Design Feedback

wonder_lander · 25 Sep 2012 at 15:43

Our website www.the-pier.co.uk is an informational site about the piers around the UK. We've had the same botched together wordpress template since 2008 and so I'm looking to revamp it.

I've designed these prototypes in Pencil - http://pencil.evolus.vn/en-US/Home.aspx so am looking for some feedback.

If you've got pencil then the ep file can be found http://the-pier.co.uk/ocuk/the-pier.ep

If not here are the PNG exports for your comments, how does this look as a starter for 10, anything I've missed?

Home Page:

Pier Article:

Obviously the next stage will be to try and find a designer who can help me translate these protypes into finished designs for either wordpress or pure html.

alexx · 25 Sep 2012 at 17:05

The interactive maps part is the hardest - I just did this:

http://theartstrail.co.uk/

Wordpress also - I'd say your best passing it to a designer to find a framework from themeforest or similar to keep costs down and get 95% of the functionality you want... re the map - thats going to cost you if its anything like the arts trail site above

wonder_lander · 25 Sep 2012 at 18:29

I agree about the interactive map being the most difficult part so have already resigned myself to a static Google Map with the relevant piers "pinned" and the middle alphabetic list just being a click to the relevant pier.

Also keeping it in wordpress is much easier for me as I wouldn't need to port the posts out!

craptakular · 25 Sep 2012 at 18:52

No Lowestoft pier?

Mailman86 · 25 Sep 2012 at 18:52

An interactive map really isn't as hard as you think if you just use an existing library. I've used Polymaps in a project before (http://polymaps.org/) and I was surprised just how easy it was to get something going. If I recall correctly performance wasn't great on some browsers and IE though. Depends on exactly on what you want to do so might be worth knocking up a quick test page and see how it performs. I've heard good things about about Leaflet as well (http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/) although have never used it so can't comment on what performance and compatibility will be like. Both of those are open source by the way.

wonder_lander · 25 Sep 2012 at 18:54

Oxy said:
No Lowestoft pier?

I concentrated on the piers with most searches when I first launched as I was paying for the articles to be written. The plan with the relaunch is to have every pier covered. I'm always looking for people to write about their local pier so if you feel like cracking an article out I'm more than willing to publish it!

wonder_lander · 25 Sep 2012 at 18:56

Mailman86 said:
An interactive map really isn't as hard as you think if you just use an existing library. I've used Polymaps in a project before (http://polymaps.org/) and I was surprised just how easy it was to get something going. If I recall correctly performance wasn't great on some browsers and IE though. Depends on exactly on what you want to do so might be worth knocking up a quick test page and see how it performs. I've heard good things about about Leaflet as well (http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/) although have never used it so can't comment on what performance and compatibility will be like. Both of those are open source by the way.

Cheers for those suggestions, will certainly investigate further once we've had the design done!