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    • tikiwiki.org: messy front page design

    Posted by skip_202 posts: 1 ☆

    First off, I love tikiwiki and it's a great CMS. However, whenever I send friends off to check out this great tool I found, I universally hear back on what a jumbled and confusing mess the tikiwiki.org site is. I find it less jumbled than I used to now that is has grown on me, but my australian boss said it best when he described the site as "a dog's breakfast". This proably isn't the kind of feedback you wanted, but a little work in a better looking home page would really go a long way. Also, before I get flamed, I understand the UI can be modified and I've heavily customized the interface for tikiwiki sites I've set up. It's just this site that needs some attention, not the tool.

    How? Well, firstly by not putting so much stuff on the front page — white space and logical organization are your friends. Secondly, the three column scheme with small boxes stuffed with tiny text is distracting. Yes, it's useful information, but to a newbie all this detail is confusing. Another thought would be to contrast the colors better - grey on grey doesn't distinguish the sections well. I understand color is dangerous topic, but more implicit separation of the page components would go a long way.

    I'm sure there are tons of arguments either way on these suggestions, but again I really want tikiwiki to succeed and putting a prettier face on it for the un-initiated masses would help.

    -peace

    Reads: 1278
    Posted by Damian Parker posts: 2881 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ United Kingdom

    Thanks for the comments, but please remember this is community workspace, using the latest version for Dogfood, its not intended to "sell" the product as such.

    Damian


    Posted by Arnaud HERVE posts: 179 ☆ ☆ ☆ France

    I agree with skip 202. The layout of tw.org is a handicap for such a great cms.

    On my sites I follow the rule of never showing the boxes in columns: no border, same background as column. Only the box-title is apparent. On the whole there just too many borders.

    On some css the blue + sign is really too big, and on other css the + and - with no different functions are confusing. I would prefer no icon, + when collapsed and - when extended.

    On this site there is also confusion between the Tikiwiki menu and the Menu menu. They should be unified and reordered.

    On the wiki pages, template should arrange the print, pdf... icons on another line than Backlinks... so that the icons keep forming a neat horizontal line. Pers. I would prefer those icons beneath the text.

    On forums, messages should be ordered Plain by default.