Do You Want To Redesign Our Site?

Hey everyone,

Our site's starting to show its age, and since the project has come a long way, our needs for the site have changed too. We're inviting you to redesign the main site located at http://www.scirra.com.

The original site was basically modifications of a single template, but we'd like something better than that now, so we're asking for a full website design. We'll be approaching 1.0 soon after the 0.99 release, so it'd be nice to have a new site by then (that's probably several months though). Also, no need for any coding - we're happy with a static site still - so no worries about PHP, ASP or any of that.

Here's a summary of the sections we think we'd like:

Front page

• Key things to mention: Construct is a free, open-source game creator with drag+drop/no programming, developed by volunteers.
• Logo (you could also have a shot at redesigning it if you want, or talk to David to get the logo in new formats)
• Hi-res images
• Some key features advertised
• Clear download link to latest stable build. Maybe a link to forums too
• Latest news

Features page

Lots of features to advertise: the Unity3D site does this really well with a grid. Something which can feature all the important things like that. Sub-pages for each individual feature with lots of images and description.

Screenshots page

We'll come up with a wide variety of screenshots, much more than what's currently on offer.

Creations page

List of Construct-made games and applications. We'll try and get some real games instead of tech demos listed there, with links to creator's sites. Should feature colourful screenshots and game features.

Download page

Prominently display the latest stable release to download. Somewhere less obvious have the latest unstable build linked, but make it dead simple for a visitor in a rush to click the stable one.

Support

The old 'Learn Construct' section, with clear listing of all available resources, tutorials, wiki documentation, etc.

Community

Links to forums, the phpBB chat, and other Construct related sites.

Development

• A 'Get involved' section. "Find out how you can help the Construct project". Things like encouraging plugin development, bug reporting, writing documentation, promoting and publicising, tutorial writing, making games for the creations page, mentioning you made your games with Construct, etc.
• A bug reporting section with information on the tracker, how to submit, etc.
• A section with information on how Construct is developed, the codebase, CVS, plugin SDK, technical documentation and so on. Link to the sourceforge page here.

About Scirra

Who's on the team and some contact information.

We'll be happy to have the designer's name and website link in the footer as we currently have. Sadly, though, being a free open source project, we can't offer a full payment for the work involved, but we can offer a token sum to show our appreciation, paid from the Scirra donations fund.

First of all, I think it's best if we start off with some mockups. If you're interested, come up with some screenshots of some of the site pages to give us a feel for the look, or upload some mockup pages. Then everyone can give their comments, feedback, what they like/don't like etc here in this thread. Also, if you think we need some different pages or changes to the site structure, get your thoughts in now!

Some sites we like, for your inspiration:

Visual Studio 2010 on Microsoft.com - beautiful layout & images.

Unity3D.com - Great site which really sells the product, and looks appealing too.

nVidia - another well done site, but unlike the front page, we don't really want any Flash on the site.

Thanks for any input!

Hmm, I might have a shot if I can find the time (re: motivation). My web design skills are a little rusty though

I might try as well, is anybody willing to try to make up the css, etc?

Also what about the forum, you guys want to try to match the whole site up?

And the logo... that's a whole other pile of beans.

<img src="http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/666516/geartype.png">

If I do try to redesign it, is there a specific style?

I'll start working on some mockups soon I guess. I just discovered Construct and I'm loving it, so it's a nice way to give something back to the people behind it.

I was looking for work to fill my portfolio anyway.

The forum wouldn't need doing, we can arrange the colour scheme and logo for that.

The logo in question, well, it's fine as it is but if you think you can match up a better one to a new design it'd be fine; the inspirations and styles are demonstrated in the 3 links at the bottom of the opening post.

sweet, i always found the very template-ish look of the main page was a turnoff, it made me thing this wasnt a game creator, i thought i was in the wrong place.

pictures of something gameish are a MUST on the home page, they'd entice you to look into construct.

i could work on a feature graph maybe, which compares it to other popular game making software, specifically or in general?

my website creation skills are inexistant, so i couldn't do that, but id be glad to help on anything else : D

Here's a concept I've come up with.

