I dont like it. It doensnt have the feel of the old site. It hurts my eyes. It feels boring and generic. I honestly assumed the site was down when it first opened up. Ive been away for a week or so, but these changes, visually are poor IMO.
As hard as it seems to be for other people, I happen to like it. I think that if I were a new user here, never having seen the old site, I would find it a very good layout. I still think that this layout is just fine, I just need to adjust to the new site ^^
People have a tendency to say 'hate' far too often..
It look more clean and design than before. Colors are good and pleasant for my eyes.
phpbb 3 is a real good idea !
But, it need more fine tunning indeed and it would be nice to have only one login for forum & website :) I haven't had any problems for navigations and PM's
The colors are a little better, but I still preferred the old layout. : Everything is WAY too spaced out. That's really bad for an attractive or functional web page.
Not only does this site demand you login EVERY TIME you come back, you don't even get the reassuring image of your own icon to greet you anymore on the main page! That was one thing I found so endearing about the older layout.
But now... it's just... just... sterile. There's no personality anymore.
The forums are much better looking now, but that seems to be the only real good looking thing. The navigation seems to be ok. Everything else is bland and boring. The old look felt original and fitting. This doesn't even look like a site made for art anymore. The latest updates page, which I frequent all the time looks awful and hurts my eyes. The same thing goes for the home page, if it is the home page. The page the Eka's Portal link at the top left takes me to. The text is out of place from their boxes and again, the background hurts my eyes. What was wrong with the look of the old look? It just doesn't look like an Eka's Portal site anymore or a place to upload art. Other than the forums, this new look will not grow on me.
The old site had the benefit of being around for a relitivly long time. I was used to its quirks, and the look and layout was familiar and comforting.
This is all new and shiny and buggy and has a lot of new quirks that I don't quite have a handle on because I havn't had time to really sit and mess with the place.
For now, Meh. Maybe in a few weeks/months when things are all working as intended and my eyes have adjusted, it will be an Okay.
It's a clean(ish) start, I like it for that alone, but the differences from the old are scary to people set in thier ways ^.=.^
Let's see... Navigation is harder, PM's seem to have disappeared (or I just can't find them), and the color scheme is downright terrible. The only thing I like about the new site is the forum upgrade. If it were up to me, I'd keep the forum and switch everything else back to the way it was pre-upgrade (except, of course, the actual server upgrade).
Well, the good news is I don't hate it. The bad news is I don't love it, either. I'm kinda... meh on it. It looks cool and all, but a little *too* much on making it look cool. A few things seem out of line, too... But I do admire the whole modern feel to it. Maybe I'm just having trouble letting go of the Eka's I've known for years.
I had this long post written up, but then the site ate it when I previewed it, since it apparently logged me out for some reason. -_- So, I'll summarize:
Navigation is worse, my eyes are hurting from bright colors, and I don't like the lack of dividing borders between grouped items. See the main page's list of recent topics for example. It has always been a bit of a mess, but at least before it was in a seperate white box, thus letting us know where the headers ended and the actual rest of the content began.
Mostly, this can be blamed on the color scheme. Pink text on bright blue background with white buttons/bulletpoints/arrows means everything blends together into an incomprehensive mush on my LCD screen. Have either dark backgrounds, dark text throughout(don't mix black and bright pink, instead use a dark purple), or something. It's a bad sign when if I greyscale the site, I can't read any of the links because they are the same contrast and brightness as the background. There is a reason we print BLACK text on WHITE pages in our books, instead of bright yellow text on white or dark grey on black. Contrast dark and light, either dark backgrounds and light text, or dark text and light backgrounds. NEVER PUT BRIGHT ON BRIGHT IF IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE READABLE! >:(
Then there's the whole lack of borders around elements. In the old design, borders helped hold things "together", and seperate them from the rest of the site. This new design seems to have simply nuked the borders, resulting in a bunch of text and leaving the user with no idea where one list ends and another begins. Case in point: the latest posts listing placed right next to the forums listing, and right above the "catagories" section. There is currently NO WAY to tell, aside from previous knowledge or purposely clicking on links, where the catagories list starts and the latest topics list ends. The earlier design solved this by having two seperate boxes for each list, making a clear division between them.
