Habbox.com Site Suggestions.

[Meanies]

I wasn't just ignoring your post, you had a lot in there which I would have replied to but when I did post I didn't have the time.

'As for the rest of the thread I will reply a little later.'
presumably meaning when you had more time and could have given indepth answers and an answer to mine also.

[xxMATTGxx]

Is this just for the website? I have ideas for both forum and site but maybe you could add some special features such as Habbo of The Week or Habbo Spotlight? Also, a suggestion for Rare Values, maybe add a page which has the latest news for Rare Values like the latest rares which will be comming soon like the old Rare Watch or something.

This thread is mainly for the next version of the website, Habbox.com.

[Con]

My suggestion would definitely be to simplify the site, only keep essential information visible while making sure other content can easily be reached too.

And bring back more orange.

I agree with this. Only keep the essentials and make it look less crowded, and remove that horrible enlargement thing of the habbos at the top.
+ Definitely bring back more of the traditional orange

[Dean]

Scrap orange and blue crap themes please they're boring

Reminds me of puke

[hah]

From what I understand (although I haven't been told too much yet), news will be more condensed in the new version. I think instead of having near enough full articles displayed it would be good to have like just the first paragraph along with an image (possibly all sized the same if possible). This would allow for "blocking" of articles side by side rather than just a long lengthy list of them. This would look smart, be functional, still mean we can attract readers attention with the headline/image and also mean that pressing "read more" will take them to the full article. Individual news pages could of course be kept normal, with full length articles, but I think for the front page more of a smart system like this needs to be implemented.

I completely disagree that news is "dead", and I think the fact that popular articles still attract comments is good. Some sites don't have a comments system and so it's a useful thing to have. Pre-merge we had a couple of articles with excess of 100 comments. It often depends on what the Habbo news is, and how important.



I think the News reporters do a really good job in writing up the articles, and effectively saying we are "dead" is rather insulting to those who work at their best to ensure the readers are happy. We have to ensure that we are aiming our articles at the correct usebase, and whilst older forum members may not like the news element of the site, we have to remember that we are a Habbo fansite and providing a solid foundation of all the news and goings ons within Habbo is a core element.

Thanks for your feedback, but I really was quite upset and quite hurt by your comments, which in all fairness lacked constructive critisism on how you think we could improve. I'm always open to suggestions. As I outlined above, I think the best way to go would to "shorten" the news aspect down by blocking the articles side by side, with perhaps 6 articles on the front page (2 columns of 3). I'm not sure if there is a new system being put in to write/present articles, but I'm sure this will all be found out in due time.


Edit: I also just read you wanted to put the Habbox today section where news is? I think that would be ridiculous considering Habbox today is something which just lets you know what's going on with departments and events etc. It needs to remain a Habbo fansite, and featuring Habbo content should remain important.

I think there is going to be widgets anyway, so you may well be able to move certain things round. Nearly 600 people took the current poll on the site (which is a lot of views alone) and 70% said the news articles look good. 40% of the figure said "they read them all the time". I know this isn't conclusive evidence, but it does show that a nice amount of people are reading articles.

Its a Habbo fansite, you're 18 years of age (i think) and you're seriously getting hurt over someone saying the news department is dead :rolleyes:. It's an ugly long eye sore on the Habbox main page, and there is simply no need for it seeing as Habbo provides in client news. All you and your department do is reword it

There is no constructive criticism to give because it should not be there. There is nothing you can improve on and if i wanted to know Habbo news i would look on the forums, then the Habbo client. I wouldnt look on the Habbox site.

[Special]

- change the horrible orange colour to a more professional colour
- make the 'habbox guide' a drop down menu like the other options
- the 'news' section is a bit pointless too imho - habbo users are looking for habbo related things, if they wanted real life news they would look elsewhere
- change the habboxlive website to match the habbo one - atm it's very different & anyone who didn't know any better would think it's a completely different fansite

[Alkaz]

Is this just for the website? I have ideas for both forum and site but maybe you could add some special features such as Habbo of The Week or Habbo Spotlight? Also, a suggestion for Rare Values, maybe add a page which has the latest news for Rare Values like the latest rares which will be comming soon like the old Rare Watch or something.

