I was looking around the forum and I thought I would give you a few suggestions that might help with a cleaner look to the forum.

1] Why are all of the icons like x10 bigger than they need to be? Such as the forum icons, the topic icons in a forum. If you resized them to to be a bit smaller it would give the site a cleaner more slick feel and attract a little more attention.

2] Why are there two banners? The header at the top of the board that reads "DotA 2 Portal" and then the banner with Drow I believe on it that reads "DotA2Portal / Be a wind in the sails of Valfrog...". It is a little weird and kind of annoying to be honest, you really only need one and if you choose option 2 then resize it, it is way to big to be the header/banner of a forum. When I load a page as a member I don't wanna have to scroll 8 years before I see a forum.

3] To be honest I am getting the feeling that this is like a chan and not a forum. In a forum there is an icon to see what topic your in and to back out onto the main forum or the forum the topic resides. Such as on PD if I were in a topic in random chat it would read something like "Forum -> Entertainment -> Random Chat -> I like fish and why". If your going for the chan feel fine dont add this, but if your going to want this forum to attract a lot of new members I would suggest adding it because honestly it is super annoying. And I know "just wait you'll get used to it" but honestly that is just glazing over a really big issue.

4] I am also confused as to why this forum is even visible to normal members. If it's trash then only have it visible to staff, it looks really bad to have a forum labeled "trash" visible to everyone as it basically says hey look here is the garbage of the forum all neat in one place for you to see all the shitty posts that we make all the time.

5] I also feel like a restructuring of the forums is in order. Here is what I think would be cleaner.

/Site/
News and Info
Suggestions / Feedback
Introductions



/DotA/
DotA 2 Tournaments
DotA
Replays

/Random/
Tavern
Artwork
Music
Video Games
Forum Games
Challenges
Blog

(Stating Portal at the top of each one is a little redundant and honest the forum itself seems super spread out.)

I am sure I will see more things I could suggest but I leave these here for you as of right now. Live Long And Prosper.

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To be honest I am getting the feeling that this is like a chan and not a forum. In a forum there is an icon to see what topic your in and to back out onto the main forum or the forum the topic resides. Such as on PD if I were in a topic in random chat it would read something like "Forum -> Entertainment -> Random Chat -> I like fish and why". If your going for the chan feel fine dont add this, but if your going to want this forum to attract a lot of new members I would suggest adding it because honestly it is super annoying. And I know "just wait you'll get used to it" but honestly that is just glazing over a really big issue.

I must say I do agree with that.

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Why are all of the icons like x10 bigger than they need to be? Such as the forum icons, the topic icons in a forum. If you resized them to to be a bit smaller it would give the site a cleaner more slick feel and attract a little more attention.

I don't see why it would need resizing.

banebu wrote:

Quote :

To be honest I am getting the feeling that this is like a chan and not a forum. In a forum there is an icon to see what topic your in and to back out onto the main forum or the forum the topic resides. Such as on PD if I were in a topic in random chat it would read something like "Forum -> Entertainment -> Random Chat -> I like fish and why". If your going for the chan feel fine dont add this, but if your going to want this forum to attract a lot of new members I would suggest adding it because honestly it is super annoying. And I know "just wait you'll get used to it" but honestly that is just glazing over a really big issue.

I must say I do agree with that.

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Why are all of the icons like x10 bigger than they need to be? Such as the forum icons, the topic icons in a forum. If you resized them to to be a bit smaller it would give the site a cleaner more slick feel and attract a little more attention.

I don't see why it would need resizing.

To be honest they look tacky and out of place.

And how much I know he can't resize the icons cause it's a univerzal code

If he has the original image file it is not that hard to have some one re size it in photoshop.

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1] Why are all of the icons like x10 bigger than they need to be? Such as the forum icons, the topic icons in a forum. If you resized them to to be a bit smaller it would give the site a cleaner more slick feel and attract a little more attention.

i agree with you... i must say "yes" its too big... but make it smaller will leave wide open space.

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4] I am also confused as to why this forum is even visible to normal members. If it's trash then only have it visible to staff, it looks really bad to have a forum labeled "trash" visible to everyone as it basically says hey look here is the garbage of the forum all neat in one place for you to see all the shitty posts that we make all the time.

lol i thought it only visible to specific member and not think it also visible to normal member...
myb i'm not care with that thing since never go to that part of forum XP

3.100% t-up ....

5. look more clean and better i think : t-up...

Those things you said, i agree with most of them and i am aware of most of them. 3rd and 4th suggestion will be implemented really soon. For others, i have to disagree, specially with icons and banners. For now of course.

