Ryzom.com Website

[soulsnatcher]

We are currently working on an engine update of the Ryzom.com website.
This will bring a number of new features, which I discuss below. Most of it is still work in progress, but at least you'll know where we are aiming at.

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I] What's new?
==============

a) New Engine

The look&feel of Ryzom.com is kept as is, but the engine behind it changes completely for something more robust and extensible. We use Plone, a content management framework (http://plone.org/), which is already used on the Ring website.

b) Presentation of the Game for New Players

Currently, new players have to really search a lot on the website to know what Ryzom is about. We address this by refactoring the home page to display the key strenghts of the game on top of the news, linked to a features page made more readable and more complete. A small video is also included on the front page, to make it more attractive and entertaining.

c) Community news & content

You will be able to submit your own news and content (videos, tutorials, reports, screenshots, etc.). The content will only be visible once it has been moderated by us, and be published under the FDL (texts) and the Ryzom Fan Art license (others, like screenshots, movies, etc.).

e) Integrated comments

Instead of creating a dedicated feedback thread by hand on the forum every time we publish a news, we'll have comments directly on the news.

f) Open-sourced development

To benefit from open source qualities (external contributions, better integration of the users' needs), we'll use a open-sourced development method; which means:

- The modifications to the Plone engine will be released under the GPL and available from the public CVS
- The development site (nightly build) is open to all
- The developers' bugtracker is open to all

g) Chronicles

The Chronicles articles are moving to Ryzom.com, to make them more easily accessible to everyone, and a fourth section is added.

f) Other features

- Search engine (and LiveSearch)
- Calendar
- News icons
- RSS feeds


II] Development & Tests
=======================

We are approaching the end of the development phase, but what remains is a lot of polishing, tests and debug. That's where we'll need your help!
You can have a look at the current development version of the website: (http://web-dev.nevrax.com/)

And whenever you see a bug or have a suggestion, enter it in the public bugtracker (http://web-dev.nevrax.com/bugzilla/) (if it's not already in there):

You will need to create an account there if you do not already have one.
Btw, this bugtracker is also used by the web development team to track its progress, you might thus find its content interesting to you too.

Comments welcomed!

--
Xavier.

[acridiel]

Niiiiiiiice :)

Will have a closer look :)

Edit: Allready found a small Bug. My did Comment appear in doubble.
And some Buttons are to small for their texts.
But where´s the Tracker?

Acridiel

[ajsuk]

So is this gunna be part of a new really big advertisement push?
If not, pretty and shiney as it is, looks like a big waste of time to me. >_>

Edit: Page loading is now laaame, gotta lose that .gif movie dudes, its horrific!
Try flash maybe. :P

[uhuhu]

OMG! It's so NICE

[d29565]

Wow, that looks real nice.

[cloudy97]

Xavier, the new site looks very good. There is one feature I miss though: integration with in-game guild forum.

[xenofur]

the link to the ring is nicely done, but needs to be emphasized, perhaps by putting real tab borders around it and the ryzom log?
also it needs a counterpart on the ring-site that leads back or it'll be pretty pointless.

next gripe: resolution! the page is 91 pixels too wide for a proper 1024x768 screen (+(20-50) for the scrollbar) and thus forces vertical scrolling. (get some older monitors there, not everyone has as much cash as you do, yo! :p )

about the video: add a play button that, when clicked, triggers a javascript that sets the image source to the url of the actual gif, much nicer on people with old/slow systems/browsers and/or bandwidth restrictions.

graphics: it's nice to have shiny and funky graphics, but i think it's bad practise to use enhanced or specially generated graphics as advertising, even tho such graphics can never be seen in the actual game. (especially so, when the game graphics are already quite nice...)

the news, chronicles, and what's up(o_O) blocks on the side could use some inner borders, they look pretty cheap now.

could you hide the "+ADD" buttons for accoutns that do not have access rights?

using opera the fonts in the left menu are pretty ... tiny :)

please please please go without totally empty borders on the left and right side of the website this time, the are completely pointless and only make the user scroll more than actually necessary. some of us don't have gobs and gobs of free screen space to spare. ;)

the section titles (presentation, news) could use a bump up in font-size, they are easily overlooked as it is now.

i think the email and print page buttons at the top are pretty pointless(hands up everyone who has EVER used such buttons to email or print a full webpage! ;)) and the language switches would look nicer, when integrated into the top banner.

the white search text-field looks a bit out of place, perhaps give it a frame or something? =)

some of the german buttons (http://web-dev.nevrax.com/Entwicklung/dev-watch-beitraege-des-ryzom-teams-aus-den-deutschen-foren) don't quite fit the images.

are we going to be able to log in on that site with our normal game/forum accounts?

where are the rss feeds? i've been waiting on that for ages! :D

ok, enough griping from me now, props for moving towards a dynamic system! :)

[katriell]

Edit: Page loading is now laaame, gotta lose that .gif movie dudes, its horrific!
Try flash maybe. :P
I like the GIF...no sound. :D

In any case, doesn't a GIF animation finish loading last?

[Xavier Antoviaque]

the link to the ring is nicely done, but needs to be emphasized, perhaps by putting real tab borders around it and the ryzom log?
also it needs a counterpart on the ring-site that leads back or it'll be pretty pointless.

-snip lots of interresting comments-


Thanks - could I ask you you enter these points as tickets in the bugtracker ? It's easier to follow this way, and you'll get updates when we review them or work on them.

--
Xavier.

