To HW2 Discussion moderators
Dear moderators, please WAIT! Before you push this to the Website Design forum may I ask that you PLEASE allow this post to sit here for at least 2 weeks. Reason is that I have tried to post there, but either there were no people reading it (40 views in one month!) or people there were not too interested in the Homeworld 2 aspect of this site. I am posting this here so that the guys in this forum can take a look at it and give useful feedback posts (of which of all my posts in the website forum I've only gotten 2!!!).
Thanks Moderators!
(Do me a favour or I'll set my toons on you! hehe)
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The first draft of the site is at:
http://www.homeworldarchives.com/www-new2/index.html
ABOUT
The emphasis of the site is on archival of files that need to be stored, hence the news items are not current Homeworld-related news, but rather updates on what has been added to the site itself. For more background on the site scroll down...
THE HOMEPAGE
The homepage is thus organised into four areas, a main spotlight area, plus four focus areas below that to showcase the latest additions for each of the games. As you can see, I've tried color-coding the focus areas plus using the logos from each of the games (with a resourcer logo for the HWA site itself) in the titles.
THE LEFT MENU
The left side I have organised into the three games with files for each sorted accordingly (e.g. music, video etc) with an additional menu part at the top for the HWArchive site itself.
THE HEADER
As for the header, it's just something I cobbled up together to put at the top so any suggestions for the design would be nice.
I'm still trying to get with grips with css style sheets and table layout, but in general once the template is there, the rest of the site should be ok.
Comments, harsh criticism and tips are welcome!
[EDIT]
I've just realised that the page itself looks screwy in different browsers and different platforms, and I'm very disillusioned by this (guess it's back to the css drawing board grrrr). Thus I'm trying to find how sites like the Shipyards can look the same on Mac and PC, plus on both IE 5.0+ and Mozilla. The site is supposed to look like this:
BACKGROUND
Originally HWA was a dumping ground for misc video, music and picture files from all over the place and there was never really a serious homepage. All stuff was linked to in separate pages or directories (e.g. the concept art, HW: Too comic, video files, wallpaper etc). The site is NOT meant to be a substitute for anything else (e.g. the Shipyards) but rather a sort of 'storage' place for all things HW, which is why there do not exist any specs, reviews, industry news and the like.
Now that there's enough content, I'm thinking of organising it that people can come in from the homepage properly.
My rough draft sitemap is at the below link.
http://www.homeworldarchives.com/pics/zhwa-sitemap1.gif
I'm stumped as there are so many ways to organise the data. Do I organise by game (HW, HWC, HW2) or by category (media, pics, tools, links), and even some of the categories themselves criss-cross (e.g. does the concept art go into a 'Official' category to join the PDFs and video files?).
As a brief shakedown, here are the descriptions:
1. About
- About the site, FAQ, and news updates
2. Docs
- Place where the PDFs of the game manuals are, plus HW jokes and perhaps strat and spec guides.
3. Comics
- The HW: Too comic depository, plus collecting the last remants of the HW:C comics and other comics contributors may send in. After much hounding I've finally decided to set up a proper place for it at:
http://www.homeworldarchives.com/hwtoo
4. Gallery
- The gallery of the games. Basically official art like at:
http://www.homeworldarchives.com/hw1comp
http://www.homeworldarchives.com/hw2comp
5. Models
- 3D and physical models of the ships. Currently asking some official people for permission about this part.
6. Videos
- The videos from the games (see my video test thread in HW1 Disucssions). HW2 videos are N/A because it is a definite no-go according to some preliminary findings.
7. Fan Art
- Art from mostly people here in the forums who I ask permission for to post up their works.
8. Fan Films
- Something like the Star Wars Fan Films. Hosting the movies that people do (e.g. the Elvis resourcer video and the animatic tests).
9. Download
- The HW1 and HWC music. HW2 music I am still investigating. Plus utilities (or links to them) and the English big files for our foreign friends like at:
http://www.homeworldarchives.com/bigfiles
10. Links
- Links to official and non-official sites plus fansites. I will not link to MOD sites but will link to a site with a list of them as they update quite often and I don't want to intrude on their turf.
For the navigation I going for the HW2 interface which you can already see when you go in through the http://www.homeworldarchives.com mainpage. The yellow button at the top of the nav bar also closes the bar just like in the computer game, though if you have ideas for what goes inside the navbar that would be great as I am also slightly stumped there.
Please give your comments and thanks in advance.