In short, the new design just plain is a mess. Why did you change it if it wasn't an improvement in function or form?
Wow, you made it sound like it is end of the world! Anyway. I didn't know why IE would refuse to display the borders. (Firefox seem to display it fine though, give it a try) and yeah, if I found out how to fix the borders they will be fixed! count on it.
The background color issue should be fixed already, try clear your cache if you still see white background.
Also. If you don't think there is an improvement then you probably haven't been using it much. Try give it more time. Check the UCP in the forum, for example, to start.
I mostly only use the Archives, the homepage, and the pm system. I don't really have time to be involved in things like the chat room or fourms, and all you peoples are too fast for me to keep up anyway. ;)
Umm, in case it helps, here's a screenshot of what the site currently looks like in my Avant Browser(which is simply a shell for IE7 and uses IE7 for rendering the pages).
Aplogies for the direct link, I don't know how to do a proper link with a url that ends with .jpg on this site. x_x
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v220/300happy/Other%20stuff/ekaportalI...
As you can see, while things are sorted by white borders, it's not clear at all where one topic listing ends or another begins due to the lack of extra space between entries. Also, the bullet points and navigation become a sort of blur of pink and blue lurking off to the left when reading content, making it difficult to focus on the rest of the site. And of course, the dreaded IE7 header flood with it's wonderful ability to make any header that looks nice flood into the rest of the site, but I don't know if there is a sane solution for that as I've got the same problem with my own sites. Oh, and my mouse is on the navigation, just so you can see how "wonderfully" IE7 handles the highlighting of pop up menus. x_x No, I don't know a fix for that either, but I can put up with it since I can't use a decent browser anyway. :P
Hope this helps to show what I meant with the above, in case it looks different for those with non-microsoft-crap web browsers.
2) We know about the white line issue, it is suppose to be black box around them and I don't really know why IE is doing it, will spent some time on it later.
Seriously, IE does that to a lot of sites, considers using FF or something else.
The old look was good. These new colors clash, the titles are hard to read, the buttons aren't as eye-catching, the text was nice, casual, and warm...this all feels too artificial. Like we're trying to break global or something. I feel, even as I'm typing this, this message is being reviewed by some panel of business men in suits and ties who belong to a mega-corporation. It's really unnerving. Really, so much so, I might as well just link myself directly to the chat and ignore the main site altogether.
The more I play with it, the more it's growing on me. For example, the blog section is far cleaner. There are a couple of niggles, like the poll bars breaking the sidebar and the picture in the banner at the top breaking into the "archives" link*. Overall, though, I do like the new look-and-feel.
The new look is a bit cleaner, but there are some smaller touches that need to be worked on. The Eka's logo is falling a bit low when I use it in Firefox, breaking up what would b a clean looking banner. It just needs to move up a little more.
The cleaner look makes it a touch more professional. While navigation will take a little to get used to, its a lot better than hunting for links in a block of text. Any new thing has growing pains. I wouldn't give up on it, but I would recommend some touch ups and, as always, there will be a need for adjustments for new needs as they arise.
First OFF: Let Eka handle the server move... after this complain about skins and such. That the site works comes first!
In my opinion the look of the site is good BUT it's way too DRY... It looks like one of these neutral financial forums... it still needs more stuff which makes it individually (like before). How about more banners? Or a more stylish entrance?
