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Good simple web designs
https://forum.dead-donkey.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=23504
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Author:  spudthedestroyer [ Sun Dec 30, 2012 7:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Good simple web designs

Hey,

I'd like to broker some feedback and discussions on what you guys like in a *simple* website design... its very easy to go overboard with features and have a 'busy' looking site, but I'd like to see something simple but usable when it comes to a dead-donkey.com redesign. The idea is that content is the important factor, simple navigation and article formatting that you'd want to read.

I've been looking at a frontpage replacement for a while and have settled on a framework, but just need to plan out the features/focus. This will likely be collating a "dead-donkey"/"Fileheaven" style single entry per movie and ranking by quality for records; then there'll be collection creation features which can be built and maintained in an easier format than the forums 'massive blob of text' approach. I also want to provide people the ability to provide more comprehensive reviews; Slayer's review thread is quite inspiring :)

On the content side of things, I'm a big fan of automation so hopefully some feeds of data and some nice 'nudging' features to encourage people to share.

What will likely be happening forum-wise will be the header banner disappearing, and being replaced by a left navigation banner that will exist cross-site. For the frontpage, and all sub-sites I'd like a consistent navigation style... I've been looking at various blogs and articles and I like the following "floating left panel" style (not as wide as this example):
http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/02/0 ... go-part-3/
The simple designs usually look more appealing to me, so even a simple 'bar' google style at the top and a right nav looks good too:
http://irfandurmus.com/projects/jquery- ... c-updater/

I also like our own forum images, so would like to use a similar category image views.

I'd also like to build up some functionality for efficiently offering collections, etc. I've looked at an interface to the various databases we have hosted here (fh, hhah, shah), and can access post data, etc. Ideally a site where you can throw together a 'collection' on a theme, and have a decent layout and editing options, based on posts from the various forums.

Any sites you like the design of you want to share? Some links and a description of what you like about it I'd greatly appreciate.

Author:  simian_raticus [ Mon Dec 31, 2012 11:22 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

I am schizophreniac and pornoholic from FBI und kuntzerputzer aka luft putzen vel dramatic comedy maker!

Author:  spudthedestroyer [ Mon Dec 31, 2012 1:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

Any replies from people that haven't suffered from blunt force trauma to the head and now operate on the same level of single cell organisms and pond life?

Author:  Slayer [ Mon Dec 31, 2012 6:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

Something I need a little more time for to think about. I'll come back to this later.

Author:  spudthedestroyer [ Mon Dec 31, 2012 8:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

No rush, I mean how long have I been going on about a redesign? I'm down at my gf's parents house atm so have been looking at the nuts and bolts but I have no flair for usability and design; I'm a server side and deployment architect by trade :)

I've been looking at a way to integrate my preferred framework with the forums and also design the site structure; but want to keep a design and feature set in mind so i don't code myself into a corner :lol:

Author:  Macabria [ Wed Jan 02, 2013 7:33 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

spudthedestroyer wrote:
Any replies from people that haven't suffered from blunt force trauma to the head and now operate on the same level of single cell organisms and pond life?
:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

Author:  Macabria [ Wed Jan 02, 2013 7:44 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

if maybe you plan to use wordpress, i like score theme http://demo.ghostpool.com/?theme=score or even this theme, more simple, box office http://shinywp.com/boxoffice-free-movie ... ess-theme/

also, metacritic website is simple and good looking http://www.metacritic.com/

Author:  elchupacabra [ Wed Jan 02, 2013 12:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

I actually like the design of the forum. What I really don't like is the main page. It is quite hard to get to the reasonable part (the forums) of the site. The main page also has a lot of links saying "this page is in development". I think that the main page should be much simpler.

I like your other suggestions. Especially the one about the collections. Posting everything into one "post" is quite unhandy.

The idea about the review is also great.

What about a feature of uploading images directly to the site? People that post regularly could get a permission to host their images on this or another image sever.

Another idea: The main point of the site is movies. Often people post rips of movies that were already ripped. So maybe the database structure should be like this:

- MOVIE
-- a movie can have several rips assigned to it (people or admins can assign it a quality flag or even rate the rip)
-- the best rip is the one that is displayed by default but you can switch between the rips
-- a movie can have reviews
-- a movie can have comments (which is basically a forum), maybe you can also comment on the rips
-- a movie can have links (to let's say sequels or prequels)
-- a movie can be marked dead (if there is nobody sharing it)

Everything must be well-arranged. So that people don't have to think.

Author:  spudthedestroyer [ Thu Jan 03, 2013 6:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

frontpage will be binned, that coming soon stuff was just silly and i never had time.

