ASN's New Look & Feel...

FactionOne

FactionOne

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Hi All,

As I'm sure you've all noticed, ASN has moved to it's new home, and the forum engine has been upgraded.You'll find numerous little tweaks and new features, and there are some more significant new additions too.

There is new social networking functionality (groups, discussions etc), an upgraded photo album system, improved 'friend' listing/contacts management, profile visitor messaging, more powerful private messaging. The bread and butter stuff of reading and writing threads has some tweaks too - and there's improved search functionality with support for 'tags'.

Have a look around, we're sure you'll discover some useful new toys :) The Nav Bar at the top of the page (where you'll find new community stuff and a Radio & TV player) and your user profile controls are a good place to start...

We'll be building on this new platform furhter in the coming weeks/months, so keep an eye out for the extras as they come, and as always, if there's anything you think we should consider adding, drop us a line.

Have fun...

ASN Admin Team

PS> We've tried our best to make this move & upgrade as transparent and smooth as possible; but we are aware of some minor and intermittent database issues which may result in the odd blank page; this will be resolved ASAP. If you encounter other problems with the site following the work, we'd be grateful if you would get in touch, either in the Forum Helpline Section, or by PM.
 
Not too sure about the look - appears to be a roughly skinned basic template design. I'm guessing there's more to be done on the appearance?
 
Looks alright to me :)

As long as it works!.

T
 
ChriS3 said:
Not too sure about the look - appears to be a roughly skinned basic template design. I'm guessing there's more to be done on the appearance?
Click to expand...


Yes that is exactly what it is, we need input from you guys to help us to get the site looking as good as possible whilst still being as functional as possible.

All criticism welcome, good and bad.
 
Yeah have to agree with Chris, the look ATM is not pleasing on the eye tbh, only IMHO, but doesnt feel like ASN, the thanks, quote etc buttons maybe slight change in text colour, I also notice pages load a little slow aswell, as you say ongoing but just making you aware of the site & how its running, havnt had chance to check it all over yet but seems ok for now, work in progress so all new things are welcome I'm sure.

Another thing I notice is when actually submitting post, it takes little longer to actually post it up, used to be instant now sits there taking few secs to decide what to do, lol

Glad to see some movement in the right direction guys.
 
I re-did most of the buttons and in-built graphics for Olly last time we had a facelift. Unfortunately I don't have time to help anymore.
 
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I could give it a bash. I'm a professional web and graphic designer. This pale blue is doing my head in, lol.

Is the whole thing styled with CSS or are there some sneaky in-line styles knocking around too?
 
I like the look, its minimalist and sleek ;)
 
I made a start on a sweeeeeeeeet new site header at work. Would be good if a mod could PM me so I could get a high res version of the ASN logo off them. Don't worry, I make websites look good for a living, lol.

I'll post it tomorrow when I get it finished, take it or leave it... I had fun making it either way.
 
SmoothAssault said:
I made a start on a sweeeeeeeeet new site header at work. Would be good if a mod could PM me so I could get a high res version of the ASN logo off them. Don't worry, I make websites look good for a living, lol.

I'll post it tomorrow when I get it finished, take it or leave it... I had fun making it either way.
Click to expand...
I will get in contact with Rob for you mate, he would be the man to ask
 
I noticed the text inside the PM area reply button etc was a shade of lime green not grey as per mainstream site Quote buttons etc, quite like that colour tbh.
 
Is it just me or is it painfully slow?
Seems to take an age to dip in and out of different sections and when you press the back button, nothing happens, you have to press it twice.
 
That took longer to post than it did to type - about 30 seconds. Then 40 seconds to get back into here to type this....
 
No mate, you're correct, it is very slow.
 
Yep. We're aware that speed/responsiveness hasn't been up to scratch today, but traffic has been quite high and we've still been fine tuning the resources on the new box.

We're working on it at the moment and things will be up to speed soon...

Thanks guys,

Rob.
 
Fair play to all involved, nice to see some improvements underway :icon_thumright:

I know I for one never like change! But pretty soon will be used to the new look and won't even notice it.