Lots of things are removed cause I didn't think they where needed. The drops down menu bring you everywhere you really need to go. If you see something missing, feel free to point it out, we might add it.
i hate it 100 percent. it is confusing and theres stuff missing. it really does look like a way more boring site. the other way looked fun, and not like a business forum. and i really dont like that the "newest updates to threads that you post in" button is gone, that pissed me off a lot. and whenever i login and go to click on something, it will either go and then somehow log me out, or it wont even go and it says "you might want to log in before you do that"
all in all, it totally sucks a whole freaking lot, and i hate it.
and the colors are way too bright. but no joke, for real, way too bright.
I'm torn. There are things I like about it. It's certainly more refined, but there are a good amount of things I don't like. Most recent blogs aren't listed on the side of the page, most of the old symbols are gone, I liked seeing them. Also, updates from favorite artists/writers are no longer visible on the front page, which was one of the things I always checked when I noticed it had gone up. There are some bugs to be worked out, to say the least, but I wouldn't say it's all bad.
That said... I think the biggest blow is to the artists/writers. If it's claiming to stay focused on it, shouldn't it be more prominent than the first two tabs of archives?
I actually dislike the new layout. It's harder to find your way around, even for those who have been here a while, and the new outlook is less friendly than before... Now it just looks all buisness-like, like it's not meant for fun. It's.... colder. I can't explain it, but the site just seems to have a less cheerful look now.
Respectfully, the whole site is.... it's STERILE now, is the best word I can think of. It's just... It's cluttered, confusing and cold. It just isn't friendly anymore... ;.;
I like the new layout more than I did the old one. The last one looked so cluttered and confusing. Still, I did like the color of the last one better as all white kinda hurts my eyes a bit =(. So basically I think the new layout is great but it just needs to have the colors improved a bit as the colors of the skin can get in the way of words and other important things.
New look is pretty bad. I hate it, personally. The white background is very blah, and hurts my eyes. The layout is a bit wonky, but could be worked around, I guess. The way the forums look is terrible. I keep seeing text clipping through text boxes (using Firefox, have 1024x768 resolution active, at the moment, with a 19" monitor, so maybe that's part of the reason?).
Overall, the old look was much much better. This new one...not so much.
The layout is fine, but it is too bright. It is because of all the white. I would suggest that a second skin for the site be available for people that need something easier on the eyes. I would suggest black or a dark gray.
I think most people are overreacting to this change because they are not yet used to this layout. I bet if the site had always had this layout from the beginning, and then changed to the one we had before the same complaints would arrise. I say we give it a few more weeks to settle down and get everything working, then we can always discuss the layout later. I think there are probably more pressing issues that can be dealt with in the meantime and for now this layout will suffice.
The layout is pretty cool, and I like the way avatars are displayed on the right bringing the posts to the forefront, but (no offence) the colour scheme looks like a misatched late 90's site. I guess there's still stuff to iron out though.
EDIT: You have to preview before posting as well(?) Hm.
Everything is so far spaced apart, rather than neatly organized. It's obnoxious having to navigate around the pages like that. The color scheme is also highly annoying to look at.
All in all, I really dislike it. It's layout is horrible. It needs to be more clearly organized for starters, and the tables look like they're overlapping one another giving it a really uncomfortable look.
The new look design looks better than the original one. This page looks up to date of other websites today but it could use some work and stuff to make it website and vore friendly.
Looks suspiciously like Drupal... Well, to be honest, though the design isn't actually bad, the previous one was much more functional and user-friendly. I think.
Comments
Nah
I dont like it. It doensnt have the feel of the old site. It hurts my eyes. It feels boring and generic. I honestly assumed the site was down when it first opened up. Ive been away for a week or so, but these changes, visually are poor IMO.
I like it
As hard as it seems to be for other people, I happen to like it. I think that if I were a new user here, never having seen the old site, I would find it a very good layout. I still think that this layout is just fine, I just need to adjust to the new site ^^
People have a tendency to say 'hate' far too often..
Well,
Colour scheme is looking better. If the pink writing was got rid of and changed to a darker colour now it'd be fine tbh.
