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Celtic Radio Community > Celtic Radio > Site Re-Design


Posted by: CelticRadio 05-Feb-2010, 08:46 PM
Some good news about Celtic Radio. We are starting on a partial site re-design!

We hope to accomplish the following with the re-design:

1. Much simplier design.
2. Quicker loading.
3. Employ new technologies such as Ajax
4. More enjoyable user experience.

The forums will be staying though as is. Only the top user interface will change and our radio and music pages will see the biggest changes. The forums will have some enhancements to the user profiles such as adding twitter and facebook and removing older type contact systems.

Unlike prior development, this one will take place completely hidden until it is completed.

During this time we are open to all suggestions. If there is something you hate about our site, post it here. If there is something you love or something you would like to change, let us know here!


Posted by: CelticRadio 13-Feb-2010, 03:45 PM
The new design is now available on our main page. There still is alot of work we are doing to our main page and our playlist/album pages. Once we perfect the theme we will be moving the new design into the forum part of our site.

For now, the old them will be displayed in our forums. Eventually we are going to rebrand all of our pages with this new theme.

Posted by: CelticRadio 14-Feb-2010, 08:01 PM
For the next 2-3 weeks things are going to be a little different across the site as we upgrade some of our technologies.

Can't upgrade everything at once, so we are handling it in pieces.

Our new policy on advertisments will centralize the google ads to one location on the page, so we are removing the more annoying ones that get in the way! But that does leave one big google ad at the top which can easily be turned off if you are premium account holder.

Once we get the new login, registration and process flow working good we shall start working on our "now playing" box on our main page.

Posted by: WizardofOwls 15-Feb-2010, 02:36 PM
Look forward to seeing the new changes! smile.gif

Posted by: MDF3530 15-Feb-2010, 11:33 PM
I like the retro look thumbs_up.gif !

Posted by: Shadows 16-Feb-2010, 07:55 AM
Lacks personallity if you ask me....but does seem to load faster.

Posted by: WallaceGal 16-Feb-2010, 08:20 AM
Loads very fast, but the header is a bit plain compared to what I'm used to. I know how much work goes into this though so Kudos!!

Posted by: Rindy 16-Feb-2010, 04:15 PM
I love it! I like how you combined the color schemes. Nice and clean looking. It's just going to take a getting used to as anything new does. I realize it's very time consuming but I just want to say "great job!" thumbs_up.gif

Slainte

Posted by: maggiemahone1 16-Feb-2010, 10:34 PM
I luv it!!!

Posted by: CelticRadio 17-Feb-2010, 08:33 AM
Thanks for everyones feedback. Part of the decision in changing the design header was more geared towards simplicity and usability. Our biggest complaint from new members is it is just too confusing to play the music. Hopefully our LISTEN NOW button addresses that.

The next phase of the re-design will focus heavily on our front page, album pages, and a re-review of profiles. Think we need to add facebook, twitter, etc. to profiles. We also got some excellent new technology to inject into the music part of our site which will be very exciting for us.

Thanks for your feedback - we appreciate your honesty and hopefully we can attract more people to our site once this redesign is done. Any and all suggestions will be considered.

Posted by: CelticRadio 21-Feb-2010, 12:34 PM
The Control Panel (commonly referred to as the Founder's Control Panel) is now completed with our new design and menu navigation system.

Next up will be the Web Services control panel which is not functioning right now. Should have it completed later today.

After that we are going to be working solely on the main page, followed by our album pages and then some clean up work throughout the site.

Undecided on the Medieval Theme for parts of our site. We may leave it intact and return the medieval forums to the previous theme.

Posted by: CelticRadio 24-Feb-2010, 08:33 PM
The Web Services system (now Called Web CP on the member bar) has now been completed.

Web Services is a place where you can create a free webpage using one of our many Celtic themed domains. We offer free webpages and paid webpages using a simple interface. Coming soon will be a community webpage showcasing everyones website.

Both the Premium Control Panel and the Web Services control panel use our newly designed interface. Check it out, its faster and easier to use:

http://www.celticradio.net/php/founder/upgrade.php

http://www.celticradio.net/php/hosting/index.php

Next phase of our redesign project will entail our main page. Right now we are converting database scripts that only need to run periodically to static HTML pages so our main page will load even faster and the load on the servers will be less. Ok, that mumble jumble just means our site will be really cool behind the scenes! smile.gif

Since we started this project we are receiving 500 more visits a day!

We will keep updating this thread with the latest on our redesign project.

Posted by: CelticRadio 28-Feb-2010, 09:03 PM
If all goes well our mini site redesign is about 2 weeks to completion.

We took a diversion to work on our album pages before we finish up on our main page and the end of the project. Here is an example of the new ALBUM pages:

http://www.celticradio.net/php/playlist.php?start=0&limit=25&letter=&search=Turn&type=album&exact=exact

1) MP3 Download widget displays instead of the album cover for easily purchasing songs.
2) Editorial Review of the CD is pulled directly from Amazon.com.
3) New browse all CDs of an artist.
4) Link navigation in our playlist is being enhanced so you can click on the artist name to see all songs of an artist.
5) Song Info, Requests and Favorite pop-up notification have been converted to our special effects gray box (cool effect).
6) Cleaned up formating and a few new icons.

All in all we are pretty happy with the new design and this week we will be updating all of our playlist pages to this type of format (Queue, Last 25 songs, etc.).

Next we will work on our search box at the top of our page which we plan to show an auto completion as you type in the music search term and will be much more usable.

And finally our main page will be completed with a bunch of new fun latest technically stuff to make the music experience on our site much more enjoyable.

Again our EST time to completion is for St. Patrick's Day! smile.gif

Posted by: CelticRadio 07-Mar-2010, 10:06 AM
Ajax search is now available on our music search located at the top left of our page. No, we are not talking about cleaner! smile.gif

Try typing in a search term for an artist you are looking for and you will see a display box giving suggested items you are looking for. Search is available for Artist, Album and Song.

We are closing in on finalizing the site redesign. Coming up this week will be our main page which will undergo some changes. It's possible we might add a cloud tag box to our main page now that we have search terms working good.

Posted by: CelticRadio 08-Mar-2010, 06:45 PM
We have completed the "NOW PLAYING" new box on our main page. Tabs are now available to show:
  • Current Song Playing
  • If there is a MP3 download
  • Any Reviews
  • All Artist Albums
  • Similar Artist Albums

We have discontinued the automatic refresh on our main page as well as seconds to the song finishes as the current Now Playing Widget is more user driven and automatic refresh would interfere with the browsing of the tabs above.

Posted by: CelticRadio 08-Mar-2010, 09:30 PM
We finished up the main page tonight with a re-arrangement of certain sections and expanded our Top Ten to include thumbnail preview images of the album covers.

In addition, we added a facebook widget of our Celtic Radio Web page on Facebook.

The last small piece of our redesign will be updating the profiles to include Facebook.

Other than the profile work, this mini-site redesign is officially completed just in time for St. Patrick's Day! biggrin.gif thumbs_up.gif

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