Utah PHP Users Group site redesign
Sunday, 18 November 2007 @ 16:31I had the pleasure of finishing a pro bono web project last night. Coming up on their fourth anniversary, the Utah PHP Users Group sought a fresh face to better reflect their maturity and depth. Several new features were also added as well as many usability enhancements. My primary goal was to strip away the clutter so that users could find what they were looking for and the content could be digested easily. I also automated several components with custom modules elevating regular human maintenance or moderation.
Love that right-hand nav!
Thanks. What do you think of the vertical design? You don’t see too many sites without a header and footer. I enjoyed designing within a strict grid that required everything to be in one of the three columns.
As described above, my primary goal was to avoid any extraneous fluff. On a site like this, the content is king, even over the navigation and a masthead. I wanted it to be the very first thing. The content is on the left (as we read left to right) and the navigation is on the right (as we are most right handed).
I like the hierarchy of the layout a lot. I wish there was more contrast in the main content. The higher contrast and high saturation of the navigation pulls the eye over to the right, while the grey background and grey text makes the most important content suffer from lower legibility.
Excellent feedback, Seth. I agree that the nav is too strong. I have darkened up the copy on the left a little and it is much better. I wonder if I still need to lighten the gray background a pinch.
yes, maybe a pinch lighter, well, perhaps even a smidgin or tad lighter would be more tasty. Nice work Wade.
Oh, nice! The contrast is much more better.
Overall I like it, looks similar to this site to some extent. I would lighten the background on the left even more. I think the darkness of the gray actually makes the right stick out more. You should lighten it to the color of the current Omniture background (and the Omniture background should be white!).
I think that would be nice looking. Almost makes me want to learn PHP—almost… ;)
Yes, I used a lot of the same structural elements as I used when designing this site, as they are both running on the same customized engine. If I had had more time, I would have liked to have customized it further, but that will have to wait for another day.
The layout is certainly fine, nothing wrong there. Quite usable for people familiar with this site!