Couple more site bugs and whatnot:

[WazzaMouse]

All news articles in the Archive section have a date of July 27th 2006
(as does the one article currently active though this was reported)

copyright should be 2001-2006 as the site was launched in 2001

Order symbols are missing from the Team Members sections(not sure if this was intentional, but it was always nice to see from what part of the community people hail)

Header image masthead.jpg has a nice background but the typeface is pretty low res.

All of the contact links from the Team Members page and elsewhere lead to a form but you can only select CIK or Stonecold to contact. (its a nice deal as it keeps bots from capturing emails on the site. Just needs the others added)

[GizmoHB]

Magma Site Design Issues

First of all Id like to say that I dont mean to offend anybody with this lil post (I know there seems to be some tension within magma members these days regarding hosting, the tain, credits etc etc.

Overall the site is terrible right now, it feels like a cheap blog template (rapidweaver, wordpress, blogger etc) that was edited to fit the old projectmagma sites content and screwing it up while doing so, im kinda dissapointed to be honest, magma is a creative bunch of people, and im sure something better could have been made. its a boring site graphic wise 2, this simply isnt an improvent over the old site. I guess thats my opinion so I'll leave it at that and focus on other stuff...

Now I know the main page says "We have redesigned our websites to make the website more easy to navigate and have created a cleaner look" but I dont agree with that statement at all! (im sorta restricting myself to the main page (for now) but most of these problems exist on every page)

Logo:
come on! its huge! scale it down, the logo is not the important feature of the website, it is the content and the site's purpose that should be emphasized. The logo should not dominate the page, but instead work subtly to help to lend gravity, interest, and context to the content and the site's purpose.

Eye flow and layout:
this is the main problem, its just awful to look at, since most of us read from left to right, top to bottom, we tend to look top left first, this means the logo position is correct (its still huge), from there on the eye moves to the right....I'll just take a screenshot and draw on it...all this typing...



Text Alignment / Spacing:
lots of stuff wrong here also, the smaller the text the smaller the spacing between paragraphs...right now every break is different, which makes the page hard to read. The content seems scattered around the page, the structure is gone.

Content:
The sites content is pretty boring, since its a site about a game, Id expect more things related to the game, right now its text only, which isnt a real good presentation form for a game I guess. the only page worth looking at is the "what is myth?" page, which uses screenshots, different colored collumns/boxes, and other graphical elements to make it more appealing.

anyway, hope this helps somebody, if not atleast I got to let it out...

...Giz

[AblitERateOR]

ya i have to say i agree with you on all of those points, i just plain like the old site a lot more. the new one looks out of place

[Lugas]

Also the downloads before Project Magma 2.0 have dissapeared. This would make it impossible to install Myth fresh on an Intel Mac or those without OS 9.

[Doobie]

it also makes it impossible to download any of our old projects...

[Lugas]

Is there any way of getting them back?

[Doobie]

yes

[The Elfoid]

It looks nice enough. To be honest the whole 'eye tracker' thing is only an issue to first-time users. And we've all been around the Magma site enough now.

[GizmoHB]

Sure Elf, ppl will get used to bad sites eventually (this isnt 100% true but oh well), for me it'll just result in avoiding it and bookmarking the forum so I wont have to go through the site ever again)...

I dont think thats a good way to look at things Elf (I wonder if ur the type of person that says "yea thats cool" when somebody asks or shows you something). Magma is an important sitein our lil myth community, a lot of ppl are forced to go through it for their myth updates so it should be as close to perfect as possible...

...Giz

[The Elfoid]

Interesting you wonder if I'm the 'yeah thats cool' type since on another (non myth) forum I freuqent, I'm renowned for the level of brutal critisism I offer. People even say 'dont comment on this richard' (I am richard) when they post things since they expect a complaint.

I just happen to like the new look.

EDIT: The window-header along the top says 'Projects' for both Projects and Downloads.

[Gholsbane]

As the initial designer of this new look, I guess I should chip in.

Overall the site is terrible right now, it feels like a cheap blog template (rapidweaver, wordpress, blogger etc) that was edited to fit the old projectmagma sites content and screwing it up while doing so, im kinda dissapointed to be honest, magma is a creative bunch of people, and im sure something better could have been made. its a boring site graphic wise 2, this simply isnt an improvent over the old site. I guess thats my opinion so I'll leave it at that and focus on other stuff...

First, I only ever designed this for the What is Myth page. A complete overhaul of the rest of the site was on the books but it hasn't been a priority for me of late. That's why CIK and StoneCold decided to go ahead and just use the design as a template, though they never consulted with anyone about it first. Anyway, I am responsible for some of your complaints so here goes.

Logo:
come on! its huge! scale it down, the logo is not the important feature of the website, it is the content and the site's purpose that should be emphasized. The logo should not dominate the page, but instead work subtly to help to lend gravity, interest, and context to the content and the site's purpose.

