Micah
Drew has posted some of the initial designs for the campaign dashboard, which is intended to be the first place where you go as the GM or player in a campaign. This will show the summary of what is going on in the campaign and allow you to quickly jump to any deeper info that you need.
However, this is meant to be a private-facing page, just for you and your players. On the flip side is the public-facing campaign landing page. This is where a visitor to your campaign will end up. Essentially, the current home tab on the campaigns is what we have now, like "the homepage for my Kensing campaign":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/kensing In the current system, this page does double-duty, serving as both the public landing and the private one as well. The plan is to split that up somewhat.
I've been working with Drew and writing up notes about what I think needs to be on that page, but I'd like feedback to see if there's anything I've missed, or if anyone has strong feelings. *Remember!* It's important to understand the distinction between the public facing landing page and the private facing dashboard. What we're talking about here is the public side.
h3. Needs
* Campaign name
* Campaign banner (optional, need to look good without one too)
** If banner is shown, we probably want to hide any text for the name, since the banner is assumed to name the campaign...
* “description” which is basically just a special wiki page (the Home page)
* Navigation to subsections
* Identification of GM
* Players and party
h3. Nice to haves
* Game system (preferably with logo treatment, not just text)
* Where we game map
* Indication of staleness (last update?)
* Indication of popularity (number of fans, something like that)
* Indication of featured (featured campaigns could get a badge showing the date they were featured or something)
h3. Overall Thoughts
* Power users are going to want fewer default modules and/or content items. They will want to lovingly place what they need and hide the rest.
* New users will want something that just looks nice out of the box
Comments
Search button for campaign- I know people look for things this way, both visitors and players.
Is there any way we can add a pbp/video conference addition to the map? Or even an option of game system as online?
You nailed this really well- especially the overall thoughts.
Just trying to help out.
Whoa! Let's keep focus on the campaign landing page here! That's like me asking if you like the paint color of a bicycle and you saying, "Yeah, but can we have a Lamborghini instead?" Create another thread if you'd like, but please try to keep discussion on-topic for these feedback threads. It makes it very hard for me to gather feedback on a specific feature or page when people jump in with random feature requests.
As to search, please remember that the campaign quick search bar is going to be there at the top of every page. Watch the quick search video I posted and I talk about it there.
JayJay - It's natural to ask for everything to be optional and configurable, but that often creates a horrible mess. In this particular case, 99.9% of people who upload banners are going to want all the text hidden so they can have maximum control over what the banner area looks like. If you want to add the subtitle, just add it to the banner image and update it as you go along.
But, from your notes, it might also be useful to indicate the status of the campaign, similar to staleness, but specifying if it's in development, being played, on hiatus or concluded.
Thanks for clearing it up!
Last update is a good indication of staleness. Just thinking as an idea, another measure could be 'number of pages' on the campaign site, as often people start a campaign but don't add much other than the starting page. It also gives some recognition to those play groups that put a lot of effort into their 'site' with detail/extra information.
As a GM, I like fans and the idea of seeing who is following my campaign. But I think the mobility of fans is pretty clumped together (I imagine data shows fans cluster around very few campaigns and by system while most campaigns get very few). With this said, I'm not sure if it's important to display fans prominently -but it's still nice to see. So I agree with it being a 'nice to have'.
I imagine its out of scope, but the ability to pick 'boxes' of what you want to put up on the front page (like a pin board) would be cool. But maybe that's something for a distant future.
I would still like to have a contracted 'Latest Updates' stream box up on the public landing page; I think I'd want visitors to know what the most recently-updated page was on our campaign site; it'd be a nice way for them to dive in. (But that's just me)
Micah- Ah, thank God. That makes much more sense. I’ll definitely keep that in mind with the redesign, as I hadn’t considered the Internet games.
Thanks for clearing it up!
Yes, Langy is dead on! I was not in any way suggesting a new app at all, just a printed addition to the map where it would say Video Conference, PbP, or Pbemail. The statement was not clear, so I apologize.
Just trying to help out.
I don't currently have a banner, but that's just because I haven't gotten around to creating the one I want, and the one I want doesn't include the campaign name - it's just a thematic image. Additionally, not making the name available as text makes the site both less accessible and less searchable by 3rd party search application (e.g. Google or Bing).
