Site redesign - 2016 Update #1

[4040AD]

In response to post #34709485. #34709835, #34709940, #34709945, #34710060, #34710240 are all replies on the same post.

Black Jack 11 wrote: ad's that don't autoplay be nice

KeystoneA1 wrote: AdBlock.

Everlive wrote: I'd rather have ads that don't auto play and still help keep the site up than use AdBlock and prevent Nexus from getting any money.

digitaltrucker wrote: Those of use that use Adblock have traditionally NOT used it on the Nexus. Running this site is ungodly expensive and we try to support it any way we can. The best way to get rid of ads AND support the site is to purchase a subscription and become a Supporter.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/users/supporter/?

J Allin wrote: Become a Premium member: No more ads ;)

starfis wrote: Become a Supporter.

Edit: Loading a page, reading it for couple of minutes while at the same time doing other thing and then responding to a discussion isn't a good idea. ;)

It's all fine for people to say become this or that but any of you stop to think not every one got spare cash floating about?

[doodlum]

Looks a lot better. Although I do believe that there should be an area on the main page which shows recently updated mods as well. As I think some mods can end up going unnoticed as they can almost disappear after being in the new files area as they can't be seen anymore

[TheThirdRace]

Here are my 2 cents:

 

- The new design is very nice

 

- Be careful when putting emphasis on videos and images, the bigger they are, the lesser you see the actual information. So while it's good to have them, you don't want to drown us in them either. I like the mockup though, the videos and images size seems great, I'm just suggesting not having them bigger otherwise you'll transform into a hipster/marketing site where everything is beautiful but there's no information, thus useless at its core.

 

- It's nice to simplify information like dates, views, likes and such, but some people are interested in the real numbers too. What I suggest is to display the simplified value by default, but a mouse over would display the real value, thus keeping information available if needed without cluttering the UI.

 

- I hope there's room for a "tutorial" / "guide" section. The current section for that is lumped in "ressources", but they are 2 very different things. Tutorials are a bit special because they shouldn't be considered as "downloadable" content like the rest of the mods. Thus, an exception should be made for them so we can endorse them without having to download anything. Furthermore, they should have their own separate section as they're currently drowned amongst the "ressources" mods.

 

Keep up the good work!

[Gloweye]

Looks very good! Can't say that often at site redesigns.

 

Be sure that when searching, either sort by endorsements or have user setting what to sort by/remember what was sorted by last time. So if I'm looking for Frostfall, I don't have to dig 3 pages of compatibility patches first.

[mamelukturbo]

In response to post #34710385.

M1stLynx wrote: Gonna be honest here, your ideas for the new layout look like about as intuitive and clunky as you could get.

+1, also I don't get what stuff web developers of today are getting high on, but back in my day you tried to use all the screen estate you could. Nowadays you have ultra wide monitors and the web pages are getting thinner and thinner.

I've grown accustomed to having my web browser spread only across half of my monitor, and yet on some pages (nexus included! ) there is like 100-200px margin on both sides.

F that, honestly. Edited February 18, 2016 by mamelukturbo

[TheThirdRace]

In response to post #34710385. #34710630 is also a reply to the same post.

M1stLynx wrote: Gonna be honest here, your ideas for the new layout look like about as intuitive and clunky as you could get.

mamelukturbo wrote: +1, also I don't get what stuff web developers of today are getting high on, but back in my day you tried to use all the screen estate you could. Nowadays you have ultra wide monitors and the web pages are getting thinner and thinner.

I've grown accustomed to having my web browser spread only across half of my monitor, and yet on some pages (nexus included! ) there is like 100-200px margin on both sides.

F that, honestly.

You can thank mobile and the plethora of users still using 1024x768 screens.

I really don't mind so many users don't have at least 1980x1080, but web designers should make their site auto-adjust to the type of screen it's displayed on. They call it "responsive" if I remember correctly.

It's a bit more work on their end, but it would be worth it.

