Hey GAFers,
I think we can all agree that the current Tested design isn't awesome. It was a crazy rush job, put together in two weeks, and we simply didn't include a bunch of important stuff, like categorization, notifications, PMs, RSS feeds, and a whole bunch more that I'm forgetting.
Over the last few months, we've restored a bunch of the missing functionality (PMs, notifications, user blogs, quoting and replies, RSS, mod tools, etc). Next on the list, we're going to restore categorization to the site, fix the podcast page (include video and audio versions, as well as links to RSS, iTunes, and a direct download) and refresh the overall look and feel of the design.
As I said before, none of us were particularly happy with the previous design. Because everything happened so quickly, Norm and I weren't involved with the current design at all until it was too late to make real changes, and by then the engineers had to move on to the next project. We've fixed the small stuff, and the big changes are coming next.
I wanted to solicit feedback from you guys while we're mapping out changes. Consider this a companion to the
thread over at Tested. Feel free to post suggestions, comments, and critiques here or there. I can't promise that we'll address everything, but we'll address as much of it as makes sense. We don't have any plans to change the mix of content on the site.
Here's are the big things that are already on the list.
- Categorization of all content (videos, news, etc)
- Podcast page to include video + audio, unify comments, add links
- Contrast for reading to be improved, no pure white background
- More posts/page on forums, article comments
- More granular search options
- Image/Video embeds in comments/forum posts
- Promote great user content (forum posts, userblogs) to homepage
- Attach articles/videos/user blogs to forums
- pin threads to top of boards
- Bring polls back to forums
- Jump to last page on multipage threads
- Add Will and Norm to the site header
