Website layout. - Page 1

Hi all,

I have been wondering these past months if the current layout is too confusing.  I really don't know how to best present all the options and pages available here on pdb.  But I do know that visitors do not view as many pages as they did.  Perhaps the navigation is simpler and fewer pages are needed or it's more complex and people simply can't find the pages.

Here is a link to podb as it was in 2007.    Was this a better choice?   Complete segregation of breeds with lots of links on every page?   :  https://web.archive.org/web/20070701024352/http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/

Just wondering if I should redo the layout yet another time :)

Regards
Oli

I do think the old layout was easier to glance at and find what you needed. 

I think personally that the previous layout was much better, simpler,clearer,and much easier to read. This one you have to jump all over the page to find what you are looking for,is little confusing.

I think this layout is better for smart phones but the old layout was better for desktops. With the old site clicking on links was a bit cumbersome for mobile devices. I always loved the old site so I lean towards going back to it or something similar maybe with a (m) mobile component.

I also would not mind seeing a combining of gsd forums. Get back to one forum for GSDs. IMO.

just wanted to say - Hi Oli, thank you for providing this database and forum.

Goodmorning Oli

 

i like the old way. a lot easier for a person like me that

doesn't have a lot of computer savy.

 

Happy New Year to you and your family.

  God bless

 John

Took me a time to get used to the new layout, I really like it now but, I do think the old layout was better and I would go with the old.

Seems a lot of hoops to jump through in the new compared to the old.

Looking at the old layout and this one, the old layout is easier to look at, and its because I have eye problems where the lighter colors of this layout does hurt my eyes sometimes. I know some boards have a set of themes that you can change in your user profile, what about something like that? A set of themes where people can pick the layout they would prefer?

I have been searching a lot for the old design that supports being responsive (i.e. changes depending on device)

The old look (3 columns) is called "The holy grail layout".  With people using tablets and phones it kind of fell out of use since it's hard to make it responsive.

Doesn't seem to be any global solution that works effectively

This comes the closes:  http://philipwalton.github.io/solved-by-flexbox/demos/holy-grail/ problem with this solution is that it's for IE10+.  But its lightweight, fast and responsive.  About 1.5% of PDB's users are using IE9 or less.  So it's a small percentage but still a considerable amount of real life folks (~ 12.000)

There is a lot of bloat in PDB right now,  really does need a good overhaul and streamlining.  I would probably go back the the old way, having just per breed URLs instead of selecting multiple breeds as a preference.

 

Jakob Nielsen,  Usability export even says that you should have separate full and mobile versions (if you can afford it): http://www.nngroup.com/articles/mobile-site-vs-full-site/

Regards

Oli