I’m going to change up the front page a little bit. I’ve already started on it by expanding the width so we can add a bit more content. So I’m wondering what you’d like to put on the side bar?
I decided to remove the petition link since the movie is pretty shelved at the moment. I won’t delete the petition, it just won’t be showcased on the front page.
I’m also going to consolidate the monthly archives link by making a page of its own. It was taking up too much space.
What I will incorporate into the front page:
Twitter link (I will give everyone access to it once I get it all setup)
Facebook link
Link to Youtube channel
images of Cheetara and Mumm-Ra statues that link to Hard Hero preorder page.
Will be keeping Lion-O’s intro…something we’ve had since the very beginning!
Anything else? I’m not going to make it too fancy, otherwise I’ll be stuck working on it for a long time (as usual).
I know it’s going to look weird having the front page be wider than all of the other pages on the site, but just look at it as a test to see how it goes.
Sounds good to me Manny, could we try something with the existing banner that we have for directing traffic to Hard Hero… can we make it a rotating banner that shows each of the available status, and maybe it rotates every 5 seconds or so and whichever T-Cat is showing is the one you’re directed to at the Hard Hero site?
Reason I’d like to try this is that MannyR and I were talking about getting advertisers who carry the statue line in their online stores to buy space in that banner and if we could get maybe three companies to buy in that we could get some income to cover the cost of hosting, forum upgrades and whatever else we decide to do.
If this works and we end up with anything left over we can keep it saved in the paypal account for a rainy day.
I like your ideas for the front page and look forward to seeing what it looks like.
To be honest I think you’ve covered everything, Manny - I can’t think of anything missing.
The only feature I think might be worth adding when we go over to using WordPress is if we give folks the ability to both open each news story on its own page (allowing people to link directly to a news story, as well as post links to it on their Facebook status updates, etc.), and also allowing people to comment on the news stories if they wish - it will make our forums a bit redundant for some things but might add a nice bit of interactivity.
It’s not a working page (the sub-bar doesn’t link to anything).
I really want to add more content to the right sidebar…I think it could potentially be important space that isn’t currently being used.
If someone can make a rotating banner for the statue images, I’ll gladly put it up replacing the two images on the right side of the page.
The twitter graphic on the top is also just a placeholder. If there is something else that’s important, we can put it up there. Just wanted to give you an example of what we can use in that particular space.
And the sub-bar displays some of the sections on the site, particularly those that are exclusive. I tried to add one from each area of the site (toy guide = toys, encyclopedia = cartoon, art gallery = comics, etc).
It’s essentially the same as the current, but I cleaned up some stuff (the news archive, old links) and put some links to important sections of the site.
I still have the recordings that I got most of my interviewees to record for the ThunderCatsLair.org website - Peter Newman, Earle Hyman, Lynne Lipton and Gerrianne Raphael are some of the ones I collected saying “This is “…” and you’re looking at ThunderCatLair” - we should use them in some capacity. Maybe do a rotating clip play with some of those (like you have with Larry). Otherwise, I’ll use them for the podcast or something.
Well, we could have options on which welcome visitors want to listen to, but I don’t think having the message automatically play every time someone loads the page is a good idea. Or, if I am reading Mark’s post correctly, we could add both clips one after the other and just make one big welcome message…although I’m not sure if it would sound right.
Anyhow, if no one objects to what the front page looks like, I’m going to replace the current page with the one shown in this thread by the end of the weekend.
If you have more suggestions, just keep posting them.
I thought that the message might be able to rotate what comes up, but that each time you visit the front page you’d randomly get a different welcome message that only plays if you hit the play button, like we do now with Larry’s greeting. But whatever you decide to go with will be fine by me.
With the renewed front page, will we be able to use the blog to update the news feed again? I’d like to put up the news of our winning the Best Site of the Decade award when you’re done.
No, sorry. We’re gonna have to use straight HTML for now. If you’re not comfortable doing it, I’ll be happy to do it. I promise I won’t lag on posting updates on the front page. I know how important it is.
I can’t find a workaround regarding Blogger without redirecting to a subdomain and it is just too complicated to do especially since we’re moving to Wordpress eventually.
Hey Manny, thanks for the status update about this.
For myself I’d say let’s get the front page workaround up for now and then forge ahead with the site relaunch which will serve as a permanent fix for this problem - I think it would be better for us (or in this case you, LOL) to focus the most time on that rather than on a temporary workaround.
I can send them all in one .rar/zip file or something whilst you decide on what to do with them. If you’re going to choose one, choose the Peter Newman one. It’s awesome.
Yeah, the site header and navigation bar display as broken links for me too - I’m using Safari for Windows, and it also displays as a broken link in my ancient version of Internet Explorer, namely the dreaded IE6!
Could I add that I think we’re dedicating too much real estate to the twitter graphic? I’d rather see a more discrete couple of links to the facebook group and the twitter account if that’s cool with everyone else.