Author:  Macabria [ Fri Jan 04, 2013 7:36 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/binned

Author:  pure [ Fri Jan 04, 2013 10:24 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

If you are going for a left side bar nav. I would suggest keeping the main pages at the top of the page. Use the lef nav for the subpages and for creating threads/collections/etc.
Best look IMO would be something clear and simple, yet with enough functionality to let it stand out. :drunk:

Author:  Slayer [ Fri Jan 04, 2013 1:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

I thought a little about this and I came to the conclusion that I know too little about webdesign to make a valuable addition to this thread.

Author:  spudthedestroyer [ Sun Jan 06, 2013 7:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

Slayer wrote:
I thought a little about this and I came to the conclusion that I know too little about webdesign to make a valuable addition to this thread.


:lol:

What about a horror/movie site feature set that you'd enjoy?

Author:  Slayer [ Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

I enjoy reading reviews and ratings of films, like on imdb.

Author:  Macabria [ Wed Jan 09, 2013 8:16 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

Slayer wrote:
I enjoy reading reviews and ratings of films, like on imdb.

agree

im not some promoter of wordpress, i dont really care aout them that much, but this platform could be good for this stuff

:jesus: :jesus: :jesus:
few more themes:
http://demo.ghostpool.com/?theme=reviewit
http://themeforest.net/item/gonzo-clean ... ew/2415788
http://demo.ghostpool.com/?theme=mediastore

but Score i think is best and most simple,
you can also look at one-item-page: it gives all the related tabs [News, previews, videos etc] (they are automatically made throug tags, very easy), it gives box for description etc.


http://demo.ghostpool.com/score/reviews/dead-island/

Author:  spudthedestroyer [ Fri Jan 11, 2013 7:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

I'm a fan of Django, I've already been looking at using this module:
https://github.com/jedie/django-phpBB3
and a database router to interact with fh.org, hhah, shah, etc. for content sharing. I am hitting a few headaches with the ORM mapper, its not liking my attempts at code reuse but i can pull out posts, scan them using regular expressions, then extract text/links and create entries on the frontpage. Effectively, I can scrape forum posts, extract the links and specs (latter difficult), relocate the images, then create the frontpage entry. Or at least that was the plan. I can also cross-post it from fh.org to hhah, or vice versa at the same time. All that is without people actively doing anything different.

There's modules to support bbcode, etc. Wordpress is a pure CMS system, so its not clean when it comes to cobbling together systems, but it is neat for more manual page entries. The other problem with wordpress is that its super hackable the more you extend it, so i'm not overly keen to put it on the servers. I can certainly steal it!


The model I was looking at was, based on some feedback and my own views of a model:

MOVIE(Movie-*Cut-*Edition)-RELEASE(*Release)

ie.
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
CUT: Theatrical Cut
EDITION: Blu-Ray Anchor Bay R1
RELEASE: SiCK 1080p x264
RELEASE: SiCK 720p x264
EDITION: Blu-Ray Anchor Bay R2
RELEASE: SHiTBUSTERS 520p x264
EDITION: DVD Anchor Bay R1
RELEASE: SiCK XviD
CUT: Argento's Cut
CUT: Director's Cut
CUT: xyz

Calculation for whether something is censored is difficult:
"Runtime" is minutes or seconds for CUT, compared to minutes or seconds for EDITION, compared to the minutes or seconds for RELEASE.

Code:
movies/models.py
from django.db import models

# Create your models here.
class Person(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return '%s' % self.name

class Genre(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)

class Movie(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    year = models.DateField()
    genre = models.ManyToManyField(Genre,related_name='genre')
    poster = models.ImageField(upload_to='/tmp')
    imdb_url = models.URLField(blank=True)
    language = models.CharField(max_length=15)
    director = models.ManyToManyField(Person,related_name='directed')
    actor = models.ManyToManyField(Person,related_name='acted_in')
    writer = models.ManyToManyField(Person,related_name='wrote')

    def __unicode__(self):
        return '%s (%s)' % (self.title, self.year)

class Cut(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    movie = models.ForeignKey(Movie)
    runtime = models.IntegerField()

    def __unicode__(self):
        return '%s' % self.name

class Edition(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    cut = models.ForeignKey(Cut)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return '%s' % self.name

release/models.py
from django.db import models
from movie.models import Edition

# Create your models here.
class Hash(models.Model):
    size = models.IntegerField()
    filename = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    md5 = models.CharField(max_length=50)
    sha1 = models.CharField(max_length=50)
    sha256 = models.CharField(max_length=50)
    ed2k = models.CharField(max_length=50)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.id

class Release(models.Model):
    ripper = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    edition = models.ForeignKey(Edition)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return '%s %s - %s [%s]' % (self.ripper,
                                    self.edition.movie,
                                    self.edition.cut,
                                    self.edition)

class SceneTag(models.Model):
    release = models.ForeignKey(Release)
    tag = models.CharField(max_length=15)