In my personal opinion, I do think that allowing the user to choose between showing or hiding the campaign title when a banner exists offers the best experience for both GM's, players and visitors. And, even with that, if the user chooses to "hide" the campaign name, the system should be using the name as the "alt" attribute for the banner image.
_Note that I completely agree that making *everything* optional is not the way to go. However, that doesn't preclude making *some* things optional if there is a solid reason to do so. Otherwise you're allowing yourself to be hoodwinked by the "slippery slope" logical fallacy - that is, assuming that just because you decide to do one thing one way (e.g., make showing the title optional) means you are automatically required to do_ everything _that way (e.g., make everything else optional too)._
KillerVP - Also making a note of marking games as remote or "the internet". Not sure what form that would show up as, but it's a good thing to keep in mind.
Matrissa - If you look at the source of "my Kensing campaign":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/kensing, especially near the title (look for the campaign-metadata class), you'll see that the title text, subtitle, and metadata is still there, just hidden. We do this mainly for SEO, but hopefully it also helps with accessibility. In addition, the main reason we would hide everything is because most people uploading banners will want full control. They won't want to display some things and not others, and if they do want to display the subtitle, they will want maximum control over where and how it is displayed (font, color, size, position, even angular orientation and skewing). Since all of that can be done in Photoshop, my assumption is that someone who wants a banner and a subtitle will take the extra 2 minutes to add a subtitle to their banner image. In other words, the vast majority of these people would choose the option(s) of _hide the title, hide the subtitle_.
So, in short, I'm breaking the world into 2 groups: Those who make banners and want total control, and those who don't and just want things to look nice by default. There probably is a 3rd (or more) group too, but I think the top 2 cover the vast majority. Therefore, since I can support them without adding new options, that's how I plan to go.
That said, you should know that you need to be careful using "display: none" as some search crawlers and assistive technology (like screen readers) will ignore content with this CSS style. A more accessible way of making something with meaningful content disappear visually is to set the visibility to "hidden" and the width and height to 0px (some people will also give the item an extreme negative margin, like -9999px, so that it's effectively "pushed off the monitor"). Thus the content is still technically on the page and won't be skipped by screen readers and crawlers but is actually invisible to someone looking at the visual display.
I've never thought that the _Where We Game_ map was a useful part of the public page. It serves no real purpose other than to satisfy curiosity. You can't join a game from the _Where We Game_ map, and since pvp/video chat/online gaming is all the rage, it's really rendered geography immaterial. I would get rid of it all together.
Other than that, I think the Reforge team has their priorities straight.
I disagree with Frank about the 'Where We Game' map being useful or not; it *can* be useful for figuring out whether it is close enough to join. Geography isn't always immaterial, because there are plenty of games that are still played face-to-face (and I doubt that will ever change, really). With one of those, knowing whether you physically can play in it is pretty important (if you're considering whether to play in it at all).
Thanks Micah, for understanding! Sorry for the earlier confusion....
Just trying to help out.
Just trying to help out.
For last update, we're going to simply show the most recent date any change was made, at least at first. Indicating staleness is important, so I'll try to come up with a better way to show it. Maybe campaigns automatically transition to "On Hiatus" status if they haven't been touched in a while. Just thinking out loud...
~Weasel0
A Parade of Black | ShadowRunHack |
Where I play with CSS code
PS- this is on the staging site.
~Weasel0
A Parade of Black | ShadowRunHack |
Where I play with CSS code
Is the exclamation point inside the gear going to be where the theme settings are? It isn't working for me (nor is what must be the die roller), but I don't know if that's "because beta" or because of something wrong on my end. I only ask because the email told me to "try playing with the campaign backgrounds and color schemes," and it doesn't look like I can. ; )
Which is too bad, because I can barely see, let alone read, the yellow links against the white of the center column, especially in this overly-daylit room. : ( This is something we'll be able to customize, though?
And I feel like the center column is too narrow. I don't need it to be as wide as it is on the current site, but it could definitely stand to be wider than it is now. Is there a "default resolution" you're working with?
Still, so far, so good!
!https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/145070/op_choose_campaign.png!
then
!https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/145070/op_dashboard.png!
It's much, much, much too narrow in the current beta. I need it to be _wider_ than the current site, not narrower; it feels like we're losing usability there rather than gaining anything.