Why "nah" ?
It look more clean and design than before. Colors are good and pleasant for my eyes.
phpbb 3 is a real good idea !
But, it need more fine tunning indeed and it would be nice to have only one login for forum & website :) I haven't had any problems for navigations and PM's
-
I like it for the most part :) I think you guys gave it a nice clean revamp and I can respect that any day. Keep up the good work :)
Still don't like it.
The colors are a little better, but I still preferred the old layout. : Everything is WAY too spaced out. That's really bad for an attractive or functional web page.
Color is better nvm
i take it back now it looks cool
Unfriendly...
Not only does this site demand you login EVERY TIME you come back, you don't even get the reassuring image of your own icon to greet you anymore on the main page! That was one thing I found so endearing about the older layout.
But now... it's just... just... sterile. There's no personality anymore.
Sure we will look into those,
Sure we will look into those, but you really need to cheer up if the lack of your own avatar in a certain page feel like the sky is falling on you.
I don't like it
The forums are much better looking now, but that seems to be the only real good looking thing. The navigation seems to be ok. Everything else is bland and boring. The old look felt original and fitting. This doesn't even look like a site made for art anymore. The latest updates page, which I frequent all the time looks awful and hurts my eyes. The same thing goes for the home page, if it is the home page. The page the Eka's Portal link at the top left takes me to. The text is out of place from their boxes and again, the background hurts my eyes. What was wrong with the look of the old look? It just doesn't look like an Eka's Portal site anymore or a place to upload art. Other than the forums, this new look will not grow on me.
I don't hate it...
The old site had the benefit of being around for a relitivly long time. I was used to its quirks, and the look and layout was familiar and comforting.
This is all new and shiny and buggy and has a lot of new quirks that I don't quite have a handle on because I havn't had time to really sit and mess with the place.
For now, Meh. Maybe in a few weeks/months when things are all working as intended and my eyes have adjusted, it will be an Okay.
It's a clean(ish) start, I like it for that alone, but the differences from the old are scary to people set in thier ways ^.=.^
Where to start...
Let's see... Navigation is harder, PM's seem to have disappeared (or I just can't find them), and the color scheme is downright terrible. The only thing I like about the new site is the forum upgrade. If it were up to me, I'd keep the forum and switch everything else back to the way it was pre-upgrade (except, of course, the actual server upgrade).
Or, rather, give users the
Or, rather, give users the option to choose the which style and color scheme to use.
No hate, No love.
Well, the good news is I don't hate it. The bad news is I don't love it, either. I'm kinda... meh on it. It looks cool and all, but a little *too* much on making it look cool. A few things seem out of line, too... But I do admire the whole modern feel to it. Maybe I'm just having trouble letting go of the Eka's I've known for years.
Hates it.
I had this long post written up, but then the site ate it when I previewed it, since it apparently logged me out for some reason. -_- So, I'll summarize:
Navigation is worse, my eyes are hurting from bright colors, and I don't like the lack of dividing borders between grouped items. See the main page's list of recent topics for example. It has always been a bit of a mess, but at least before it was in a seperate white box, thus letting us know where the headers ended and the actual rest of the content began.
Mostly, this can be blamed on the color scheme. Pink text on bright blue background with white buttons/bulletpoints/arrows means everything blends together into an incomprehensive mush on my LCD screen. Have either dark backgrounds, dark text throughout(don't mix black and bright pink, instead use a dark purple), or something. It's a bad sign when if I greyscale the site, I can't read any of the links because they are the same contrast and brightness as the background. There is a reason we print BLACK text on WHITE pages in our books, instead of bright yellow text on white or dark grey on black. Contrast dark and light, either dark backgrounds and light text, or dark text and light backgrounds. NEVER PUT BRIGHT ON BRIGHT IF IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE READABLE! >:(
Then there's the whole lack of borders around elements. In the old design, borders helped hold things "together", and seperate them from the rest of the site. This new design seems to have simply nuked the borders, resulting in a bunch of text and leaving the user with no idea where one list ends and another begins. Case in point: the latest posts listing placed right next to the forums listing, and right above the "catagories" section. There is currently NO WAY to tell, aside from previous knowledge or purposely clicking on links, where the catagories list starts and the latest topics list ends. The earlier design solved this by having two seperate boxes for each list, making a clear division between them.
