The Org Redesign - Main Thread

[Pwolf]

Since the org staff wants to wait to gather ideas in an organized manner, I've decided to take it upon myself to create what I think are the necessary threads to get the job done. I don't want to wait until the coding is done before we know what the website will look like and function. Lets start now.

This is the main thread. Please post here if you have topic ideas that need a separate thread. I would appreciate it if everyone would allow me to create new topics so I can keep track of everything easier. You will also find a list of threads for easier access. If you plan on checking these threads often, bookmark this page.

The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

The Org Redesign - Design...

The Org Redesign - New Features and/or Function...

The org is our community, lets work as a community to make it better.

[Pwolf]

See these threads for some ideas and concerns that have been previously expressed:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... 2&t=101794

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... 2&t=101989

[Pwolf]

The site feedback forum, lost of good stuff there if anyone wants to look through them for ideas:

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... m.php?f=16

[Phantasmagoriat]

Starting these threads was a good idea Pwolf

Easy navigation is my biggest concern, so I think we could use a separate thread for:
Headings/Structure

If I think of any more threads, I'll be sure to post here

This is the current structure of the Members.Main Page:

My Account...
o View profile
o Edit profile
o Local downloads
o Download queue
o My journal
o Submitted banners

Search For AMVs...
o Super Search
o Newest Videos
o Newest Downloads
o Search by Anime
o Search by musician
o All Search Options

Fans...
o My Favorite Videos
o Opinions Given
o Interviews (10)
o Newsletter
o View Alert Log
o Modify Alerts

Editors...
o Opinions Received
o Enter new video
o Edit video info
o Upload A Video
o Bandwidth Usage
o Video Embedding

Community...
o Chat rooms
o Forum
o My journal buddies
o Search for members
o Site Store

Donate...
o Make a Donation
o My donation history
o Site donation stats

Guides...
o View all guides
o How to play videos
o How to use the site
o Everything A/V

Contests...
o AMV Contest List
o AMV Contest Forum
o Banner Ad Contest
o Logo Contest
o Viewers Choice

Site Help...
o Site Help Forum
o FAQ
o Site Rules
o Report a bug
o About Us
o Site Homepage
o Members Main Page
o Useful Files
o Logout

Quick Search For AMVs:

--------------------

global statistics...
* Members 836089
* Videos 142986
* Creators 49112
* Direct DLs 9127
* Indirect DLs 5841
* Local DLs 87211

'top' lists...
* Top 10% Videos
* Top Star Scale
* Top Favorite Videos
* Commented Videos
* Top 30 Anime
* Most Used Anime
* Most Used Music
* Most Under Rated

banner ad contest...
* Total Banners 21473
* Vote Queue 0
* New 7
* My Worthy 0
* My Unworthy 0
* Winners 4398

new journal entries...
new vid on the block...

----------

Pending Stars...
Daily Upload Stats...
Notices...
New / Updated Opinions
New Quick Comments
New Alerts


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It looks a bit scary when all expanded like that, but if there are a few main headings, and a bunch of stuff is rearranged/merged/grouped, it's not that bad.
I might get around to organizing it the way I would have it, but for now I'm just gonna post that there and let other people have fun

A concept mapping tool like VUE or the online bubbl may be helpful to brainstorm the structure of the site (BTW, I'm still looking for a tool like this with better online collaboration...). Plain text works too, but it's harder to move around and group ideas. Think about what it would be like if you scattered all those links out onto a table, then try to organize them. Just drag them around. You can make all sorts of connections you never thought of before, and eventually categories will start to form, perhaps even different/better ones than what we're using now.

Generally you want to have a small number of main headings (... using subheadings if needed...) and join categories of you can, I'm sure a lot of pages can be merged too. This is actually what I did when I proposed a new structure to the AVTech guide earlier this month (scroll down to post#11). Of course, that looks kind of scary too... but if there were pop-up menus, everything about AMV production can be broken into 5 parts, which is a good target number IMO. I'm not sure if the org can be broken into 5 categories though...

