My 2 cents - I love the current site, and the gray/blue alternating stripes are *very* easy on the eyes. Please keep this as is. Secondly, I'll echo trickykid's comments against avatars, and as a general comment, why make changes just for the sake of making changes? Personally, I consider LQ's main purpose to be the exchange of knowledge/information between Linux users, and in that regard LQ dominates. Seriously, I don't think a more helpful Linux site exists, and I'm not sure that a new layout or a different color palette would really influence that key goal of one LQ'er helping another. As they say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" -- J.W.

As a yearbook staff member for 3 years, this site is also "paper publishing rules compliant" (for the most part) it elegantly uses white space - well done, and spaces stuff nicely.

There are 4(5/6 if you count white space and the link hover colour) main colours used in LQ- the light blue, the dark blue and the beige/gray (renders differently on different monitors) Having your key colours and sticking to them is one of THE rules of website design.

It is easy on the eyes, is nicely divided (though unified), and overlaps on all the subsections of the site.

Makeover? NO WAY! it's great. (it's like sending *someone who dresses stunning* to "what not to wear")

titanium_geek

As for as the "makeover" goes I think a big no-no would be apropriate. The colors are very good, they are nice to the eyes and the design should not get more important than the purpose of this site: helping fellow Linux/*BSD users.

The avatars: please no! First of all it would slow things down, but even worse: all the sites I have seen that uses avatars are uglier and more full of bad-joke-avatars and things like that. If you must have your account more personal what I would agree on would be adding a photo to the profile. That way you can give other a chance to see what you look like, but it won't be exposed unless someone wants to check out your profile. But, this will still cost storage and, if it gets popular to check out others profiles, bandwidth. But at least it won't be in the way so I would be less against that.

The IRC channel: I like the idea, not for questioning/answering but for social talk between LQ members, improving the community-feel within LQ. The problem is that people may stop posting in the forum and go to the IRC channel, since you may get faster response over there. That will hurt LQ in two ways: less forum posts, less recorded and trackable solutions. The latter is important, since with a forum you not only help the OP but also people searching the forum or googling for an answer. But if there would be a way to make the channel "less support, more social" I would like it. Although I can't see this happening.

However there can be logs saved at the LQ website which will be included in Googles base, but I am not sure however. This has been discussed before and it seems that most people dislike the idea of an IRC channel.


But, I can say something that should be improved here. I think that the site has become a little too disorganized. It is harder to find your way through the site and things are placed very wierd. I think that the layout started out good but now with all this extra that has been born the site need a big, major layout-upgrade. I hope that Jeremy has fixed this in the next improvement of the site. We'll have to wait and see.

Regards.

found LQ quick, lean, and design is more than fine.
It is content oriented, lets keep it that way.
Keep it simple
Jeremy is making a great job at improving step by step
whatever can be improved, but it is already really really good

Avatar discussed many time elsewhere: would vote no as well

I disagree. I think we need animated avatars, and why stop at .gif? Wouldn't it be great if we could use flash for our avatars, then we could embed music as well? That would rock! *kidding*

I agree though. I still maintain that the site is fine. The only suggestion I'd make is to relocate the "view new posts" link to ALWAYS be in the main menu, and not in varying locations page to page. Ditto for other links that appear at different locations depending on which PHP template you're on at the moment.

$.02

When is the link not in the Main Menu?

It's in the second of the main menus, I think KimVette wants it in the first (top) main menu.

Exactly. In some pages the main menu moves to the bottom of the right column, in some it's in the middle.

I thank the more simple the bettter. If this forum had big Pic's and all kinds of java scripts to run I prob. couldnt ust it my PC is already kinda slow.

IF IT ANT BROK DONT FIX IT !!

Happy Birthday chemichael :D For this day only, you are granted an avatar!

Hay thanks that's what I always wanted for ever and ever its better than the pack of smokes my mom got me. By far

Know really thanks.

I wish more forums were as easy as this one. This is the only forum I don't have a problem logging into @ work (which uses winxp). Most including Neowin.net I have to log into multiple times before it sticks and then I have to keep moving within the site to stayed logged in. I also like the color seperation in the post.


peace V

Ditto from me: happy birthday!

Hay thanks to ypu too

www.4hv.org
www.hardforum.com

4hv, If you are logged in, it shows only that page but on the left its a fairly large thing that shows the most recent posts in each subforum. Shows if they have any new posts or not too.

Hardforum. I like the crap free layout, its easy on the eyes to read for hours on end too. I have a fairly big headache from reading this forum, the white background is screaming at me.