Site Design

The Anchors · Post by **The Anchors** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 9:49 pm

I feel that song fight could really use a makeover. Nothing drastic, just a simple and easy to navigate design. I'm not sure how inclined others here are with web design, but I threw this together in a few minutes. Maybe somone could work with it?

Also, after a rough couple of weeks The Anchors are soon to return.

Post by **Spud** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 9:54 pm

Maybe it's just me, but I find that lifeless and uninteresting. Clean, sure - but booooooooorring.

Don't worry, the animal skins will be gone eventually.

SPUD

The Anchors · Post by **The Anchors** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 9:57 pm

What will replace the animal skins?

Bjam · Post by **Bjam** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 10:08 pm

Songfight has had all different themes in the past. RGB, CYMK, wasn't there a chocolate/vanilla/something one? Maybe I'm imagining that one...

Anyway. Possibilites are eeeeendless. Ish.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 10:54 pm

Chocolate/vanilla/strawberry.

Also don't forget licorice/pumpkin, the first "special" theme. There have been other seasonal ones as well.

I have no respect for "designers" who do their mockups in FrontPage or who simply throw things together. Some of us actually take pride in our work. I also don't see how the proposed design is any better than the current one, seeing as how it's exactly the same layout, only without any identity.

(And of all the elements to keep, why did you stick with the fugly "stream all" button?)

bz£ · Post by **bz£** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:05 pm

"I threw this together in a few minutes" is pretty much the worst thing you can say about your work. It basically means "I guarantee that this is sucky." Lie about it! Tell us you put some thought and effort into whatever you've done, so we won't automatically dismiss it.

Just some advice, you know, for next time.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:10 pm

It'd be even worse if he had actually put any work into that, considering it looks like every other site designed using the standard "clean weblog" template that comes with so many things now.

Also what the hell are the fight names supposed to be there? Might as well be "love," "candy," and "flowers," for all the correlation there is between the names and the look of things.

The Anchors · Post by **The Anchors** » Mon May 01, 2006 5:59 am

Wow, feisty are we? I was simply suggesting that the site could use a makeover, as it's not exactly the prettiest thing around. Thanks for jumping on my ass there everyone.

Now if I said I threw a song together in a few minutes, kick me in the balls for it. But this was seriously ten minutes of me tweaking the existing Song Fight design. I don't do web designs, this isn't my work.

Also, I'm just going to ignore anything that Fluffy has to say about web sites. Apparently when his isn't being a roaming dick on Song Fight he is drawing shitty comics and making even shittier sites for them to be placed on. Seriously. Hideous.

john m · Post by **john m** » Mon May 01, 2006 7:10 am

Who the hell are you?

Dan-O from Five-O · Post by **Dan-O from Five-O** » Mon May 01, 2006 7:51 am

Well he's the noob with absolutely no web design skills whose come along to make design suggestions to Spud & JB and insult Fluffy in the process.

Sit back and enjoy the beat down.

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Mon May 01, 2006 7:56 am

Well, come on guys, it is cleaner and easier to read. But, as was mentioned, it has no soul. Soul is what gives a site its character. Even if it's funky and doesn't meet someone's requirements for clean-site-dness. Tradition at a place like Songfight, drawn from history as tradition often is, bases itself on what came before. This plays as much a role in site usefulness and value as any website design whitepaper. The next important thing to keep in mind is the focus of said site or community. Arguably, this focus is music making. So, one has to consider whether generic clean site goals have anything to do with music making. I think not. Lastly you need to consider whether the current design accomplishes or defeats these goals. Unless there's a hidden agenda here, I think it's difficult to establish it misses the mark. Anyone who's been here a few months can see how it evolves. Ain't that cute enough? And thank god it doesn't look like a blog! Songfight isn't a blog. I am so fucking sick of blogs (well, perhaps you know the ones I mean. They look like that example page). Maybe once OTM takes over the design will change (being a democracy and all) but for the time being it still has soul.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Mon May 01, 2006 8:44 am

This was the response I expected:

"DURR HURR I DIDNT LIKE WHAT PERSON WITH 12 YEARS OF WEB DESIGN EXPERIENCE SAID ABOUT MY FIRST PAEG SO ILL TAKE A SCREENSHOT OF THEIR WEBSITE AND SAY IT SUCKS THATLL TOTALLY TEACH EVERY1 A LESSON"

So I'm glad you're being civil about it.