[xenofur]

right, shoulda been a bit more attentive, sorry ^^;

edit: added them, leaves the last three points of my post above as actual questions/comments ;)

[kibsword]

Loooove the new site!!! :D

Looks shiney and I love the video on the homepage, should help attract new players =)

*huggles nevrax*

[kostika]

next gripe: resolution! the page is 91 pixels too wide for a proper 1024x768 screen (+(20-50) for the scrollbar) and thus forces vertical scrolling.

The page is lovely. But I'll have to agree with Xenofur about the horizontal scrolling. Even with the window maxed I have alot of scroll to see the menus on either side. Really take away from the page. I also run at 1024x768 res, but alot of people still run at 800x600 res. The horizontal scroll will be even worse for them. (and yes ALOT of people run at 800x600 res)

Either make the page dynamically resizing, or take about 30pixels out of the middle area. Either should solve the scroll problem.

[ajsuk]

I can see where that bug tracker would come in useful for the real developers but I dont think I can be arsed to deal with using that everytime I wanna make a comment.

Though I do take some time to read articals/forum posts about the game I dont like spending that much time on it unless its play time. :D

[legokid]

*fires Fire Ball into the air and make it explode*

A very nice site and i mean very very nice. The race movies extremely nice I cant wait for R2 and the new website to be finished.

Keep up the great work :)

//Windra

[blaah]

maybe someone whos registered in bugtracker, could insert one thing there...

that damn vertical scroll is 3km long. dump the news section

ty ;-)

[dazman76]

The new site looks great, but it it's definitely info overload - granted there is a lot to learn about Ryzom, but if possible it needs to be tidied away under meaningful headings :) (I know this is tricky from experience).

As far as resolutions go, please don't redesign the page for 800x600 viewing - 1024x768 is the minimum a web developer should design for - pages that actually fit in 800x600 look horrible, and *always* create vast vertical scrolling if they contain a fair amount of information. Apologies to people running 800x600 - you really need to move up. If you're running a Palmtop or similar, then you should expect the majority of info websites to require scrolling anyway, and possibly both directions. Palmtops and similar are not designed for viewing large documents. If you have a machine capable of higher res but you're monitor is limiting it, you need to pawn a family member and get a new monitor :) If you have a machine that's *not* capable of higher, then read the website on the machine that runs Ryzom - because I can't think of another reason you have only 800x600, and if you're running Ryzom that particular machine (video card etc.) *must* be capable of at least 1024x768 :)

Bottom line - blog sites can be any size you like, sites packed with info deserved to be designed with 1024x768 as a minimum. If possible, provide sites for 'mobile' users seperately - then the people stuck at 800x600 for other reasons can also view the site properly. Whichever way you design a page, if it contains a fair amount of info, it will have to scroll - and not all designs work well in avoiding horizontal scroll - the more you squash content horizontally the more it has to expand vertically, and that really achieves very little - except making the site horrible for 75% of it's visitors.

It may be worth squishing the homepage, and using a different template for the rest - but I don't favour that approach, because it's inconsistent for the visitor. First impressions are important, second impressions are equally important if you want to get people interested.

People may run 800x600 for games, but if that's their Desktop resolution too, something is very wrong, or they're using a Palmtop :)

I agree with Jayce - GIF is not the best way to show a movie at all. It creates two of my pet hates as a programmer - the never-gets-to-100% progress bar for loading the page, and the 'app busy' small egg timer in Firefox, even when focused on another tab that isn't loading. Being a web developer I know what's going on - other visitors will be wondering why the page hasn't finished loading, and never does. Flash is definitely preferable here (file size/quality should still be good), what's more important is a *way to stop the movie* ;) Also, based on experience, the movie is *much* longer than most homepage movies - they tend to be maybe 10-30 seconds, so making the movie link to another longer movie on a different page (or several movies) would be better.

I'm not sure about the 'top bar' containing the links and sever status. Again linked to info overload, it gives the feeling of 'stuff to click everywhere' to the visitor, and that's best avoided - at least on the home page. A website should preferably form a 'pyramid' heirarchy of pages, as closely as possible. When you have a huge number of links on the homepage, this means most of your content is directly underneath on the next 'level' of the heirarchy - it's nice for people to have lots of content to see, but you don't need it all accessible from the beginning. Strong categorisation of info helps the user, 50+ links on a single page does not :)

[rundll32]

great site - god awful loading time

[geezas]

It takes my box 10 secs to load it up, that is a bit on the long side. But it is a testing site, and it probably has all sorts of debug routines enabled ?

[ladattas]

If you use movies of any format, I suggest leaving them as an option in the media section of the site, that way people who want to see either movies or screen shots will get their choice. The bullet-like listing of the features could be condensed and then expanded into another page onto itself called features. To get new players though, it will take mostly ease to find all of the information to make the sale stick.

For example, if you are having a promo-presentation on your front page, then news shouldn't be on the same page since it adds unwanted scrolling to the page itself. It's really hard to find that happy middle with that, but I would suggest starting with three variations for everyone to try out. But, I will end this post with one good point; you made a better and concerted effort compared to SOE's webpage for EQ2, which is either outdated [due to patch/combat updates] or missing pages. I got none of those, so I say you're on the right track. Keep up the good work.

-- Bridget

[kibsword]

I like having the vid on the front page, if potential players visit the site and see the video, it will make them more likely to try the game. However, an optional stop option for those on 56k etc perhaps may be appropiate (perhaps set so that if logged in, your account will remember the setting).

[katriell]

I think the features list should stay on the front page. It does make it slightly busy and crowded, but it's worth seeing right up front. I don't even bother to look at Features pages on other MMORPGs because they're always the same. :p Ryzom's is different.