I don't know if you remember the old one but it was about 3 times as big. A logo is important for lending brand to a site, and frankly, this one is pretty inoffensive compared to most of the garish monstrosities out there. Besides, 84 pixels is really not all that much... That said, you're entitled to your opinion :)

Eye flow and layout:
this is the main problem, its just awful to look at, since most of us read from left to right, top to bottom, we tend to look top left first, this means the logo position is correct (its still huge), from there on the eye moves to the right....I'll just take a screenshot and draw on it...all this typing...

OK this is a valid concern but I think your image is a little misleading. There's been research to prove that when visiting a site, people's ayes will jump straight to the main content and work their way down, skimming in here and there: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

The separation of the navigation element is actually a useful visual cue to say 'This is separate from the main content and has it's own purpose, you can ignore it if you want, but here it is in case you need it.' If the navigation was too close to content, it would be in danger of blending in too much and becoming more difficult to locate when you needed it.

A key element of design is contrast. It should be used effectively and in tandem with structure to differentiate separate sections of a page.

Text Alignment / Spacing:
lots of stuff wrong here also, the smaller the text the smaller the spacing between paragraphs...right now every break is different, which makes the page hard to read. The content seems scattered around the page, the structure is gone.

Totally agree here but I think it's not a universal problem. The downloads, projects and about pages need work, but my original stylesheet caters for general body text. This is just a by-product of the repurposing.

Content:
The sites content is pretty boring, since its a site about a game, Id expect more things related to the game, right now its text only, which isnt a real good presentation form for a game I guess. the only page worth looking at is the "what is myth?" page, which uses screenshots, different colored collumns/boxes, and other graphical elements to make it more appealing.

Yeah, that's an issue, and certainly something can be done for the static pages, but for the news pages, it's sometimes difficult to find relevent graphics for every story.

anyway, hope this helps somebody, if not atleast I got to let it out...
...Giz

Thanks Giz, I appreciate the comments, hopefully they'll inspire something to be done, but I doubt it will happen any time soon. Maybe I'll get the chance to have another crack at it one day, but that's also pretty unlikely. Take care,

- James

[Gholsbane]

Header image masthead.jpg has a nice background but the typeface is pretty low res.

Not quite sure what you mean by this. Are you referring to the slightly pixellated look of the fill? That's actually an intentional (though possibly ill-conceived) effect used to give the logotype some definition.

[vinylrake]

As an employed computer geek with experience in user interface design dating back to the dawn of time (Macintosh 128k) I have to say I disagree with the general "Magma's site design sucks" comments.

Now I know the main page says "We have redesigned our websites to make the website more easy to navigate and have created a cleaner look" but I dont agree with that statement at all! (im sorta restricting myself to the main page (for now) but most of these problems exist on every page)

Personally, I think the main page - and subsequent pages are extremely easy to navigate, and the look _is_ cleaner. It might not be one's cup of tea, but it is cleaner and more consistent. True the menubar under the header is almost a cliche at this point it's so widespread and it does give it that blog-template look and feel, but the format -

header
menubar
content
footer

is ubiquitous precisely because it works. it is familar - people are used to it and it is about as simple an interface as one can get away with on a multipurposed site. again, it may not be your cup of tea, but there is no rational argument to be made that it isn't simple or clean.

Logo:
come on! its huge! scale it down, the logo is not the important feature of the website, it is the content and the site's purpose that should be emphasized. The logo should not dominate the page, but instead work subtly to help to lend gravity, interest, and context to the content and the site's purpose.

UNless you have your screen resolution set to 800x600 I am not sure where this complaint is coming from. From my experience, any header/logo that is under 100 pixels in height can hardly be called huge these days. For comparison with some other fairly well designed community sites; Playmyth's logo is 100px, Bungie.net's is @100px, FlyingFlip's is 257px, MythAddict's is 107px, The Package's is 120px, myth@bungie.org is 100px, etc, etc.

Eye flow and layout:
this is the main problem, its just awful to look at, since most of us read from left to right, top to bottom, we tend to look top left first, this means the logo position is correct (its still huge), from there on the eye moves to the right....I'll just take a screenshot and draw on it...all this typing...

I don't follow that at all. Other than the body text section being a tad wide for medium-low resolution monitors (studies show eyes scan only about 2/3 of a visible window/monitor) - I don't think your criticism is valid.

Content:
The sites content is pretty boring, since its a site about a game, Id expect more things related to the game, right now its text only, which isnt a real good presentation form for a game I guess. the only page worth looking at is the "what is myth?" page, which uses screenshots, different colored collumns/boxes, and other graphical elements to make it more appealing.

I can see this as a valid point if the goal of the site is to attract people who don't know the game to the game, but it really depends on who the intended target audience is I think. But I wouldn't argue that a few more well thought out graphics would hurt the presentation.