News:

SimuTranslator
Make Simutrans speak your language.

[Survey] Should Simutrans have a new site? How is the site going?

Started by IgorEliezer, February 13, 2011, 08:34:22 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

IgorEliezer

This is a survey I've wanted to make in these past months. It's about our main portal. If you don't know it yet, let me introduce "him" ;D

The Simutrans portal
http://www.simutrans.com/ or http://www.simutrans.org/

Our site has received a lot of changes since 2004. That's one of oldest versions of simutrans site: http://web.archive.org/web/20040403095155/http://simutrans.com/

...and the main changes along the history:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040829055531/http://simutrans.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20051215080715/http://simutrans.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20060814050432/http://simutrans.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20070323125957/http://simutrans.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20080619021708/http://simutrans.com/

The current version of our site has been up since late 2008, I suppose, and ever since it has received minor updates almost every month.

Now, my question: Should Simutrans have a new site (new style, new layout etc)?

- If it should, feel free to give us suggestions and ideas for a new site.
- If you prefer the site as it is now, feel free to say what could be extend upon, improved or changed.

Anyway, tell us how the site is going for you.

Below there are some other official Simutrans site that we support which are worth visiting before you post or vote on the survey:

http://www.simutrans.de
http://blog.simutrans.com
http://www.simutrans-blog.de

Zeno

It has been improved quite a lot along the time, and AFAIK it is working fine for its purpose. I can't see any reason for a new site or a new design for current ones, despite a redesign of current site could be welcome from time to time if it's cool enough or if it means an improvement somehow.

Ashley

The current site is fine IMO. It looks pretty good and has all the information you'd expect to find on a portal site. I think we'll need to add a page soon when we have a new stable with multiplayer support but that's easily added to the existing site.

One suggestion would be for us to move away from the simutrans.com domain and make more use of simutrans.org - as a community-driven non-profit project the meaning of .org compared to .com is quite clear.

I'd also like to see us move at least simutrans.com/simutrans.org to hosting which can provide IPv6 access. This is now really becoming a pressing issue for connectivity especially in the far east. We're going to see exhaustion of the APNIC RIR IPv4 pool towards the end of this year from which point it's likely an increasing number of people in Asia-Pacific countries will be using IPv6 to connect to websites.

Finally there are lots of subdomains for simutrans.com, I think any efforts on improving our websites should be focused there (there are still many which are obscure and under-advertised, and many which don't look at all pretty). Where possible reducing the number of subdomains to reduce confusion. Many of these subdomains could be easily served by a top-level directory above simutrans.com/simutrans.org IMO.
Use Firefox? Interested in IPv6? Try SixOrNot the IPv6 status indicator for Firefox.
Why not try playing Simutrans online? See the Game Servers board for details.

paco_m

I voted "No, but the site needs to be improved."

Imho necessary improvements:
* screen format, make it more dynamic and let the main window adjust itself to the monitor size, the portrait-like format conflicts with nearly any monitor (they are in general wider than higher) and results in >50% of green space and a realtively small centered main window where you have the actual content
* download page is a bit confusing, I miss a link to the sources of paks (sourceforge page where you can download pak64 and other opensource paks) and explications like what a "Nightly Build" is

VS

As a portal, it's good. News are separate, which is unusual, but why not. Design feels slightly oldschool and blocky, but there is no point trying to improve it right now, unless there is a dedicated person willing to do it against all odds. Cost/benefit is just not good enough imho. What's far more important is showing that the pages are recent - any dates should be preferably within last 2 months, or the page might feel abandoned.

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

An_dz

I think the pages in Simutrans site are OK, but a new layout would look cool. The Simutrans blog have a more appealing layout than the official site. But that don't means official is not appealing, the actual site is really good, but I think it can look even better.

TheUniqueTiger

The present site looks ok, but frankly looks like the sites 6-8 yrs back. It surely needs improvement if we want to promote Simutrans to a large number of new audiences. Right from the word-of-mouth to the Google searches, the gateway to the world of Simutrans is the main portal site. It surely needs improvement, if not total redevelopment.

I would myself volunteer to put up a design/layout complete with css and may be javascript as required. After that it would be upto the admins to decide over it.

In my opinion Games sites, especially, need to be bolder & dynamic in order to draw the interest of new gamers. I still remember I had myself come directly to the Simutrans forum 10 yrs back in 2001. (there was no portal site probably) Had I seen the portal site which was put up first, I doubt whether as a youngster I would have gone ahead to try the game... Also a game which arouses interest only after playing & discovering for hours, it at least needs a good 'frontend' to maximize its player-base.

Mod note: following technical discussion split to Technical discussion for portal website. --VS