I like the idea of the Habbo Spotlight, it could change daily and have people on it who have won member of the month, best comments on news on the site etc. Something a little extra for recognition of their efforts.

the whole site just needs simplifying. there's too much text and its ugly. the homepage is too cluttered and is just likely to force people away
We've realised this and we're hoping for a much simpler design which we hope will actually be contemporary compared to most of our previous versions and hopefully compared to other fansites. With the widgets feature which we will be having people will be able to have as much or as little information and bits and pieces on the page as they like.
the colours are ugly. yeah managment say 'but they're the traditional habbox colours' or whatever. every time this comes up, users object and say they're ugly. but oh no, management have to dictate what users get (which i know in a way is what they're there for, but the colouring is a key thing in layouts and having colours people don't want and have shown they don't want it just stupid)
Again, coupled with a much more contemporary design we hope there wont be awful clashes of colour all over the site however despite us dictating it to everyone, we will be keeping the orange. At the moment we don't know to what extent but it will definitely still be featuring in our new designs.
as if the main colour scheme wasnt ugly enough, the nav colours are just awful and i don't know why management insisted on them in the first place because it just makes adding things to the menu so much harder because when i was agm i wasnt actually told how to add colour to a menu item and so had to swap items for something which already had a colour, and people say i had bad communication. look at yourselvessss
I agree completely with you on this point, hopefully we wont have anything as disgusting again. I don't know if you were told but the only way to add colour is via ftp and General Managers / Jin are never that keen on giving it out, let alone to change areas of the site which could potentially be a big mistake if I / you were to change everything as though it had been hacked. I hope that the new navigation will just have one simple colour.
the navs also so cluttered. before i got fired (lol) my plan was to make all links go to a 'hub' as the guides page does as it's much neater, clearer and more user-friendly as it gives users an idea of whats on each page. don't know if this is still being done, but it should be done
a lot of content on the site is also a mess which i was slowly focusing on in my time as agm and making sure people were sorting it, but seems not. the staff page is something i was going to delay until the rest of the site was sorted so that it could be done well, but look at it, its just a complete mess and if i was the one responsible for it, i'd be ashamed.
Yeh that has become a problem, we're trying to go through and updating each page and removing what is not needed. As for the hubs one is planned for the Habbox and Fun Stuff sections, the others don't really need an entire hub. As for the quality and gradually going through things there was what I felt communication issues between myself and you when I became ACDM and when I became AGM I had no idea what your intentions were or what you had planned because of the communication. There have been a lot of other things to contend with as well and as for the staff list that will be getting another make over soon as well as elements from the original staff / management list being re-introduced. The main problem at the moment is with the images as we've merged, all of the images were ...co.uk/ where now they are all ...com/ so they've all broken.
not being big-headed or anything (well it is but whatever), i think i was what kept the quality of content up. when i quit as manager i think the first time, the site went to **** so i offered to come back and get the quality back. then i got fired, and the site's quality has gone down again. not saying i was the only factor in this, but some content staff work nowhere near as hard as required

@graham, yeh i was gna remove that whole section but got fired before i could lol
It's been merged with fun stuff but we will still be keeping some things from the graphics section for the time being. The image archive which I think was only updated once was also removed a long time ago and is now a staff only feature.
@bolt, there's a module for joomla i'm using on someones site that does that, not sure if it'd work how you said but it worked for what i wanted, www.emergencystories.com - right hand top module. think the modules called aidanews or something

Scrap orange and blue crap themes please they're boring

Reminds me of puke

As I have said above, the orange will still be kept but made to look a lot better than it does currently.

[hah]

when will the site be done do you know?

[Alkaz]

- change the horrible orange colour to a more professional colour
As I have already said, the orange will be staying. It wont be as vulgar as it has been in the past so it should be pretty pleasing to the eye.
- make the 'habbox guide' a drop down menu like the other options
There are currently 23 articles in the guide hub, having them in a drop down form would make a lot less sense and make navigating guides a lot harder like it used to be.
- the 'news' section is a bit pointless too imho - habbo users are looking for habbo related things, if they wanted real life news they would look elsewhere
Some do and some don't. Personally I don't really read news papers or go to any other websites for this news as a lot of it is in the entertainment section. Anyway it isn't as though it is harming anyone and provides a bit of light reading for people.
- change the habboxlive website to match the habbo one - atm it's very different & anyone who didn't know any better would think it's a completely different fansite
Personally I have to agree but at the moment it is not a major concern of Jin / General Management. This may however change in the future as the Habbox.com is our main concern at the moment.

In red.

@sex ~ We're not sure at the moment. We're still trying to develop the skin and update it and this thread is helping provide more ideas and changes we can make to make the site the best we can possibly do. Hopefully nearer the time we can give people a due date for its release.

[Special]

In red.

thanks for your reply. i agree with everything you said apart from the news section feedback comment. if some do & some don't why not make a poll on the habbox website & habboxforum website? you said that you want to hear directly from the people who use habbox & personally i can't think of a better way to decide the future of the news section

also on the 'habboxlive website changing' feedback i made a small typo and meant habbox instead of habbo