I’ve been tidying up and reorganizing various things on my computer – primarily the bookmarks in my browser – and I came across various “layouts” that I’d done for the new look REG Temple. I decided to take a few screen shots of the various page designs and put them up here. You can click on each of the pictures to get a bigger version of it. I have to say that I am, once again, enthused by the idea of getting back to work on the Temple site – even though it’s a hella big job! I think, from memory, there’s one and a half thousand pages to reorganize and rework! Not for the feint hearted.

The REG Temple (the official website of actor Richard E Grant) has had the same look now for almost 7 years – a millennium as far as web sites go! Still, for the most part it works really well – even if there are a couple of “cross browser” issues to address. The backbone of the new look Temple is quite complicated, with many “parts” added together to create the one page, php parsing everywhere, new graphics and features and separate cascading style sheets for virtually each section of the site. In the end though it will make it much easier to change the look again further on down the track – with only about 50 pages to change rather than over a thousand.

That’s the idea anyhow! The reality may be very different. I might be opening up a whole can of worms!

Although the “look” of each of the versions is basically the same I am toying around with the design and the function of the navigation buttons. I felt that in the first design (the one up at the top of the post) there was too much wasted space where the top banner is. I don’t mind it personally, but some people have smaller screens than I do and would probably want to get to the “real content” sooner rather than later. The “basic black” of the original site is still there, although I did toy with the idea of changing it completely to a very pale gray/green at one stage. In the end though the original path I went down way back in April 2004 ended up not being what I wanted after all. It was only when I threw myself back into the designing of the new site just after Christmas that I’d finally worked out what I did and didn’t like. I wanted to have a kind of “retro” look that was also quite modern. I’m not sure if I achieved that exactly but I still liked where it was going.

Along with the use of the black background I “paid homage” to the original REG Temple site in other ways as well – retaining all the bright colors for each section of the site and the (almost secret) navigation at the bottom of each side bar. In the top design I’ve kept the idea of the “mystery meat” navigation boxes – by that I mean that you don’t know what the boxes are until you mouse over them and reveal the sections. “Mystery meat” navigation is not my terminology by the way and it would be almost damaging to have that style of navigation in, say, a business site or a site like Google or Yahoo. For an actor’s or a musician’s site though I think it’s perfectly fine. Still, having said that, you can see that I’ve put the name of each section on the buttons for the other three examples. It’s easy enough to do if you have the space to do it. Plus it makes it easier to see at a glance where each button will lead you, rather than have to guess or mouseover.

The third and fourth versions of the new site have top banners that aren’t quite as deep as the other two which, of course, brings the content further up to the top of the page. Of all of the designs though I still like the first one and probably the third one (to the side) the best? I particularly like where the positioning of the search box is at the very top right hand side of the page on the third design. The only problem with it though is that you lose the “ticker” just under the eyes where the latest news is scrolled. No biggie for some, but I kinda liked it. In the second and fourth designs I find the navigation layout a little too “blocky” – especially with the fourth design.

I’m also thinking that I might run some Google advertising on the site because there’s a LOT of traffic that goes through it over the course of a year. It just might be worthwhile in the end and I usually find those Google ads unobtrusive enough anyway. Someone (you know who you are) suggested to me years ago that I do something like that but, back then anyhow, I wanted to keep The Temple ad-free for the most part. Nowadays though I’m thinking a little differently?

Now I’m not sure exactly just when I’ll be able to get around to working on the new site again? I figure I can do a bit here and there, section by section until it’s all finished. Things like the cgi-based sections (the gallery, news and search sections for instance) will have to be done last and will be quite a headache? It might pay for me to set up “test sections” alongside the real ones and develop the templates from there? It’s doable though….and if I have to muck about with them “live” then that’s just how it’s going to be. As long as I remember to keep backups of the original layouts then I should be OK. In the end though I’d have to say that I’m fairly happy with either of the four design layouts – though I still might put it past a “panel” of my learned friends in this field (although I now have a slight problem with one of them now that I think about it?) Anyhow, if anyone out there has an opinion on any of the layouts then let me know through a comment or something? Thanks.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 3rd, 2005 at 11:11 pm and is filed under My Websites, The REG Temple, The Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.