I agree it's been slow today, its 0130 now and everyone must be in bed as I am racing through here!;)
 
i think it looks pretty good, i think its got something missing tho, a bit of red here and there! also google chrome says i need to download something to view the site however E explorer lets me straight on???
 
I used my normal browser and im fine :nyah:
Good work, Maybe a bit more colour but im happy with it how it is. :icon_thumright:
 
It's fine, just one niggle -

I have to log-in again, after a period of inactivity.
I've always had my preferences set to remain logged in, even if I switch my system off, and don't power up for weeks.

That function's gone now, a bit tiresome having to log in constantly.
 
Okay here's my effort...

http://www.smoothassault.co.uk/AudiSportForum/AudiSportHeader2009.jpg

Your browser will probably scale it down slightly, so let it load then click on it to magnify up to 1:1. Only took a couple of hours, if that... Hope you like it.

Whole thing is very easily doable with some basic CSS, and even the transparency can be done on the welcome message box using a IE PNG hack script.

Main header image would be set as the background image in a relatively positioned DIV and fixed to the centre of that DIV. Login/Welcome box sits in an absolutely positioned DIV, same for the ASN logo. I could knock this up for you and provide the HTML and accompanying CSS, or I could put the CSS all in line (although it is not best practice).

...right, back to some real work, lol...
 
That looks really good mate, definitely an improvement and helps give the rest of the page its fresh new look!
 
To Google Chrome users experiencing problems... Here's the fix:

http://www.mozilla.com/firefox

...Seriously though, I'll have a look at this later, but it's not at the top of the list just now. I WILL investigate though...

Siena - So long as you tick the 'Remember Me' box when you log-in, you should stay logged-in. The only thing short of hitting 'Log Out' which will cause you to have to log-in again is deleting the cookie off yor machine. If you have your browser set to clear temporary files on exit, or use particularly aggressive internet security software, this may be what's happening. We've made no changes on our side which should affect this - the only thing which is slightly related is that we've reduced idle timeout - but that just means your name disappears from the online list after a shorter period of inactivity. So long as the cookie is still there and valid, you should be returned to the online list - without physically logging-in again - immediately as you click your next link.

SmoothAssault - Great work! Thanks! I'll drop you a PM shortly, I'm using a PDA which is running out of RAM and connected wth one bar of GPRS at the moment. As soon as I'm in front of a proper computer with a proper connection I'll be in touch...

Thanks and regards,

Rob
 
Nice work Smooth, I'd only say maybe some more red/black/blue needed overall as AS is known for this combination, maybe the actual text is coloured this way, but nice work anyway.
 
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So it isn't known for red and blue then?

ASN_banner1.jpg
 
audi upgrades
mitch78 : the red and blue are most definitely our colours, and a discussion on the incorporation of the Audi-Sport.net logo with it's current colours was to be the content of my PM to SmoothAssault in the first instance.

ChriS3 : thanks for the heads-up, we'll get that resolved ASAP.

Regards,

Rob.
 
the only gripe i have is the speed which hopefully will be sorted and the white border background get rid of that and were back to original
 
Thanks, just waiting for Rob to send me a PSD version of the logo and I'll be knocking up a new version. I was sent a nice high res JPEG but PSD would make things easier for me.
 
Got the logo from Rob last night and made a start incorporating it into the header. Also added some red and blue hue to the S4, R8 and S3 to cater for the comments about the colour scheme.

I'm in the office right now working on a few other sites, but when I get a chance I'll finish off the header.
 
Looking good mate, I don't think it needs the red and blue wash over the cars now it has our colours in the form of the logo. I think it looked cleaner when they were 'natural'....

Cheers,

Rob.
 
I have used the new forum for a few days now, and generally I like it and have got used to it. One point which would make the site easier for me to use is this:

The "Tags" by each section, are a light grey when there are no new posts, and a darker grey when a new post has been made since your last visit. Personally I don't think that the dark grey of a new post stands out enough - did the old tags used to be red? I would prefer to see a more standout colour so it's instantly apparent which sections have new posts in.

Generally it's a top job, seems to be a bit quicker today too? :thumbsup:
 
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