WETalkSports.com, branding, styling, design

[nexialys]

Site's forum: http://wetalksports.com/forum/
Definition: a site where we talk anything about sports...

Focus for review: Branding... WETalk is a company that is starting some new themed forums, this one is the first in the collection, and i was requested to create a new style, install and configure a new vBulletin and some addons, like vBookie, the arcade and some other hidden stuff...

The goal of the owner?!... compete ESPN with a forum instead of just News and stats... in the near future, they will add more professional stat blocks and more content to the forum, more topics and a staff team. My job was to configure the site, not manage it...

(even the site owner decided to move some blocks on the forum tonight without changing their style... we can discuss this too... ;0) )

I also created a complete SportsNetwork.com integration for vBulletin--which will be released on my site in some days... this system completely integrate the Feeds from SportsNetwork.com, with header/footer, and you can customize it to cache the entire content of these news so it require less loading time when you view the entire content...

on WETalkSports, the TSN.com content is listed in the gray navigation bar, and in all the Sports News in the portal and wrapper. the Scoreboard is the only one which is not grabbed serverside, due to its javascript.

There is a lot of missing elements on the site, please consider it's a WIP!

;)

(actually this is my second complete site-flip this month!)

--------------- Added 1221521576 at 1221521576 ---------------

oh, btw, the forumicons, threadicons and some other packs on that site are custom ?2008 nexialys.net!... just in case you ask.

[Matt665]

It's ok you just need a bigger community..

[nexialys]

lol... coming from you, i will say "thanks... " lol

[gfxhelp.com]

I wrote a long review last night and closed the dam window by mistake before I posted it lol...anyways on the home page you should consider having some more imagery, for example maybe for the background of the "Pro Football News" block and the other blocks have an image blended in the background.

The forum icons are my fav thing about the site, but there's no way anyone would be able to tell between the locked icon and no new posts icon. I would stick a lock icon on it so it's obvious.

The dropdown menus are very long and some of it will get cut off if visitors are using 800-600 or 1024-768, depending on where it gets cut it might appear that it's the end of the dropdown and they might not think to scroll down.

The forum itself has some areas with strange word wraps, screenshot attached.

I have about 25 tabs in firefox right now and it's using between 1-2%cpu, when I open your forums it jumps to 5-6% and stays there, in my experience the meta refresh with the iframe causes this so that might be something to look into...not sure if there's any alternative. The scoreboard thing is cool, if you have the ability to make it match the rest of the site it would probably look better, but perhaps you don't have a lot of control over that.

Lastly, when viewing forums there's a V in front of threads which I assumed was a prefix, but it seems it's actually a link to view the first post? Anyways add the title tag to that link so when someone mouses over the "v" it says "view first post" or whatever is appropriate.

Post again when it's complete so we can check it out...

[Forum Lover]

I got crush on your menu things. Wish I could have it on my forum.

[nexialys]

Thanks Sam for your details... you are completely right about the missing elements, the long dropdown etc... these are some details the site owner wanted that way... the homepage structure is a bit messed because we were supposed to have a larger contract but the lack of financing make him have to wait 'til he is able to complete the contract.. :)

@Forum Lover, what menu ???...

[Forum Lover]

Those are really sexy.

Once, I was trying to make some of those mouse over drop downs.. was kinda hard for me as a newbie, then leave the idea. :p

but surely.. nice work out there.

[nexialys]

the ones in red are not complicated, it's hovering CSS... the gray one are simple dropdown called "son of suckerfish" (use google)

[Forum Lover]

Thanks mate. Will dig it out for sure.

[Oyobiia]

Looks interesting... I like the way it all matches and the way the forums are all laid out.

How many modifications do you have installed for all this?

I also like the skin you use.

Well done with this.
Oyobiia

[nexialys]

there is not much mods on that site, the arcade i don't see it as a mod, but an addition as it is not changing the forum behavior...

[lasto]

i like it m8 and it serves its purpose.Well done

[NolimitMike]

Very nice anyway you can share where the scoreboard came from?

[SEOvB]

I was thinking, maybe you can have some more validation errors

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwetalksports.com%2Fforum%2F&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0

:erm:

But after that, its a pretty sharp design, nicely done again!

[Shazz]

Nice style, from first look I couldn't notice any errors etc.
I didn't know you were a sports guy nex.

[nexialys]

@FRDS, sure, the validator hates my site, but most of the stuff is related to the external feeds... this is basically a vBulletin with some colors.. lol

@Shazz, if you read the first post, you will see it's a job i've done for the owner.. lol (Loco can tell, he is rebuilding it right now!)

[djxcee]

nexialys, a great site you have there.
I was thinking about creating a something very similar too.