Also, Pwolf, maybe rename the Design thread to something like Design/Aesthetics to be a bit more clear and distinguish it from what I'm proposing (a mod may need to move a couple posts though).

[Phantasmagoriat]

Oh, and maybe a separate thread for Layout,
Which is closely related to Structure, but quite different.

Structure is how the website is organized: what links go where
Layout is how the Structure is presented: sidebar, top, right, bottom, etc...
New Features and/or Functions would be things that help with the Layout

I've never designed a website before, but I think it makes sense to construct the site in that order.

[Pwolf]

Oh, and maybe a separate thread for Layout,
Which is closely related to Structure, but quite different.

Structure is how the website is organized: what links go where
Layout is how the Structure is presented: sidebar, top, right, bottom, etc...
New Features and/or Functions would be things that help with the Layout

I've never designed a website before, but I think it makes sense to construct the site in that order.

I consider layout and structure part of design.

[Phantasmagoriat]

Oh, and maybe a separate thread for Layout,
Which is closely related to Structure, but quite different.

Structure is how the website is organized: what links go where
Layout is how the Structure is presented: sidebar, top, right, bottom, etc...
New Features and/or Functions would be things that help with the Layout

I've never designed a website before, but I think it makes sense to construct the site in that order.

I consider layout and structure part of design.

Alright, I just bring this up because I think the thread is going to skip around a lot. It may be difficult to have back-and-forth discussion when there are people talking about aesthetics, and others talking about menus. But I guess it depends how much discussion the thread generates too.

[Pwolf]

Oh, and maybe a separate thread for Layout,
Which is closely related to Structure, but quite different.

Structure is how the website is organized: what links go where
Layout is how the Structure is presented: sidebar, top, right, bottom, etc...
New Features and/or Functions would be things that help with the Layout

I've never designed a website before, but I think it makes sense to construct the site in that order.

I consider layout and structure part of design.

Alright, I just bring this up because I think the thread is going to skip around a lot. It may be difficult to have back-and-forth discussion when there are people talking about aesthetics, and others talking about menus. But I guess it depends how much discussion the thread generates too.

It would be nice if there was a subforum for all of this...

[Kai Stromler]

This is the current structure of the Members.Main Page:

My Account...
o View profile
o Edit profile
o Local downloads
o Download queue
o My journal
o Submitted banners

Search For AMVs...
o Super Search
o Newest Videos
o Newest Downloads
o Search by Anime
o Search by musician
o All Search Options

Fans...
o My Favorite Videos
o Opinions Given
o Interviews (10)
o Newsletter
o View Alert Log
o Modify Alerts

Editors...
o Opinions Received
o Enter new video
o Edit video info
o Upload A Video
o Bandwidth Usage
o Video Embedding

Community...
o Chat rooms
o Forum
o My journal buddies
o Search for members
o Site Store

Donate...
o Make a Donation
o My donation history
o Site donation stats

Guides...
o View all guides
o How to play videos
o How to use the site
o Everything A/V

Contests...
o AMV Contest List
o AMV Contest Forum
o Banner Ad Contest
o Logo Contest
o Viewers Choice

Site Help...
o Site Help Forum
o FAQ
o Site Rules
o Report a bug
o About Us

There are 46 subheadings in this list. This is way too fricking many, even set up collapsable like they are currently. Some of them can probably be merged, some are dead content and need to get out of these buttons and over somewhere else. The discussion of what's going to remain of these should probably take place in addition to the discussion about how they're presented.

What follows is an attempt to purge these menus down to a more reasonable size. The .org has a lot of functionality, which is a good thing, so it's not going to be a huge reduction. I normally have such tabs open as to see 17 of the 46 available buttons; if the below was implemented as-is, I'd have 13 buttons of 28 to 32 visible.

My Account... (original)
o View profile
o Edit profile
o Local downloads
o Download queue
o My journal
o Submitted banners

My Account... (new)
o My profile
o Local downloads
o My journal

Merge View and Edit to a view/edit control on the profile page. If the layout on the queue page was cleaned up, it could easily be integrated into the local downloads page (suggestion: above the videos already downloaded). Banners would be associated with the banner contest. further down.

