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By taz3r on
Designmess is a community based website for web developers, designers, and graphic artists. Built on the Drupal platform (with a lot of theming), we aim to deliver quality articles, tutorials, and a portal for users to hang out and socialize. Check out the site, and maybe sign up for an account.
There was heavy theming involved, and some modifications to some modules.
Designmess is currently in beta testing, and your feedback is very helpful!
Let me know what you think!
Comments
I complement you for the hard
I complement you for the hard and great work, i just signed up and there's interesting content, good design, some lovely theming there too.
My suggestions would be that you make the header smaller so we can see more content on the homepage. btw i would love to know how you did those stats and the avatar's block can you please share it with us?
Thank you! Will take that
Thank you! Will take that under consideration.
The stats on the front page are just counting the number of nodes that exist for its specific type. Refer to: http://drupal.org/node/105375
The avatar block is printing your current avatar.
Thank you so much btw
Thank you so much btw sometimes the site is a litte bit slow
Yeah, I haven't enabled the
Yeah, I haven't enabled the boost caching yet because there were still some theming things to be done.
awesome site! bookmarking for
awesome site! bookmarking for reference
Thanks! Hope to see you
Thanks! Hope to see you around.
Awesome
Hey There,
I can tell you have the beginnings of an excellent site! I found the design to be very pleasing, a few minor things here and there such as text in the Twitter feeds going outside the box borders. However, on your login/registration box, the fields on the registration side expand far beyond the borders of the box. I am running FireFox 3.5, on a 1024 display.
I will be signing up here in just a moment.
I have a few questions, if you don't mind.
1.What was your build time for the site? Was this a solo project, or was there a team involved?
2.Regarding the theming, did you start completely from scratch, or was a based used? Could you share some of the "heavy theming"? Lots of java/jquery?
3.I am highly interested in your little touches, such as the corner "ribbons" on the post photos. I assume these are automatically added? Also, the login/registration box is a nice touch.
4.I, like many others, highly enjoy seeing community sites built in Drupal. Is there a chance that you might be willing to share a more detailed case study? Talking in depth about challenges you faced theming, modules used, and the like?
All in all, quie nice
Devon
Thanks!
Hey Devon,
Thanks for pointing that out. I see the issue with the Twitter feed, and fixed it. However, I don't see the issue with the registration box, could you take a screenshot?
I'd be glad to answer your questions:
1. Build time for the site was approximately 1 and a half months, while I am still continuing to make updates and fixes to the site. Designmess was a personal solo project of mine.
2. The theme is based off of the Acquia Marina theme, but after I got into the theming, I just started overhauling most of the div containers, rewriting code for the template files, and changing most of the stylesheet. Afterwards, I included alot of basic functions from the jQuery library to help with things like animated scrolling, etc.
3. The corner ribbons and such are just empty divs added in views and then styled in CSS. They are automatically included, and mainly depend on the CSS code.
4. Hmm...I'll consider doing a detailed case study later on.
wonderful theme. waiting for
wonderful theme. waiting for your detailed case study.
Looks very similar to the
Looks kinda similar to the nettuts+ site. The slight shadow on some of the fonts really highlights how not soomth the font is, gives it a bit of a net1.0 look. I also think you have extended the use of the css overflow "thing" - starts to look a bit lame. the color scheme is also a bit hectik. The orange/yellow color is a bit out there, and red/pink um ..... i dunno
.. I suck at design anyway
Hey Arkad, if you're seeing
Hey Arkad, if you're seeing issues with the fonts, I think you may be using an old browser. I've checked the site on a few browsers and 2 platforms and it looks good to me. Definitely no 'net1.0 look' there. Also, if you say you 'suck at design', why give an opinion on it. Kinda makes your statement lack value.
Anyway, nice site, to the OP!
most users on the net suck at
most users on the net suck at design but still have an opinion. i think it is a valid one. The site does have hard edges though, from the font to the over use of the ribbon thing. I am using firefox 3.6. it's not a bad site but someone has to critic it.
Your site is sick.
Which direction
Your site makes me question my own work. I am twisted in knowing which approach is best. Though I do not have any criticism of your site, it has brought questions to my mind. I know there is a lot of move to the look and feel of websites in recent years. That being said, my experience on the web has been mixed. Many of the websites have used graphics to the loss of function. I find them too difficult to use. I find it takes too long to know where to go and what I need to know once I have arrived at the site. I am not sure a creative art form is going to help me have a productive site. I am not an illustrator, film maker, photographer, or master painter; I am rather pragmatic. I am not insulted by simple websites that allow me to find what I want very quickly. I like websites that do not make me work to learn what they want me to know. Some of the most popular websites are incredibly simple and some are even messy. I have more interest in how productive a website is than how pretty it looks. The bottom line, I am not sure how graphics and function fit together. I guess the answer to that question depends on your target audience and indeed would also be rather subjective.