HeatWare needs a new design!!

[heat23]

HeatWare has been around for 8.5 years and the Anandtech community has been the reason for the longevity and growth of HeatWare. The current site design has been around for 5+ years and figured that its time for a refresh/redesign. I wanted to turn to this community for help in this. Since HeatWare is a non-profit website, I will not be able to spend much on design services but I will give what I can which we can discuss later. I'm hoping that someone with good design skills and some free time can work with me on coming up with a new design.

What I am looking for is a design that is clean, simple, low-bandwidth, easy to navigate. Currently, all the tables on the site are very plain and can be a little more flashy (ex. rounded corners, background images/styles). If possible, it would be nice to maintain some elements of the current design so it still looks somewhat familiar to the existing users.

If someone would like to come up with some mockups or send me a link to their portfolio that would be great.

HeatWare users PLEASE feel free to include your own suggestions on what you would like to see!

Thanks!
heat

 

[Jeff7]

Suggestion: make it possible to open individual evals without reloading the entire page. This in itself would save page loading time, and probably loads of bandwidth.

That's really the only suggestion though. Don't fix what isn't broken.

 

[skyking]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Suggestion: make it possible to open individual evals without reloading the entire page. This in itself would save page loading time, and probably loads of bandwidth.

That's really the only suggestion though. Don't fix what isn't broken.

As much as I loathe most java applications, it would be perfect for that. build it so a mouseover will reveal the evaluation.

 

[youngnhorny]

I want to see a ajax interface and built in usage of paypal via API. Something cool that allows me do to calculations and stuff like mint.com...

oh and allow one to start feedback procession before item trade is complete. Like gametz.com trade in progress system....
hell how about a cross site reputation system....

 

[daveymark]

lol OP, a spammer left you your last heat?

 

[heat23]

Originally posted by: daveymark
lol OP, a spammer left you your last heat?

Thanks for pointing it out. I took care of it

 

[FoBoT]

sweet :thumbsup:

 

[AMDMaddness]

One thing that heatware needs is more man power... most support emails go no where fast... need help? maybe you guys could get more people to help on issues like false evals etc. I'm in the top 50 last time I checked on heatware

 

[youngnhorny]

yeah hire me to deal with all your customer support

I need a job...rofl

 

[ViviTheMage]

:thumbsup:

 

[AVAFREAK182]

make it to where people can choose their on color schemes

 

[Akhen]

my coding skills are poor but if you need any actual graphics for the site feel free to ask me.

 

[eplebnista]

Thanks heat23! Hope the re-design goes smoothly! :beer:

 

[heat23]

Thanks for the replies and I am very sorry for all the support issues. I hope to come up with a new system that will be more efficient in handling this to minimize delays.

 

[buck]

I can't help but thought I would post how much we (I) appreciate what you have done over the years. Thanks again!

 

[markgm]

If I had web skills I'd do it for ya, only if you'd leave positive heat ;-)

 

[Slick5150]

Originally posted by: youngnhorny
yeah hire me to deal with all your customer support

I need a job...rofl

If your user name reflects your skillset, I think your career options are limited.

 

[mcurphy]

I really like the way it is now, clean and simple. But as suggested earlier, it would be nice to be able to at least preview reviews without reloading the page.

 

[heat23]

bump

 

[amdskip]

I'm a web developer by day so if I can be of assistance let me know. One thing that should change is that the website should be W3C compliant.

 

[Unheard]

Sent ya a PM Heat.

 

[jw0ollard]

Good luck! I'm too busy redesigning my own website to be of any help.

Just a few suggestions:

1) 570px wide is a little ridiculous. This is 2007... try a slightly <1000px layout. Separate the Evaluations into 2 columns; 1 for Bought and 1 for Sold. Cross-trade could just go below.

2) Better yet, build a nice system that incorporates AJAX tabs. Have a tab each for Bought, Sold, and Cross-trade. This will probably (definitely) help with performance. When I visited the link in your sig, it gave me a PHP timeout after 30 seconds.

3) When you OPEN an Evaluation, it ends up reloading the entire page?? Your server is probably dying. AJAX-ify it!! Make it so that it's only querying the transaction details, not a whole new page


Edit: Not trying to be mean with my 570px comment. I was aware you said that design is 5 years old. =p

If I think of anything else I'll chip in.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: skyking

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Suggestion: make it possible to open individual evals without reloading the entire page. This in itself would save page loading time, and probably loads of bandwidth.

That's really the only suggestion though. Don't fix what isn't broken.

As much as I loathe most java applications, it would be perfect for that. build it so a mouseover will reveal the evaluation.

By "java," do you mean Javascript? And by javascript do you mean AJAX? That would be a perfect use for AJAX, and I'd be willing to help code it.

Graphically, I don't think the site needs to be changed at all. It is functional, it looks fine... it is what it is.

 

[jw0ollard]

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: skyking

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Suggestion: make it possible to open individual evals without reloading the entire page. This in itself would save page loading time, and probably loads of bandwidth.

That's really the only suggestion though. Don't fix what isn't broken.

As much as I loathe most java applications, it would be perfect for that. build it so a mouseover will reveal the evaluation.

By "java," do you mean Javascript? And by javascript do you mean AJAX? That would be a perfect use for AJAX, and I'd be willing to help code it.

Graphically, I don't think the site needs to be changed at all. It is functional, it looks fine... it is what it is.

Lulz. I was going to mention something in my post but I thought I'd leave the call out to someone with a higher post count.

haha.

 

[Kelvrick]

Bump for a great cause.

I can't do much design work, but can volunteer my useless down-time at work for techsupport. At least, minor stuff.