class Video(models.Model):
    """
    A video is a video file within a 'Release', there can be many 'Video's
    within a 'Release' but there can not be the same 'Video' in multiple
    'Release's.  Retagging, reposting, etc. is not releasing you swine!
    """
    hash = models.ForeignKey(Hash)
    release = models.ForeignKey(Release)
    codec = models.CharField(max_length=10)
    container = models.CharField(max_length=10)
    bitrate = models.IntegerField()
    width = models.IntegerField()
    height = models.IntegerField()
    frames = models.IntegerField()
    frames_per_second = models.DecimalField(max_digits=3,decimal_places=3)
    aspect_ratio = models.DecimalField(max_digits=3,decimal_places=3)

    def get_runtime_seconds(self):
        """
        Calculate the runtime in seconds, as this is often important for
        horror fans.  Every second of boob... err violence... art even counts
        """
        return self.frames * self.frames_per_second

    def get_runtime(self):
        """
        Calculate the runtime in minutes, as this is the most common way of
        using runtime except for us horror nerds
        """
        return self.get_runtime_seconds() / 60

    def runtime_hours(self):
        """
        Calculate the runtime in hours
        """
        return ( self.get_runtime() ) / 60

    def is_cut_by(self):
        """
        Takes the runtime of the 'Edition' and takes the runtime of this
        'Video' to calculate the number of seconds they differ
        """
        return ( self.release.edition.runtime - self.get_runtime_seconds() )

    def is_cut(self):
        """
        Using the number of seconds difference, if there is a positive number
        difference this mean the rip is censored or has been 'chopped'.
        Generally we should expect a negative number here but we need a large
        dataset to find out how accurate using seconds is.
        """
        return (self.is_cut_by() >= 0)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return '%s %s %s' % (self.release, self.container, self.codec)

class Audio(models.Model):
    """
    This is an audio track that is associated with a 'Video'
    """
    video = models.ForeignKey(Video)
    language = models.CharField(max_length=20)
    codec = models.CharField(max_length=10)
    bitrate = models.IntegerField()

    def __unicode__(self):
        return '%s %s %s' % (self.video.release, self.language, self.codec)

class Subtitle(models.Model):
    """
    This is the subtitle track that is associated with a 'Video'.
    """
    video = models.ForeignKey(Video)
    language = models.CharField(max_length=20)

    def is_external(self):
        """
        Is the subtitle external to the container?
        """
        return False

    def __unicode__(self):
        return '%s (%s)' % (self.video.release, self.language)

class ExternalSubtitle(Subtitle):
    """
    This is the subtitle track that is associated with a 'Video'.
    In this case we have an external subtitle
    """
    hash = models.ForeignKey(Hash)
    extension = models.CharField(max_length=10)

    def is_external(self):
        """
        Is the subtitle external to the container?
        """
        return True

    def __unicode__(self):
        return '%s (%s) [%s]' % (self.video.release, self.language, self.extension)


The aim is:
We can see what is the best of every cut of the film
We can see what the best edition of that cut is
We can see what the best rip of every edition of the film

That can be based on preference of technical specs (is it censored? is it nuked?) and we can double that up with user comments rated by the respect. What I wanted to have is multiple hashes, so there's ed2k, torrent, magnet, etc.

The reviews can point at what films you may want, you choose a movie or edition in the db, then your comments/review will put pictures in there and it should be a bit more organic. The collection, will be of "reviews", "movies" or "editions", it will take pictures from various rips so you can add them in line.

The problem for comments, collections, reviews, news is that its really the strength

Just ideas anyway, what will go is anything that distracts from that:
* Downloads
* Links
* FAQ
* TV - for now at least


My aim is at some point, to have a beta frontend site running that has this structure visible so people can give feedback. Might take a while though

Author:  d0c [ Sun Jan 27, 2013 10:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

isn't 99% of all these old ed2k links dead by now?... so why now all this stuff this late?.. are you going to verify all movies by yourself?...

Author:  Slayer [ Mon Jan 28, 2013 8:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

Always there to add his positive note, thanks d0c :wacky:
d0c wrote:
isn't 99% of all these old ed2k links dead by now?
No.

Author:  Macabria [ Tue Jan 29, 2013 7:32 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

i tšhink it could be combined... ed2k links and torrent links... NOT?

Author:  d0c [ Wed Jan 30, 2013 12:51 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Good simple web designs

Slayer wrote:
Always there to add his positive note, thanks d0c :wacky:
d0c wrote:
isn't 99% of all these old ed2k links dead by now?
No.


sorry for being negative there bro, but the site is called dead donkey after all :lol: anyway cheer up mister slayer, i am sure some of the oldest links from 2003-2005 are dead by now... it is not impossible all links stay alive.

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