In short, the new design just plain is a mess. Why did you change it if it wasn't an improvement in function or form?
Wow, you made it sound like
Wow, you made it sound like it is end of the world! Anyway. I didn't know why IE would refuse to display the borders. (Firefox seem to display it fine though, give it a try) and yeah, if I found out how to fix the borders they will be fixed! count on it.
The background color issue should be fixed already, try clear your cache if you still see white background.
Also. If you don't think there is an improvement then you probably haven't been using it much. Try give it more time. Check the UCP in the forum, for example, to start.
I mostly only use the
1) The pop up menu are
1) The pop up menu are suppose to look like that
2) We know about the white line issue, it is suppose to be black box around them and I don't really know why IE is doing it, will spent some time on it later.
Seriously, IE does that to a lot of sites, considers using FF or something else.
..why? This is a community site, not some conglomeration.
The old look was good. These new colors clash, the titles are hard to read, the buttons aren't as eye-catching, the text was nice, casual, and warm...this all feels too artificial. Like we're trying to break global or something. I feel, even as I'm typing this, this message is being reviewed by some panel of business men in suits and ties who belong to a mega-corporation. It's really unnerving. Really, so much so, I might as well just link myself directly to the chat and ignore the main site altogether.
I already replied to you on
I already replied to you on the forum I think, about the same rant more or less. check it out there.
Nice clean lines
The more I play with it, the more it's growing on me. For example, the blog section is far cleaner. There are a couple of niggles, like the poll bars breaking the sidebar and the picture in the banner at the top breaking into the "archives" link*. Overall, though, I do like the new look-and-feel.
Not too bad
The new look is a bit cleaner, but there are some smaller touches that need to be worked on. The Eka's logo is falling a bit low when I use it in Firefox, breaking up what would b a clean looking banner. It just needs to move up a little more.
The cleaner look makes it a touch more professional. While navigation will take a little to get used to, its a lot better than hunting for links in a block of text. Any new thing has growing pains. I wouldn't give up on it, but I would recommend some touch ups and, as always, there will be a need for adjustments for new needs as they arise.
Yes but empty.
First OFF: Let Eka handle the server move... after this complain about skins and such. That the site works comes first!
In my opinion the look of the site is good BUT it's way too DRY... It looks like one of these neutral financial forums... it still needs more stuff which makes it individually (like before). How about more banners? Or a more stylish entrance?
It's Meh
Could really use a lot of improvements, it's problematic to navigate among other things.
Lots of things are removed
Lots of things are removed cause I didn't think they where needed. The drops down menu bring you everywhere you really need to go. If you see something missing, feel free to point it out, we might add it.
change is bad!
i hate it 100 percent. it is confusing and theres stuff missing. it really does look like a way more boring site. the other way looked fun, and not like a business forum. and i really dont like that the "newest updates to threads that you post in" button is gone, that pissed me off a lot. and whenever i login and go to click on something, it will either go and then somehow log me out, or it wont even go and it says "you might want to log in before you do that"
all in all, it totally sucks a whole freaking lot, and i hate it.
and the colors are way too bright. but no joke, for real, way too bright.
Check your UCP
Purple is soooo BLINDING
The colors are way to bright.
Should be fixed, try clear
Should be fixed, try clear your cache
Mixed
I'm torn. There are things I like about it. It's certainly more refined, but there are a good amount of things I don't like. Most recent blogs aren't listed on the side of the page, most of the old symbols are gone, I liked seeing them. Also, updates from favorite artists/writers are no longer visible on the front page, which was one of the things I always checked when I noticed it had gone up. There are some bugs to be worked out, to say the least, but I wouldn't say it's all bad.
