New and fresh homepage design

March 29th, 2009 - Severin

Those who have visited this website in the past have probably noticed that lottanzb.org has been redesigned once more. This is already the second time in the history of lottanzb.org. We think that the new website looks much cleaner and offers a few new things we really missed in the past. Let me present you the most important changes!

The old website was based on Joomla, while the new one is powered by Wordpress. I really love the simplicity of the Wordpress administration environment. It makes creating blog posts and customizing the appearance of the website so much easier. The new theme was initially one made for Drupal, but we ported it to Wordpress. You might have noticed that the appearance of the homepage is mainly inspired by GNOME Do’s homepage, which I personally think is a awesome piece of software.

The development blog posts and the release announcements are not separated from each other anymore and the coolest thing about it is that it’s now possible for everyone to write comments. Using the old version of lottanzb.org, we had a one-way communication and people had to use Launchpad.net in order to get in contact with us. In an Open Source project, I don’t consider this a good idea. So, what this means is that we look forward to your comments and thoughts about things we post in the news section. Of course, you’re still encouraged to use the Launchpad.net project page if you would like to report a bug or create a blueprint for a nice idea you just had.

Next, the Google Ads are gone (at least for the moment). With the amount of people visiting lottanzb.org, you can’t really expect to get rich thanks to Google Ads and they really clutter a clean and simple homepage like the one we have now.

The download page now looks a tidier as well! Unfortunately, it’s still not possible to read LottaNZB’s documentation in the Help section. Right now, we use Docbook XML for LottaNZB’s documentation. We might make the switch to restructuredText in the future, but there are more important things to do right now.

So, I guess this is it! We really hope you like the new design.

PS: *AD* The Watchmen movie is awesome! :-)

UPDATE: Don’t forget to update your RSS feed link to http://www.lottanzb.org/feed/!

17 Responses

  1. VuDu said:
    March 29th, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    Nice move!
    I love the new design! Simple and I love red :P

    PS: LOL! Advertising movies :P C’mon, how much did WarnerBros paid you? :P HaHa!

  2. Severin said:
    March 29th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    Yeah, the film critics should rather have been a microblogging post or something. ;-) I went to the cinema with some friends yesterday and today I just felt like telling the world what I think about the film.

  3. Severin said:
    March 29th, 2009 at 2:45 pm

    Did I mention that I love the identicon avatars? :-D

  4. Freddy said:
    March 29th, 2009 at 4:52 pm

    Great new website, but I really miss the old icon with the green arrow. This new one with red arrow it’s hard getting used to :S

  5. Severin said:
    March 29th, 2009 at 5:14 pm

    I personally like the green arrow as well, but it would look a little awkward among the red elements on the page. It would still be possible to leave the actuall application icon as it is, but this would be kind of inconsistent I guess. Any other opinions?

  6. Freddy said:
    March 29th, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    I really want the green arrow to stay on the application, maybe putting a vote on the website to see what other people think?

  7. Freddy said:
    March 29th, 2009 at 5:34 pm

    Forgot to mention that the website’s favicon should have stayed with the green arrow, its like the main logo of the application, I shouldn’t have changed.

  8. Sander said:
    March 29th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

    Freddy: we’ve actually changed the color of the icon in the development branches as well: http://www.lottanzb.org/screenshot.png

  9. Severin said:
    March 29th, 2009 at 9:23 pm

    Well, the icon in the main development branch hasn’t been changed yet.

  10. Sander said:
    March 29th, 2009 at 9:40 pm

    Ah ;-)

  11. Freddy said:
    March 29th, 2009 at 11:03 pm

    hmm, with the red icons, LottaNZB looks really bad.. but again, that’s just my opinion… I hope you guys keep using the one with the green arrow :)

  12. Sander said:
    March 30th, 2009 at 12:22 pm

    We’ve also discussed making it blue :-P . I’m not sure that was serious though.

  13. Roald said:
    April 2nd, 2009 at 10:00 pm

    Uh. The front page looks like one big error/warning message. To me the color red says “HALT! ACHTUNG! NEIN!”
    Apart from that, keep up the good work.

  14. Severin said:
    April 2nd, 2009 at 10:11 pm

    Thanks for the input, Roald. Theoretically, it would still be possible to rename the theme “Redfire” to “Greenfire” and switch all colors from red to green so that it would even match the existing LottaNZB icon (Freddy would love it I bet :-D ). I guess this would look as good as the red version, provided that the green tones are chosen with care.

  15. Freddy said:
    April 3rd, 2009 at 3:59 pm

    You bet I do :) … the main issue was that LottaNZB’s logo color change looked bad…

  16. VuDu said:
    April 4th, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    Keep the red, like Roald said, it gives a touching first impression.
    I don’t think the alert, danger applies… there’s tons of red thing in our lives and we all live with them. For instance, has anyone offered green flowers to a girlfriend? How about red roses? And how do most guys feel about women in red? :P Red is bold… green is good too, but now that Lotta made the switch, makes no sense going back.

    If a voting would take place, I think one should care more about the opinion of those who don’t know Lotta rather than Lotta “customers” that statistically are going to pick the green if they’re pleased with Lotta’s current status, or are going for red if they’re eager for changes ;)

    I like them both… but I’m leaning a bit to the red, because it’s a vivid red where the green was a bit pale. ;)

    Btw Severin, I think everyone already realized that from you gmail display image :P

  17. Freddy said:
    April 7th, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    Forgot to mention that the Translation icon should have an England/UK flag instead of the U.S.A flag, obvious reason :)

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