Adam! · Post by **Adam!** » Mon May 01, 2006 9:06 am

The Anchors wrote:Also, I'm just going to ignore anything that Fluffy has to say about web sites.

Did you see his blog? The style changes between different intensities of plaid (or fictitious colours) but it always looks wicked.

Anyways, IIRC ad hominem attacks are the best way to make friends and influence people. You should be popular around here.

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Mon May 01, 2006 9:18 am

Has anyone noticed how much cleaner the NYTimes site is now? Has anyone noticed how much harder it is to find category news items? But when they introduce custom home pages it'll be easier to see what's important to you and ignore items you will no longer have to see and therefore prolong ignorance...oh, that's Google news...

fodroy · Post by **fodroy** » Mon May 01, 2006 11:28 am

no to a makeover.

Post by jb » Mon May 01, 2006 11:40 am

I enjoy a good game of Bash the Newbie, but in this case I'd like to encourage y'all to calm down. Dude made a suggestion. He didn't fuck your mom or anything. Or he's at least being circumspect if he did. I for one appreciate that. Nobody needs to know that shit.

(It certainly warms my "humble" heart to see everyone leaping to our venerable site design's defense.")

The site design is a combination of traditional and practical. In our case "traditional" is within the context of the history of Song Fight. I think it was two years on before we changed "artists name" to "artist name" in the upper-right corner box.

So you see, changes are not lightly made, and will almost always be made either in the spirit of the traditional design or with an eye towards being surreptitious enough that they don't sabotage the traditional design.

If you have ideas that help us improve the site with an eye to those principles, we'll be happy to hear them. However, *because* of those principles there will almost definitely NOT be a major site look-and-feel overhaul any time soon.

JB

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon May 01, 2006 11:44 am

The Anchors wrote:Wow, feisty are we? I was simply suggesting that the site could use a makeover, as it's not exactly the prettiest thing around. Thanks for jumping on my ass there everyone.

Now if I said I threw a song together in a few minutes, kick me in the balls for it. But this was seriously ten minutes of me tweaking the existing Song Fight design. I don't do web designs, this isn't my work.

Also, I'm just going to ignore anything that Fluffy has to say about web sites. Apparently when his isn't being a roaming dick on Song Fight he is drawing shitty comics and making even shittier sites for them to be placed on. Seriously. Hideous.

I think you meant to go to BooFuckingHooIHaveAVictimComplex.Org

Seriously, you made something, and people told you what they thought about it. No one's saying you're ugly, or that your mother is bad in bed, they are talking about the thing that you yourself asked people to talk about. No one's jumping all over your ass, they just think you are bad at designing websites.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon May 01, 2006 11:45 am

I mean

Welcome to Songfight!

blue · Post by **blue** » Mon May 01, 2006 12:28 pm

i have had a couple of friends mention that it took them a long-ass time to figure out the tabbing to access the diff fights, exacerbated by browsers caching whichever fight they accessed first into their browser autocomplete, so they always end up at eg songfight.org/color when they type in songfight<tab>.

i dont remember this being a problem before the animal colors.. did we use to have the color of the two defocused fights in the tab?

john m · Post by **john m** » Mon May 01, 2006 12:34 pm

Yes. That's why it's so confusing now.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Mon May 01, 2006 1:09 pm

jb wrote:I enjoy a good game of Bash the Newbie, but in this case I'd like to encourage y'all to calm down. Dude made a suggestion. He didn't fuck your mom or anything. Or he's at least being circumspect if he did. I for one appreciate that. Nobody needs to know that shit.

Sure, and I feel that my responses in particular were justified considering it was exactly the sort of commentary he was asking for ("I threw this together in a few minutes. Maybe someone could work with it?"). Then when he got that kind of commentary he made personal attacks on my own contributions to the Internet (yes, my comic sucks, but that's only a very tiny part of my site) and the Song Fight forums (and personally I don't think I'm a dick to people unless they truly deserve it, which is sadly a lot of the time around here lately). Most of the time I try to be helpful and thoughtful and polite and kind until someone else throws a punch, and I'm not going to refrain from educating them when they do so. And even my response after he started insulting my personality and skills was pretty tame (just a bit of gentle sarcasm), especially compared to what I <em>wanted</em> to write.

I have to wonder why The Anchors are wearing size 32 britches when <em>clearly</em> they're a size 40.

Post by jb » Mon May 01, 2006 1:11 pm

hey i'm just sayin', aren't there better flame wars to have? maybe not. most things that people say in this world of ours don't really need a response.