NEW SITE LAUNCHED!

[Flimmeren]

Okay sothis - I have given the complete layout of this site some consideration, and I would like to put forward some suggestions to improve the user experience more. Whether you actually are able to implement those suggestions is a completely different matter, but there are ways of doing them:

The simple things first:

Start by adding these meta tags to the header section:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no" />
<meta http-equiv="MSThemeCompatible" content="no" />
<meta name="distribution" content="Global"/>
<meta name="rating" content="General"/>
<meta name="robots" content="ALL INDEX"/>
<meta name="author" content="Anime Planet"/>
<meta name="copyright" content="2006 Anime Planet"/>

And then you do of course need to add this:
<meta name='keywords' content='anime,news, reviews,rating,japanime,cartoons,series,otaku,foru m,anirec,recommendations,community' />
<meta name='description' content='Anime Planet Forum' />
These keywords should differ for each page they are placed on and reflect the textual content.

.. and it may of course also pay off to add an RSS feed to the anirec section:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Frontpage - RSS-feed" href="http://www.anime-planet.com/rss/generateRSS.php"/>
But I seem to recall you talking about this in the past.

It pays also off to add proper description of the picture content on the corresponding ALT tags. This may affect the siterating to a surpringly large extent.

And now on to the content in the frame. There are those who react on the border of the frame, and I can understand them. There are however ways of handling this issue without sacrificing the work that already has been done.

First of all: if possible - try to minimize the padding and border on the frame and on the content inside the frame.

Second: dont stay with the tradition 1024 x 768 look on the site - make the site taller. You will avoid the info being cramped onto a screen that is already filled with visual elements that way.

Third: it doesn't hurt to reduce the fontsize till for instance 8pt when you havent got more space to go on.

Fourth: try to let the forum header and footer stay in the same position when you scroll, which brings us on to the fifth and last suggestion of mine:

Fifth: try to avoid using iframe. You could do much of the same of what you want to accomplish with div tags with autoscroll set to true. And yes, I am aware of the situation with the forum - but it is fully possible to cheat here. I would for instance have read the forum page into an array with fsockopen and then extracted the necessary information - and then write it into the different div tags you want to use. This is a rather straightforward approach that does not steal too much cpu cycles and which you may find the easiest to do right now.

[Cetonis]

I actually like the frames; the forum seems to load faster with it. It may 'feel' cramped but all that really amounts to is more scrolling so far as I can tell, no big deal. I also think the mascot is gonna be a really nice touch, makes the site more welcoming ^_^ Very spiffy overall, many thanks!

[ScarletEmerald]

It might be nice to have the forum make the whole site scroll, like the main news page is set up. This would allow a lot more forum text on the screen at once. Not sure how easy this would be...

[Lonefox]

I havn't been around for a long time.

Nice work with the page.

[Ripzter]

Well, as I said I like the new site and all, looks really great. But I rather go straight to "http://www.anime-planet.com/forum" for my forum viewing. Maybe that's just me? Maybe I'm just mean for not being able to give more "constructive criticism"? There's just something about having two scroll bars on one page that totally screws up my forum viewing pleasure. You know when your scrolling the frame and it comes to the top or the bottom, and then you start scrolling the main page scrollbar by mistake? Or you meant to scroll the main page, but instead your mouse happened to be over the forum area? And also, as I stated in an earlier post, I like to use tabs A LOT. I basically open each forum section and each thread in a new tab.

I don't want to be mean or anything, and I've worked my way around it (by going directly to the forum instead of the main page). But consider that if a lot of people are doing that you'll miss a lot of potential viewers of your new improved main site! Or we can just hope that I'm the only one who feels this way :P

Edit: Spelling etc

[sothis]

i guess ill have to lose users then, because after YEARS of people bugging me to put it into the content section, i'm not going to switch it back -_-

*makes note to self to not necessarily listen to community input in the future, as people change their minds!*

[sothis]

It might be nice to have the forum make the whole site scroll, like the main news page is set up. This would allow a lot more forum text on the screen at once. Not sure how easy this would be...

not easy... i'd have to have all of the vbulletin variables and such built into the content window, which i have noooo idea how to do. the amount of time i'd spend on that would probably equal TONS of anirec or other development time :/

if someone out there has tons of vbulletin modding/programming experience and is able to do this for me, please let me know... i definitely don't have the cycles to waste on it though.

*sigh, still very demotivated by this underwhelming lack of response from the multi thousands of people who view the site daily* does anyone in the forum even read the main page or changelist? i feel like im announcing things to a void. blaaaah

-a very frustrated sothis

[ScarletEmerald]

Originally Posted by sothis

not easy... i'd have to have all of the vbulletin variables and such built into the content window, which i have noooo idea how to do. the amount of time i'd spend on that would probably equal TONS of anirec or other development time :/

if someone out there has tons of vbulletin modding/programming experience and is able to do this for me, please let me know... i definitely don't have the cycles to waste on it though.

*sigh, still very demotivated by this underwhelming lack of response from the multi thousands of people who view the site daily* does anyone in the forum even read the main page or changelist? i feel like im announcing things to a void. blaaaah

-a very frustrated sothis

I don't know anything about how this works, but would it be possible to keep the forum in the frame, but somehow set it to not make a scrollbar, and instead cause the frame itself to extend?

[Flimmeren]

I was actually contemplating making some code that took care of this issue. The part of generated HTML I have been looking at (for the forum, that is) - even includes tags that tells you exactly where to cut, how to move the text etc.

Just to give an example of what I am talking about - this is how you could use PHP to change the order of elements on the page:

$fp = fsockopen("http://www.anime-planet.com/forum.php?list=102931", 80, $errno, $errstr, 30);
if (!$fp) {
echo "$errstr ($errno)";
}
else {
$startPos = strpos($fp,"<!-- breadcrumb, login, pm info -->");
$stopPos = strpos($fp,"<!-- / PAGENAV POPUP -->") + strlen("<!-- / PAGENAV POPUP -->");
$header = substr($fp,$startPos,($stopPos - $startPos))
$startPos = $stopPos + 1;
$stopPos = strpos($fp,"<!-- /content area table -->") + strlen("<!-- /content area table -->");
$main = substr($fp,$startPos,($stopPos - $startPos))
$footer = substr($fp,$stopPos + 1)

print "<div style='height:150px;'>".$header."</div>\n";
print "<div style='height:600px;overflow:auto;'>".$main."</div>\n";
print "<div style='height:50px;'>".$footer."</div>\n";
}


I haven't tried this code, but this could definitively be a very easy way around some of the comments you have received so far Sothis.

[XMrNiceguyX]

It may have something to do with the fact that most of the people check other forums than the *site information* part. Regarding the feedback: criticism is a neccasary evil. If you would keep this design for a year and then change back to the old design, you would get an equal and quite probably much more criticism.

People are shown something they are not used to, that's why it's unfamiliar and new. This leads to people thinking it's bad, since it's different than it was. This is absolutely not the case, see it in a brighter light.

I would love to help out on anything, but due to the holidays I'll be quite unavailable for the coming month and hence unapproachable by means other than the forum (which I only get the chance of to check very often, much to my dismay)

Keep your chin up! I still think it's a huge improvement on what it was before, both esthethically and functual.