrong is that all of the links say home. That will be changed of course. Comments are appreciated.

Code: [Select]

[url=http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=mzntzmm1do2&thumb=4][img]http://www1.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/240c5d480fcd21ccfce5f3e234a8333c6g.jpg[/img][/url]
Once again, please comment.

[mictes]

Nice Orion, but I think the difference between the text of the buttons and the text of the title are not big enough.
Unfortunately I have no better Idea how to fix that, maybee with a little color-change in the background ? Something like that: ?
(Cause I have not the original image my version isn't very valuable... ^^)

[orion]

Thanks for replying so fast. I wasn't going to use that as the title bar. I was going to use it as the menubar of the website ("home", "about", "downloads"), but now that you mention it.....I may use that as the title bar. I have to play around with it. You're right; I would have to find a way to distinguish the title from the rest of the buttons. Maybe I could reduce the text size in the buttons so that the title stands out more or I could change the highlight color as you did. I'll experiment. Thanks again mictes.  

Anyone feel free to jump in with comments.
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I got ripped off by Adobe
I writing this just because I have to say something. Ignore this if any of you don't want to read.

For the past few years, adobe photoshop has been my image editor of choice. Every time a new version came out, I would eagerly spend hundreds of dollars purchasing it, happy that I just obtained the best image manipulation program alive.......or not.
Two months ago, I installed kubuntu linux on computer and slowly started drifting away from windows. There was only one problem.....there was no photoshop for linux (which turned out to a blessing in disguise). I tried using wine, but it was too slow and buggy. So I reluctantly installed gimp, the famous free rival to photoshop. The first time I launched it, my immediate reaction was "WTF!" and "Why the f are there so many windows" and "this is complete bs!!". I still decided to learn it, and after 1 month of reading 5 long ebooks and looking at over 30 tutorials, I now appreciate it more than anything in the world. I'm pissed that I have spent more than $1000 buying photoshop over the years when I could have gotten the gimp for FREE.
My point in writing this is to say that if you currently have photoshop, trash it and get GIMP. If you have the patience to learn what it has to offer, you'll love it.

[hailstone]

If you want GIMP to feel a little more like photoshop check out GIMPshop. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop

[orion]

I finished a draft of what the header would look like...kind of. The header is not satisfactory in my opinion yet; it still needs some icons, colors, and some dynamic effects. Without any further ado, here is what I came up with.



Once again, I didn't change the names of the link...sorry. The "G" emblem is just a place holder for a smaller version of the GAE logo. I liked gameboy's idea, so I'll experiment. I also included the orginal images in multiple formats to download (Mictes mentioned it). Below are files in psd, gimp, jpeg, png formats.

original_images.zip

[mictes]

What about initials like the Glest favicon ?

[Omega]

Looking good.

My skills:
~W3C XHTML 1.0
~W3C CSS 2
~Java Script
~SWF (ShockWave Flash)
~2D Graphics (Paint.NET & the GIMP)
~3D Graphics (blender rendering)
~Animating GIFs (BMG)
~video (avi, wmv, mpg, mp4, rm, etc;)
~c++ (basic)
~Web forms
~Perl/cgi (very basic)
~Image Mapping
~ASPX
~XML
~Sitemaps (sort of...)
~Time on my hands (kinda... So many things to do, so few hours in a day...)

[mictes]

Uhuu, a real PC-Profi, but most of them have nothing to do with web-programming ^^

[Omega]

All of those skills, except maybe c++ and video are used in webpages. SWF is a good alternative for videos, since it is very compatible and hard to rip off. It can also be done quite easily if you have the know-how.

[mictes]

Yes, that is true, but I really hate websites hazarded with flash and javascript ^^
But now lets move away from OT.

[Omega]

It's not off topic, its concerning The topic (sort of), which is 'Engineering a Website'.

Flash and javascript can't be over used, but almost every webpage will have some. Javascript is used for most things, such as log ons and posting (this page here has javascripts for posting new messages). SWF is the most common format for games and 'programs' online, including mediafire's upload screen. It also allows you to easily make a good intro screen, which some websites use. However, there should always be a 'skip' button so that people don't  have to wait for this thing to load everytime.

You can also make a good intro screen though with image mapping and animated GIFs, but its not the same (limited to 256 colors).

[mictes]

1) Gifs: Bad quality
2) Flash: Flash need to be make from profis. All other lets melt your cpu.
3) Javascript: As few as possible. All other lets melt your cpu.

I know what I'm speaking from, cause I started working on Websites since I was 11 years old.
And this is Offtopic cause it have nothing to do with the GAE website

Regards,
Michael

[hailstone]

SOS Webpages might be suitable for the backend. http://www.soswebpages.com/

[mictes]

http://cakephp.org/

[hailstone]

CakePHP is a development framework whereas SOS webpages is already complete, just add info and style. Less work but if you want other features CakePHP seems good.