[Deleted3507349User]

In response to post #34709485. #34709835, #34709940, #34709945, #34710060, #34710240, #34710550 are all replies on the same post.

Black Jack 11 wrote: ad's that don't autoplay be nice

KeystoneA1 wrote: AdBlock.

Everlive wrote: I'd rather have ads that don't auto play and still help keep the site up than use AdBlock and prevent Nexus from getting any money.

digitaltrucker wrote: Those of use that use Adblock have traditionally NOT used it on the Nexus. Running this site is ungodly expensive and we try to support it any way we can. The best way to get rid of ads AND support the site is to purchase a subscription and become a Supporter.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/users/supporter/?

J Allin wrote: Become a Premium member: No more ads ;)

starfis wrote: Become a Supporter.

Edit: Loading a page, reading it for couple of minutes while at the same time doing other thing and then responding to a discussion isn't a good idea. ;)

Black Jack 11 wrote: It's all fine for people to say become this or that but any of you stop to think not every one got spare cash floating about?

I surely do understand that, as I'm one of those people. That's the nice thing about becoming a supporter - you only have to do it once (although I fully intend to expand on that myself when I can).

My main point is that we try not to use Adblock on this site as a way to help support it. That said, the autoplaying ads are just horrible.

[4040AD]

In response to post #34709485. #34709835, #34709940, #34709945, #34710060, #34710240, #34710550, #34710975 are all replies on the same post.

Black Jack 11 wrote: ad's that don't autoplay be nice

KeystoneA1 wrote: AdBlock.

Everlive wrote: I'd rather have ads that don't auto play and still help keep the site up than use AdBlock and prevent Nexus from getting any money.

digitaltrucker wrote: Those of use that use Adblock have traditionally NOT used it on the Nexus. Running this site is ungodly expensive and we try to support it any way we can. The best way to get rid of ads AND support the site is to purchase a subscription and become a Supporter.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/users/supporter/?

J Allin wrote: Become a Premium member: No more ads ;)

starfis wrote: Become a Supporter.

Edit: Loading a page, reading it for couple of minutes while at the same time doing other thing and then responding to a discussion isn't a good idea. ;)

Black Jack 11 wrote: It's all fine for people to say become this or that but any of you stop to think not every one got spare cash floating about?

digitaltrucker wrote: I surely do understand that, as I'm one of those people. That's the nice thing about becoming a supporter - you only have to do it once (although I fully intend to expand on that myself when I can).

My main point is that we try not to use Adblock on this site as a way to help support it. That said, the autoplaying ads are just horrible.

yes they are, i all so had a ad which i just moved across as i logout sent me to another site without me clicking on it.

[Koopta]

looking good!

[Deleted3507349User]

In response to post #34709080. #34709435, #34709560, #34709745, #34709825, #34709920 are all replies on the same post.

BlindJudge wrote: Well we've entered 2016 with a productivity bang, all hands are on deck and there is plenty going on behind the scenes here at the Nexus so I thought I'd give you all an insight into what's happening...

Firstly a quick recap - we began the redesign process in the second half of 2015 by first trying to work out what our users like and dislike about the site. We were overwhelmed with the response to our survey which provided us with a wealth of information, our community is definitely one of the best in the world and it was great to see how truly passionate you all are in regards to our site.

A lot of people commented as to how they cannot browse the site on anything other than their PC, others were more interested in trying to find mods quickly and easily, others just wanted the site to be made 'fresher' and 'inline with modern web standards'. We took the time and read through each and every response that we received, that in itself took several weeks.

We decided to aim towards specific goals that were brought up over and over again, the first is for us to create a cracking mobile / tablet / responsive experience so that the site can be enjoyed by any user on any device, but without this experience lessening the experience from our core crowd of users who still visit the Nexus via their desktops. Secondly, we want the site to be easy to navigate around with search deeply integrated with the main functions, and thirdly, we want it to look nice and be a pleasure to use. The list goes on and on, but you get the general gist.

