Hi folks,
A few people have commented regarding the theme that is currently being used on the site and it’s difficulty in negotiating your way around, particularly regarding some of the older stuff that people are rooting through or looking for. With this in mind and while I have some time, I’m considering a change to the look and layout.
This will not affect the content, everything will still be there, merely rearrange the front page (in particular) and how things look once you delve a little deeper into the site, hopefully make it easier to find older stuff that hasn’t seen the light of day since it was put up.
I’m thinking of running a more “Magaziney” feel, having recently very successfully transformed a Limerick based political/current affairs website. Basically, what this means is that you will be easily able to access all of the different sections of the site more or less with one click directly from the front page. a bit like the “Irish Times” or “independent” websites or some of the on-line magazine types. Things may go a little hairy from time to time over the next ten days or so, but in the end I hope to be able to give you all a far better looking, more usable site.
Now this is not just change for changes sake, it is designed to improve things. If anyone has any ideas for additions, now is the time to let me know. If you think some things should have more prominence, let me know. if you think something is missing, let me know. I’ll do my best to accommodate any and all requests, without too much guff or backchat. 🙂
Just add a comment to this page or send us an email if you have any suggestions to make, I’m going to stick this page to the front for the duration.
Thanks,
ADMIN
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[suffusion-the-author display='description']10 Responses to “Redesign of bruffrfc.com site.”
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I look forward to seeing it!!
No rush, I’m probably the only one who is being picky anyway 😉
Ed,
I’ve been thinking about this for the last couple of days, and I’d prefer not to have another “Buffer” between the front page and the individual categories. The idea for the revamp in the first place was so that each section can be got to with only one click from the front page.
What I have decided is to set up individual headers for each section and work it that way, a bit tougher to code and may involve some individual hand coding to pages/cats/posts at the beginning but there you have it. I’ll post when I have it completed and let me know what you think.
I know what you mean. All the category articles come up straight away.
I was thinking of more a front page for the teams rather then just the list of articles. It’s not important, what you have done is fantastic and it’ll stand the club well. I know the work that can go into getting all the various bits sorted and put together as you have. Fair play.
Edwin,
Won’t tell you to go away but what you’re looking for is already accessible under the “adult rugby” and “Other Rugby” links, each individual category is listed there. Roll over it and see.
Seeing as you asked for more comments, I’ll shell out some suggestions 🙂
For the top menu (non changing) I think a link to a Teams page would be something to think about.
For example have a static page ‘Teams’ that overviews the various teams and then links to their respective team homepages. This homepage could be something similar to the main homepage template with the latest article tagged for that team showing on the main part and older ones below or something. Or perhaps using the ‘a-featured-page’ provided by the theme as the team homepage.
The content is all their but just not being brought to the fore, something like this idea would help give each team an area quickly and bring it out in a way that is more then just a listing of articles under a tag.
Feel free to tell me to go away and to stop putting more work on your plate.
Nice work!
Huge improvement.
Edwin and Smartass,
Many thanks for the ideas and comments, keep them coming,
I’ve gone more for a cosmetic change and ease of use starting off, I want to make it easier to get at some of the stuff that you and smartass above have mentioned, a lot is already there just hard to get at.
The change will facilitate making it easier to get at the stuff mentioned when we put it up. Hopefully we have improved the content over the last twelve months with more people posting their stuff, but there are some major holes (No-one to post the stuff), the underage stuff in particular needs far more posting for example.
Hopefully the navigation is now sorted, everything on the site is reachable from the top bars. Specific, non changing page sections on the top bar with the weekly generated changing stuff underneath.
In regard to the match day photos, That’s what people are specifically looking for, Over two thirds of traffic to the site to be exact is for photos alone. If you google “Thomond Park Photos” we come up number 1 usually, or “Thomond Park” almost guarantees to have the site on the front page, try googling “Rugby photos” on Google.ie to see for yourself how high we rank on that topic. The photos will be getting more priority on the new front page
The point about club gear is well noted, we’ve been threatening that for quite a while. I’m sitting down with Mike O’ Connor to determine exactly what he wants to make available during the summer to set up either an online shop or just a display on the site for the club gear, depending on which way he wants to play it.
What I’m saying is that this change is only a fresh start and we hopefully will keep improving.
On the club merchandise side, you could look at something like http://www.cafepress.com/ for small merchandise like mugs, car stickers and other bits. Might not be much, could pay for web hosting depending on the markup you put on.
Details are here:
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/pricing_policy.aspx
Hi Admin
Glad to hear you are changing it, as a regular site visitor I find site isnt user friendly in genral terms of navigation, I would like to see more underage content (sounds awful) Why not have coach contact details and photos. It would help parents greatly when they have to ring coaches if they could put a face to a name. Actual squad photos and blitz results should be added. I would like to see profile of each member of senior squad along with their underage/junior/senior achievements, if nothing else it shows kids coming through ranks what the potential is. Not being critical but 50 photos of match day (seniors only) is a bit of an overkill. Also Club merchandise should be displayed on site, I can appreciate running a retail service requires alot of work, but at least we should see club merchandise. In order to encourage more site visitors I would also recommend a quiz (club/rugby related)with heineken or magners cup tickets as prizes. In any case keep up good work and enjot the closed season
Delighted to see you are looking at improving the site!!
I’d love to see more content about the teams themselves, the players, teams sheets for matches etc., maybe even some player profiles once a month or something like that.
Also, more underage content would be great, it would be nice to have the players names/results/team achievements put somewhere for all to see with links to the relevant articles. (Check the Exec-PHP WP plugin for allowing tag/label filtering, very handy)
Best of luck with it, looking forward to seeing it!!