This is nothing more then a list of
small things I've noticed that are still being developed on
SpawnPoint.com but I'm not for sure if these have been thought of.
I'm sure they have but they just haven't been written into the code
of the pages. I address only four things. The SP navigation, the
login forums, blog editing, and the leader board.
When I come
to the SpawnPoint front page not logged in the page looks beautiful.
The page has a lovely setup and a very nice design. Kudos to the
development team for all their work on SpawnPoint. I know how hard it
is sometimes to be motivated to work on more 'coding' for a website.
I've been down that road quite a few times. :) Continuing on with the
front page. I notice the menu bar (Features, Blogs, Game Buzz, ...)
has been updated. This is not so bad but in my personal opinion
(which this blog is all about) I believe the menu should be in
alphabetical order. Reason being it I think it makes finding what you
want quicker. This gives a slight 'satisfaction' to users who have
never been to the website before and are unfamiliar with the
navgiation. I find that a lot of people are use to alphabetical lists
being in common places. Someone who is looking for say a "clans"
link and knows their alphabet will look towards the left side of the
navigation panel. Since that is the order of the alphabet. This
follows the games list on the very top of the page "Games: A B
...".
I believe the rest of the page looks and feels very
well. Some might say some of the images and banners might be kid of
large. Especially if you're using a larger screen resolution.
1024x768 or even 800x600 in some cases, still.
Now let me move
on to logging in. I noticed if you type in the wrong password the
next page with the retry setup has an incorrect tab order of the edit
boxes. If you start as the very top user name edit box and press tab,
it goes to the vBulletin login user name. Then back to the top
password, then once again to the vBulletin password box. This is a
slight error, I'm not for sure how you would fix this one. Maybe just
edit the vBulletin header.php or the header include file to not
include the login forum box. Since the login forum box will already
be on all the pages above the navigation panel. Everything looks good
if you login correctly as well.
Also, on this blog post
editing. A "preview" page would be very helpful. Also when
you view a blog, perhaps at the bottom of the blog where it says
“Posted In:” there could be a “Posted by” ?
Other than
these two slight rambling about only two things. I really love the
idea of the "On Demand" page. It is innovative and it is
extremely pretty. :) Also, I'm very pleased to say the advertisement
banners and logos about SpawnPoint.com are very sexy.
For the
"SpawnPoint Gaming Servers" list on the front page and on
the gaming_servers.php page I believe a more easier flow of content
in the lists would be to have alternating row colors. I believe this
would help users follow the row more easily with a sense of
organization and symmetricalness. Another extremely great suggestion,
though I'm not to for sure if this is actually possible. This might
require a lot of system resources to do since the server stats lists
are extremely large. Perhaps remove any stats that match banned
steam_ids. That way when users view server stats pages they won't
contain banned users. Giving a overall sense of security and
dedication from the server administrators to provide a clean friendly
environment. This is more of a "public perception" type of
thing. I believe this would make the perception of SpawnPoint servers
and SpawnPoint itself to the public better. The public will not have
to think to themselves, "Wow, this place is filled with
hackers!" Also the navigation on the SP leader board is all
messed up.
Once again! This is all my own opinion.
Unforgettably,
MusicPirate