Search For AMVs... (original)
o Super Search
o Newest Videos
o Newest Downloads
o Search by Anime
o Search by musician
o All Search Options

Search For AMVs (new)

This should be a button on its own, taking the user to the current 'all search options' page. The quick search box needs to move up the page as well, but this has too many options and they are all duplicated on the 'all search options' page. (which will get a post of its own later.)

Fans... (original)
o My Favorite Videos
o Opinions Given
o Interviews (10)
o Newsletter
o View Alert Log
o Modify Alerts

Fans... (new)
o My Favorite Videos
o Opinions Given
o Alerts

The interview and newsletter pages are dead content (newsletter, no updates since 2007, interviews, no updates since 2004) and need to be moved out of the main menu (see comments on the Community submenu below). There is no reason why 'modify alerts' isn't a control on the alerts page. (at least AFAIK, but it would have to be a really weird reason if the implementation was actually dependent on that.)

Editors... (original)
o Opinions Received
o Enter new video
o Edit video info
o Upload A Video
o Bandwidth Usage
o Video Embedding

Editors... (new)
o Opinions Received
o Enter new video
o Edit video info
o (Upload A Video)
o Bandwidth Usage
o (Video Embedding)

Most of the options here are actually useful; this is one of the core sections of the .org and, being established, has not seen a lot of feature creep. It might be possible to get rid of the upload and embed options here by adding Upload This Video to Local and Generate Embed Code For This Video controls to individual video pages, but I can also see the utility argument for keeping them split out to where they are now.

Community... (original)
o Chat rooms
o Forum
o My journal buddies
o Search for members
o Site Store

Community... (new)
o Chat rooms
o Forum
o Search for members
o Fun Stuff

Journal buddies is a duplicate of a control that's on the journal page, and should stay associated with that. The new Fun Stuff option subsumes the interviews and newsletters page from Fans... above, plus the Site Store. I don't have a design for this, but as a raw idea, this might be a good place to revive the old AMV wiki, but add in more .org-specific content. This helps clean up the main menu without losing the content that gets moved off, and also creates a DIY space for people to add stuff on their own that they feel the broader community might find helpful or interesting. This would be extra work to oversee, but it's worth considering whether this is a tradeoff worth taking.

Donate... and Guides... remain unchanged.

Contests... (original)
o AMV Contest List
o AMV Contest Forum
o Banner Ad Contest
o Logo Contest
o Viewers Choice

Contests... (new)
o AMV Contest List
o Banner Ad Contest
o (Logo Contest) -- seasonal
o (Viewers Choice) -- seasonal

The Contest List should lead with a link to the contest forum. The Banner Ad contest should lead with a link to My Submitted Banners (moved from the account menu). If the logo contest or the VCAs is not currently running, there is no reason to have these buttons on the menu; site history including a collection of past logos and results of previous years' VCAs should go on the Community->Fun Stuff anchor page alluded to above.

Site Help... (original)
o Site Help Forum
o FAQ
o Site Rules
o Report a bug
o About Us

Site Help... (new)
o FAQ
o Site Rules
o Site Help Forum
o Report a bug
o About Us

Just a minor reordering here, intended to reduce RTFM questions; the FAQ is actually really good content-wise, but needs internal navigation work.

Making these cuts gets us down to 28-32 submenu options, depending on how much gets preserved and what time of year it is. I would also vote for this and other interface posts getting split out into a separate structure/layout thread.

--K

[Panky]

Fixing the site structure/layout is quite a job, considering you have to take in mind backwards compatibility with other browsers, and check for problems with fixed or variable width/height with each of them. But what should come first is the organization of the main menu, which, like I expressed in another topic, doesn't look like a main one at all because it contains so many links it's counterproductive. What Kai is saying is probably for the best, you have to sacrifice a few links to make the rest of them more important. And I also agree with merging a few pages (like edit one, recvd ops one, related to your videos, etc).