<img src="http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/666516/sctheme.jpg">

That's a nice start

Get ready for some critiques:

The top buttons are really good, they have a nice, crisp pop to them. As are the orange boxes. Very slick looking.

The logo could use some work... It looks too squished for no good reason. A circular logo might fit better. Also the logo is a little fuzzy... it doesn't have that same pop that the buttons do. Lastly, the green on the gear is mismatched with the green in the header, which looks odd. And the yellow is clashing with the orange in the boxes below.

Having the title in white text and the subtitle in black text is a little awkward looking, I'd do them both in white.

The screens on the right look good, but they need to be lined up in relation to each other. The front screen looks like it's resting on a lower plane than the three behind it. But the concept is nice, and they look pretty sharp.

The halftone on the gradient border doesn't seem to mesh well, and I think it has to do with the severity of the green gradient. The gradient is too dark at the top and too light at the bottom, if you evened it out a bit more I think it would flow better.

The rounded corners at the bottom of the header look good, but i think it's overkill to repeat the same motif in the columns below. Squaring off the columns, or giving them the same sort of rounded corners as the bottoms of the orange boxes, might fit better. As it is now, it looks like the orange box doesn't quite fit snugly into the bottom of the gray column area.

Good start on the mockup so far though, overall I think you have the beginnings of a decent looking design, with some tweaking it could be really ace.

All right, I've designed everything to be interchangeable, cept the header.

Ideally this would be set up in css boxes, so it could be scaled, or moved around.

I kinda liked the logo, but its not merged or anything so its simply a place holder if no one wants it.

Already made a few changes. Got rid of the columns, the symmetry was just ....off.

Anyway this is more or less a cross between the Ms 2010, and nVidia.

<img src="http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/666516/sctheme1b.jpg">

If anyone would like to try to apply the css/ html here is the .xcf(Gimp)

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/666516/sctheme.xcf

I can probably export that to .psd if any need it that way.

btw the text is all separate as well.

Hi,

I just read the topic. I fully understand your needs. I shouldn't realy offer myself, because i've got loads of stuff going on all ready, but concidering there is few months for things to be done, i might be able to come up with someting for you. I'm a profeesional web designer ( made some money out of it so i'm proffesional ).

Here is the mock up i did for one of my customers some time ago

http://img23.imageshack.us/my.php?image ... withbg.png

altho it's not showing my up to date capabilities .

Altho i'm still learning , i've already had enquiries for serious projects:

did xhtml version of flash site for napierscott.com ( coding ), making a new design for diycopymachines.com ( coding&design ), did a site for meadowlandsfestival.com ( coding&design except logo and borders), and currently designing a web site for a person from a British Conservative Party for his campaing.

Anyway, i would love to design something top-quality for you. I just started working with wordpress ( making an online shop for a photographer from London ), so eventualy I could build a site based around wordpress CMS so you would have possiblity to update it quickly and easly. If you would wish me to work for you, in return i wouldn't ask you for money. I would only like to have your technical support and eventualy few coding-plugin requests for my game projects.

Thanks

Miko

Hi I might try this.. But if it were to use some server scripting.. what do you allow? (PHP?)

PHP, but the frontend should be relatively static; we're happy to do the content by hand.

Here's a little mockup I did yesterday:

<img src="http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/7678/ojoo.jpg">

Not final in any way.

I might do some more mockups, tell me what you think. :]

I usually prefer clean sites like Vimeo, dropbox, and Firefox with a huge download button. I will try to do some proposals too

made a logo, i can make it a png if youd like.

<img src="http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm245/QuaziGnrlNose/gearanim.gif">

edit: i made a transparent BG png

<img src="http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm245/QuaziGnrlNose/cgearpng.png">

i really like that site design rilem, its clean and catchy, maybe replace those empty layout screenshots with something intresting tho?