That said... I think the biggest blow is to the artists/writers. If it's claiming to stay focused on it, shouldn't it be more prominent than the first two tabs of archives?
What do you mean update from
What do you mean update from favorite people are gone? The link is still the same place. Can you specifies?
I actually dislike the new
I actually dislike the new layout. It's harder to find your way around, even for those who have been here a while, and the new outlook is less friendly than before... Now it just looks all buisness-like, like it's not meant for fun. It's.... colder. I can't explain it, but the site just seems to have a less cheerful look now.
Yeah, we fixed the color, try
Yeah, we fixed the color, try clear your cache if you haven't seem the new format.
The color doesn't matter,
The color doesn't matter, Eka.
Respectfully, the whole site is.... it's STERILE now, is the best word I can think of. It's just... It's cluttered, confusing and cold. It just isn't friendly anymore... ;.;
I like the new layout more
I like the new layout more than I did the old one. The last one looked so cluttered and confusing. Still, I did like the color of the last one better as all white kinda hurts my eyes a bit =(. So basically I think the new layout is great but it just needs to have the colors improved a bit as the colors of the skin can get in the way of words and other important things.
Hey, It's not BRIGHT RED.
I like it.
Hate the new look
New look is pretty bad. I hate it, personally. The white background is very blah, and hurts my eyes. The layout is a bit wonky, but could be worked around, I guess. The way the forums look is terrible. I keep seeing text clipping through text boxes (using Firefox, have 1024x768 resolution active, at the moment, with a 19" monitor, so maybe that's part of the reason?).
Overall, the old look was much much better. This new one...not so much.
I think I'm going to stop
I think I'm going to stop replying to the white background thing. I fixed that two days ago. Check forum for update please.
Bright.
The layout is fine, but it is too bright. It is because of all the white. I would suggest that a second skin for the site be available for people that need something easier on the eyes. I would suggest black or a dark gray.
Lol
I think most people are overreacting to this change because they are not yet used to this layout. I bet if the site had always had this layout from the beginning, and then changed to the one we had before the same complaints would arrise. I say we give it a few more weeks to settle down and get everything working, then we can always discuss the layout later. I think there are probably more pressing issues that can be dealt with in the meantime and for now this layout will suffice.
...
The colour scheme is a step backwards, sorry.
The layout is pretty cool, and I like the way avatars are displayed on the right bringing the posts to the forefront, but (no offence) the colour scheme looks like a misatched late 90's site. I guess there's still stuff to iron out though.
EDIT: You have to preview before posting as well(?) Hm.
I really don't like it...
Everything is so far spaced apart, rather than neatly organized. It's obnoxious having to navigate around the pages like that. The color scheme is also highly annoying to look at.
All in all, I really dislike it. It's layout is horrible. It needs to be more clearly organized for starters, and the tables look like they're overlapping one another giving it a really uncomfortable look.
The new design is OK, the
The new design is OK, the only thing right now that's need to be fixed is some bugs, but otherwise I'm happy with this ^^
I Don't Know
The new look design looks better than the original one. This page looks up to date of other websites today but it could use some work and stuff to make it website and vore friendly.
Looks suspiciously like
Looks suspiciously like Drupal... Well, to be honest, though the design isn't actually bad, the previous one was much more functional and user-friendly. I think.
I agree.
This one might look shiny, but it's too difficult to use to be worth it.
Not too bad...
It's a good look, but it could use some fine tuning.
would personally love an
would personally love an option for the old look, hate this new one, even the avatar's etc.. are on the wrong side on the forums ><
I found nothing wrong with
I found nothing wrong with the old look. It was easier to navigate and easier on the eyes.
too bright
Kinda hurts my eyes o_O