Redesigning the Voting Community

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
Right now, I've spoken to david and there is a good chance I will be in possession of malcolminthemiddle.co.uk domain in the not too distant future.

I have a plan, something I've had for a while but want to go about creating with the help of the community now.

The basic idea is to group the Voting community site together. We currently have the gallery, episode guide and forums.

http://tjpeople.com/mitmbeta/ Now that is just a demo, nothing fancy but is my basic idea for the front page - when people go malcolminthemiddle.co.uk. The get presented with a banner at the top saying malcolm in the middle voting communtiy. then some tag line like "worlds biggest malcolm in the middle community"

Underneath are various links (as small images) to things such the forums, gallery, episode guide, media page (download font, theme tune, maybe episodes etc)

This will drive a huge new load of traffic to the forums and other site.

now currently www.mitm.tjpeople.com is 9th on google search (front page) and lower down on other major search sites. It will be replaced with the malcolminthemiddle..co.uk main page with links to things.

What do you guys think?
(remeber tjpeople.com/mitmbeta is just a mock up, the images used are just to show the idea)
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
I like it, TJ, it looks really neat. What's cool about this community is that so much of it is comprised of work that have been done by various members so I would love to see other people's suggestions, as well.

As your plans with the project move forward, let me know what, if anything, you want me to host. If you want the forums I can get you this DB and hopefully it won't go corrupt like our good old vB DB. It doesn't look like we're going to be able to get that data back in a functional form though, as you mentioned.
 

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
http://test.tjpeople.com/

right ive deveopled the idea a little.

now rember picture icons etc will be changed in just ussing stuf to give an idea.

i feel that a frame based system would be best. meansing you allways have that top menu bar and it mean people will be able to quickly flick to all sections.

there are ton of things to sort out, i was thinging of making the front page a blog style, then we can blog on news/update/features to both the site and MITM.
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
I politely disagree about frames. They're old-fashioned and never work very well; in fact, the new version of IE has actually dropped some support for frames because they're no longer recognized as "standard." Personally, I liked the first design better.
 

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
yea i know, i dont really like frames either, i was thinking it might be a way to do the idea to have a constant theme.

So here is another idea.

I really like the blog as the mian page, becuase its easy to maintain (have multiple users with acess) and get news on the FRONT PAGE.

Then links to gallery, guide, forum, media, chat.

HOWEVER I would really like some standardisation in the theme. As in the same banner at the top of everything, so it ties together.
 

reese35

New member
Sounds good. Maybe I could design the banner (since I designed it with the forums) because the test one looks too squished together. You get me?
 

reese35

New member
Oh, and I was thinking, to make it a little more shorter, the banner could read MalcolmVC, then under it, it'd read Malcolm in the Middle Voting Community. The site could be malcolmvc.[whomever hosts the site].com, or vice versa.
 

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
Yea the banner is squashed, it was just an image i threw in its not gunna be the that one, so yes anyone could design the banner. But thats details at the moment we need to sort the format out first.

We should be able to get www.malcolminthemiddle.co.uk (im getting it off david soon i hope)

www.test.tjpeople.com/blog

If we had a blog style main page but it wouldnt look too bloggy as the front page then we can link off the menu bar to various things etc

This would IMO be better than just a plain bunch of images and links to other things.
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
As much as I enjoy abbreviations and as much as it seems like I'm disagreeing with everyone here (;D) I think we should actually spell it out: Malcolm in the Middle Voting Community so that it's clear exactly what it is and so that it matches our domain.
 

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
Yea, the official name is malcolm in the middle voting community and we should maybe keep it not abbreviated, but again thats details,

sam what do u think about a blog style front page? it is a very popular method for fan sites and i think its very effective as it gets the news on the front page, and then from the blog we can link to a threads in the forum where people can dicuss in detail.


EDIT:
I have seriously edited the theme for the blog page, see: www.test.tjpeople.com/blog

Now its just crappy green shades and it looks v tacky BUT it shows the possibility with a little time and planning it could be very snazzy in that style, with the menu bar being clear with links to whatever and blog posts about news etc.
 

qwerty

New member
Is there any way the last episodes of season 7 can be added to the VC part of the site? Because it seems a little outdated the way it is.
 

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
Qwerty said:
Is there any way the last episodes of season 7 can be added to the VC part of the site? Because it seems a little outdated the way it is.

Yea it will be *looks at yardgames*
 

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
http://mitm.tjpeople.com

Its pretty much done.

Apart from beign moved to "malcolminthemiddle.co.uk" when i get it.

What do people think? Any errors/broken links/bug tell me!

the forum will soon be moving also to mitm.tjpeople.com/forum (don't worry the current url will redirect)

I
 

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
Glad you like :)

Im still tweaking a few things, but im happy with the basic look.

EDIT:

Have added some stuff to media page to download. more will come soon.
 

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
http://www.malcolminthemiddle.co.uk/ <-- main page where lastest news and site updates will be posted and acts as main page to link to all the sites features.

Main Links:
http://www.malcolminthemiddle.co.uk/forum <-- will work when forums moved
http://www.malcolminthemiddle.co.uk/gallery <-- same gallery as you are used to
http://www.malcolminthemiddle.co.uk/media <-- media page more stuff added soon
http://www.malcolminthemiddle.co.uk/episodes <-- old VC AKA episode guide

Its back!

Well lets say in "BETA" form. There are im sure many bugs. The major being the fact that the forum needs to be moved to http://www.malcolminthemiddle.co.uk/forum

But the episode guide has been sprussed up a bit - new logos. http://www.malcolminthemiddle.co.uk/episodes

If people could go to the epsidoe guide and try any links they can find and make sure they work (yes i know the last few eposide on season 7 havent been done - will be done soon)
 

Amigo22

Super Moderator
An idea for the media section - we could add things that members have done like Sam's timeline, Reese35's Insiders Guide, the journals, my transcripts, the house floor plan, etc
 
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