We knew that we weren't going to be able to do this all ourselves and that we were going to need some help from a professional, so we advertised for a UX/UI designer and got a great response from a number of people. Each person brought something to the table but after a lot of deliberation we contracted Phill into the position. He immediately took it upon himself to read through the research we had already conducted (survey results, hot-spots, device statistics) and started producing diagrams and wireframes for us to check out based on his conclusions from the research.

Things were moving along swiftly, but we wanted input from the community and setup a focus group of 15 Nexus users to help. This group has been nothing but brilliant, right from the word go we have had a constant and thorough source of input from them. What has been great is that they come from such a diverse demographic that they represent a great cross section of the Nexus community, giving us an all around feel for what we are doing and whether it would or wouldn't work. I tip my hat to them for the time and effort they have expended on assisting us, it's not over yet though guys ;)

The focus group talks on behalf of the Nexus users. While we would love to include everyone in every stage of the design process, I hope you can appreciate that having 10 million people all chiming in on any sort of process is just completely untenable. I understand that some people are concerned that they’re not being more involved in the process, however, we believe we’ve done well by you these past 14 years and ask that you trust that we’ve got everyone’s best intentions in mind once again!

With the focus group onboard we went full steam ahead on the wireframes. These proved invaluable to begin placement of features on the site and begin to visualise the site routes that people would take to do things.

An example of one of the wireframes we used is below, please note that these are old wireframes and may not reflect the final layout / look of the site.

http://i.imgur.com/H007GXkl.png

After the wireframe stage we worked on design mocks, which included things like fonts, icons, more placement tests and colour schemes. Again, please note that these are old designs and may not reflect the final layout / look of the site.

http://i.imgur.com/4Y6H3THl.png

We’re now into February. Currently, Phill is converting the mock-ups into HTML, CSS and Javascript that our site developers can then integrate into our framework. This is a time consuming and painstaking task, as we test each page created against numerous browsers, devices and resolutions to ensure the maximum compatibility possible. But we’re also beginning to see the fruits of our labour in an interactive way for the first time.

Our aim now is to get the site to a stage where we can open it up to run alongside the current site, at first simply as a shell to allow you to experience it and see if it breaks when you try and do things.  But should this be successful it will then be attached to the live database and you will be able to use it alongside the existing site. Between us we’ll iron out any bugs that are discovered and hopefully come out the end with a product that is better, and that we are all proud of.

For those interested, I’ve created a small timeline of events since the beginning of the redesign process.

http://i.imgur.com/B0RXXQY.png

Any questions, please feel free to get in contact.

Kind regards

http://i.imgur.com/SZYsdYu.png

mannygt wrote: Man, I love this new design, really and I'm talking as Web Designer (and developer).

I have just a suggestion for your back-end: Please add the unload() event to avoid leaving the page when a user is uploading a mod without prompting. It's happened to me when I accidentally clicked a link when I was uploading a huge file (my fault of course).

Thank you :)

EHPDJFrANKy wrote: Hi BlindJudge;

Congrats to all the stuff for the great work on all the site. Good news to see you all are working hard, to better the experience.

Speaking about profiles, and in a more concretely way, about pictures and caps, please, Can you tell us, if the pictures needed for the profiles of the mod will change? if so, do you know, which will be the new sizes for them?

Just to know, and going preparing new images for my mods-translations profiles.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Take Care and C U Soon !!!

TheLich wrote: Nice disign! Can't wait to try it out!

BTW, there is a type in events timeline - last two should be in 2016, no?

Hoamaii wrote: Great work!.. Thanks for sharing :)

One 'small' suggestion: is there a way that you could make the 'back to the top' button slide alongside the page so that it remains clickable from anywhere you are in the page?

And a question: what's the tick button for at the bottom of mods' previews?

(sorry for the inappropriate language, French here ;))

BlindJudge wrote: @TheLich - I have no idea what you're talking about - Typo, what typo! ;)

(cheers, have now corrected it :) )

Nice to see Phill hasn't begun work twice now as well ;)