Once the game is out, we will need to make few more categories, and that's the time when problems may occure due to present style. For now, i am more than satisfied with the design of the portal. Shame you weren't here few months ago to see actual transformation from plane and monotone colors to this advanced and stylish use of css

And for the 5th suggestion, you must take into account soon release of dota 2, for which we will have to make additional sections and categories. So, let's just stick to this present look for now until dota 2 is out, and then we will have major discussion about things which should be implemented and things which should be removed from this portal.

And of course, big thx to you for your pretty detailed feedback! +rep

Spoiler:

I t-up Everything he said

Avalon is correct for no.5 ...need wait for dota2 come out

Here is updated look of forum page.

Dota 2 tournaments category is now part of forum with all things regarding dota 2 (news and info, and questions and ideas).

Second, i have removed category called portal's week song. That doesn't mean that we are over with that activity, but i realized it's waste of space to have category for only one thread. Week song thread is now moved to main portal section.

3rd thing > as i see lately, custom heroes are pretty popular. That's why i made new category called dota custom hero and placed it on forum's page under dota category.

4th thing, trash category is now visible only to moderators of this portal.

All valid things that had to be done

It's cool to have those regular updates, to see this portal advancing. Shame i don't have pictures from half year ago.. You would not recognize it xD

So that's why it took too long to go here. There's a problem at the bottom looks like this:

:: ::

I suggest:

A small picture here says "Forum"::Small picture of :: Title of Thread.

Please, just be satisfied with the present look. Once the game is out, and i m sure it will be pretty soon, we will have major redesign

[quote="Avalon"]It's cool to have those regular updates, to see this portal advancing. Shame i don't have pictures from half year ago.. You would not recognize it xD pointless to change the format of the forum now and the grouping of each section, its going to be much better to do it when the game is released. Necessity is the mother of all invention.. so when the time and need for something comes we will sort it out then and there. Got your back on that one Ava. For now the portal looks great, the resizing of the icons are really nice and to be honest i think it does make it just makes it look that bit neater. [color=cyan]+rep for Wivot on his generous suggestions as well.

Lol what a post my eyes hurt XD
To much cyan can do that

@[1]: I once said:
Once again, I don't know about you guys, but I find the links to choose the sub-forums rather "large" and "inconvenient".
They require a lot of scrolling for such a limited quantity of sub-forums to choose from. Should be smaller, perhaps, but I don't know if the software used will allow this.


Avalon did not approve. Lol

Also, T-up to everything.

Thank you for the changes that you did already it is looking better already. As for the banners may I have a reason why you disagree? What is the point in having 2 banners? One of them being very very large. Also why do you guys keep pushing for things to wait? Why not make changes for the better in anticipation for the release therefore having more people come here before and during it than start the remake as the game comes out and people are shunned away from it because it is not up to par with the other sites that have been fixing in the months prior.

Well, those things left are pretty relative if you ask me. Somebody likes this, somebody likes that. I have received many positive critics for present look of the portal, so i wasn't thinking (naturally) about any kind of change. I wanted unique style, and i have it.

But of course, we can always have demo period to see how things might look like. So, i will turn off banner on forum for one week. Just to see if we like it that way

Yes I agree with wivot we should improve the forum daily with major changes

thanks for removing banner from tze forum section, it looks nice but it is neater without it. Specially because that is the section that you usually navigate through and the banner only means extra scrolling down ^^

lancer60 wrote:

So that's why it took too long to go here. There's a problem at the bottom looks like this:

:: ::

I suggest:

A small picture here says "Forum"::Small picture of :: Title of Thread.

i totally agree with you, been thinking this for a while.

Avalon wrote:

Well, those things left are pretty relative if you ask me. Somebody likes this, somebody likes that. I have received many positive critics for present look of the portal, so i wasn't thinking (naturally) about any kind of change. I wanted unique style, and i have it.

But of course, we can always have demo period to see how things might look like. So, i will turn off banner on forum for one week. Just to see if we like it that way

And I have also received just as many positive votes to the changes I have suggested. Many users I know thru my career who frequent many forums will be shunned away from this forum just due to certain aspects of it, some of which I have posted about. I have seen the rise and fall of numerous forums over the years, I speak from experience when I say these things.

It feels better already without the second large banner in my opinion.

the thrash - yes, apparently its gone (like, for real), because not even i can see it , haha
the banner - yes
the big icons - yes
the navigation - yes, it was there before (for some reason without much detail as it is right now -see post above-) but it was removed, i got no idea why .-.
restructuring - yes , even Ava made a thread for this a little long ago, but nothing happened :|

hooray for forum getting nicer

Let us normal folk of the portal make a thread with Ideas then make a poll so Ava will just have to do the changes xD
I mean the man is trieng so much but only few things are possible alone

I can't agree with you with one thing > you can't say "many members will be shunned away due to present look". Myb they will, but I am sure many of them came and registered just because portal looks the way it looks. Looked actually.

The way that forum looks now is pretty dry without those colorful banners. I won't dare to remove category icons and place regular and plane text. No way.