We've had this surf site up since about Christmas and are working at improving it all the time.

The site is centred on providing surf forecasts in the UK, but we chose Drupal to promote a strong community feel. We want our users to be able to get involved and contribute.

We're pretty happy with how it is, but then we would be - we're the designers! Some constructive feedback is great. Be as honest as you like - we're big boys and can take it!

PS. Any surfers in here?

Comments

Jim surfcore’s picture

I'm tired! Not had my coffee yet!

http://surfcore.co.uk

takaakikato’s picture

Cool design!

Both side bars have a large extra space each just below them, though this might be done based on design consideration.
Also, only "community" among four primary links has sublinks (Carbon Calc, Photos, and so on). This might be a little inconsistancy.
You might be able to take away "Home" because clicking the logo always get you back to home.

In any case, great design. Simple, beautiful, unclutterd. Well customized that many don't even notice your website is based on Drupal. Two thumbs up!

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Samurai Coder : Learning Cocoa(Objective-C), AppleScript, PHP, Ajax and Rails

paddywwoof’s picture

good: looks, structure and content

couldn't see a "thanks to drupal" message anywhere though.

Jim surfcore’s picture

Good idea though. Maybe there'll be one in the next version of our theme...

Our next big "thanks to drupal" is we're going to release most of our general-purpose (ie, not specific to Surfcore) modules under the GPL.

Thanks for the feedback.

paddywwoof’s picture

Now I re-read my comment it sounds more meally mouthed than I intended - it really is a five star site.

And you answered my questions about modules (and theme?) before I even asked.

alanburke’s picture

This is a really well put together theme.
Well Done.

One Question, For the image galleries, how did you get the thumbnails for the next/previous on the images pages?

Regards
Alan

Jim surfcore’s picture

The thumbnail images themselves are just created by the image module (you can define your own sizes in admin/settings/image) the next/previous links are a size we call 'subthumbnail'.

Then, we include them from our theme_node implementation. If $node->type == 'image' we look up in the db what the next and previous are (this code is based on how forum.module finds the next/previous threads).

Granted, this isn't the neatest way it could be done because it puts logic in the theme (which should only really be used for presentation) but it could be worse.

Hope you find this helpful

http://surfcore.co.uk

alanburke’s picture

Could this be added as a patch to the image module?

Ideally, it would be an extra setting, something like 'enable thumbnail navigation within galleries'.

Alan

Jim surfcore’s picture

I don't see why not.

We've been wanting to patch the image module for a different reason for a while now. We could work this in at the same time.

It'd be against 4.6 though, because that's the version we're running for now. But someone could always forwards-port it.

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http://surfcore.co.uk
jim@surfcore.co.uk

alanburke’s picture

Great Stuff..
Its a bit beyond my abilities for now, but hopefully someone will do whatever is needed with the patch, when it is posted, to get it working for 4.7.

Thanks
Alan

sub_ubi’s picture

What theme did you use as a base for this, and do you have any interest in releasing that theme publicly? I'm trying to make a surf page for my friend who does lessons for schools.

Jim surfcore’s picture

I didn't really use any theme as a base as such. I just started with a blank PHP files and copy-pasted the default themer functions, worked out what they did, drew some HTML out on paper and wrote the code to implement them. The images were almost all created in inkscape.

It mostly uses the Smarty templating engine. Work started about a year ago and has been developed alongside all the other code and stuff we needed.

Some of my previous work includes http://wikiwyg.org (which I need to find some time to work on soon) - an AJAX mediawiki interface, so I have quite a bit of experience with javascript. Surfcore is my second website.

We won't be releasing the theme, since it is more our unique presentation then useful generic code, but I'd be happy to talk about how we do bits of it.

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http://surfcore.co.uk
jim@surfcore.co.uk

sub_ubi’s picture

Alright! So the entire thing was custom, or did you use any major snippits of other code you found? For example, "the wave of the day", I'd like to know where you got that snippit if it's not custom.

My favorite thing is how organic it looks, you did a great job on the lines. It's hard to tell that it's a drupal site.

Jim surfcore’s picture

The wave of the day is a pretty simple database driven module. We choose the images manually, put the choices in the DB, and the module gets them out to view. Nothing too fancy - done in the way you'd expect.

I only put the curvy lines online recently. We're pretty happy with how they work!

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http://surfcore.co.uk
jim@surfcore.co.uk

abaryudin’s picture

Nice site - the graphics are quite impressive. I think on the front page you should add some static words about the site itself, right now it's just the latest content.

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http://www.baryudin.com

insomoz’s picture

I like it, very user friendly and different.
I think it appeals to the topic you've created it for

Jim surfcore’s picture

You might want to check out:

  • I put a new login box up (it uses a custom module that wraps some of logintoboggan's functionality)
  • In the forums, the next+previous links on threads are custom themed

I'm pretty pleased with both these things :)

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http://surfcore.co.uk
jim@surfcore.co.uk

kozuch82’s picture

Good work. Stick to it.

Jan
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