Brandonsanderson.com upgrade

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Is it time for the Current Books chart to have a couple more slots? Mistborn 2 and 3 aren't even on there.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Brandon, my comments about the front page changes echo Tage's & stacer's. There seems to be a lot of clutter.

[EUOL]

Cool, thanks.  I was just having fun playing with buttons and Photoshop.  My question is this, then: All of those little icons used to simply be links.  Were they better as links (thinking of yourself as a first-time visitor to the website) or are they better as some kind of graphic?  

Would you (anyone who sees this) prefer the menu system, or a more button driven thing like this?  Would it be nice if I made some kind of inclusive graphic with the five buttons, then replaced the picture of Mistborn on the right side (moving it down) with them?

[Spriggan]

Gha! #(#% %$@#$ $%$!

How hard was it to ask me about this before doing it?  

[stacer]

We were just discussing our own website and it came up that graphic buttons are really helpful for side links, especially when there aren't that many, because if they're designed in a way that gives you an idea of the content, especially, they help in making the site easily visually comprehensible.

However, if you have a lot of them, it just becomes big clutter as opposed to little clutter.

[Spriggan]

Ok, well...I'm not going to go into text vs graphical links since there is a degree of taste and opinion into the discussion (and no one here will ever convince me more graphics=good when it comes to web-design.

In-fact I'm ending this discussion for the time being since EUOL, 42 and I have decided to revamp some of the page structures, there's no reason to discuss something that--hopefully--won't be there much longer.  Once we have a design we all like we'll post it here for feedback.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Gha! #(#% %$@#$ $%$!

How hard was it to ask me about this before doing it?  

I feel for you.

[EDIT: Yes, I know. But this time I was not being sarcastic.]

[Spriggan]

Sometimes Ookla it's hard to tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

Anyway, next week I'm hoping to have a working test version of the new menu for comments.  42 and I have discussed three different ways to make the menu's work and we're going to post them here for comments before doing any main site coding.

[Lost_Kyte]

I'm new to the forums so I don't know what the old site was like... but I would like to see more about Mistborn. But I might be biased cuz that's the book I read

[EUOL]

Lost_Kyte,

Welcome to the forums! Thanks for stopping by.

I realize the Mistborn page is a little blank right now.  I went and, at least, added an introduction there explaining things.  I should probably put up some more Mistborn information.  Maybe we'll do some deleted scenes over the next few months.  

The problem is, I can't give away TOO much worldbuidling, since it would reveal things about the next two books.  I can, however, put up some Allomantic charts and the like.  

[Lost_Kyte]

Hey! Thanks for the welcome! Seems like a great forum community you have here.

Good point about the spoilers... the charts sound spiffy though.

[RedAragorn]

So what's the ETA for BrandonSanderson.com V2.0?  

(Or is this finally going to be 1.0??)

[EUOL]

lol.  I don't know.  42 has a cool concept image in the works, and I'm excited to see what happens with it.  Shouldn't be TOO long, I'd think.

[Spriggan]

I'd say middle to end of October for the final version, we'll probably start testing in a week or so various menu options then I have to configure the Backend for templates and make the changes to the book pages.  So, a month and a half from start to end isn't a bad timeframe for something being done part time.  

[Shrain]

Hey, EUOL...

I happened to see that banner you posted in your blog, and I kept thinking that something looked "off" about the cropped image from the Elantris cover. Sure enough, I realized the image is reversed. Just curious if that was on purpose or what. Anyhoo, the banner's looking cool. Will it replace the "sand" at the top of BS.com?

(http://www.brandonsanderson.com/blog.php?date=1158908400)