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How Can I Improve My News Website Design?

by amacg
12 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
    • |
I'm working on re-designing my website - lion.co.uk - to focus more on news (links) rather than pure discussion content. How do you think, given my current design, I should go about doing this?

I notice that many of the larger social networks don't even make reference to "links" (facebook) or indeed use icons (google+). Most now promote the "share" concept; share text, links, videos, photos etc. The length of content appears to be driving this with many people posting less but more often.

This is having an impact on design with most social/news website layouts designed entirely around the "scanning" we do to consume content today.
What would you do to improve my site? What do you think we should do knowing where news is going?
#design #improve #news #website
  • Profile picture of the author WF99
    Unable to load the page ...
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    • Profile picture of the author amacg
      Originally Posted by WF99 View Post

      Unable to load the page ...
      Originally Posted by Warrior Machine View Post

      Was it just me or everyone could not access the site. I could see everything but could not even register in the site. Is it still under development?
      That's strange, the site has been up continuously since I started this thread. Can you advise if you can access it now? What browser are you using?

      I've had some folk report bugs e.g accessing certain pages, content etc but never not being able to access the site itself.
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      • Profile picture of the author WF99
        Originally Posted by amacg View Post

        That's strange, the site has been up continuously since I started this thread. Can you advise if you can access it now? What browser are you using?.
        No problem now ..
        I can access your site now ..
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  • Profile picture of the author fellowgeek
    I like the minimalism in design...

    For your news section try to have multiple sources, it would be nice if you could have categories for the news section.

    Find a bunch of good sites and reformat their RSS feed and use it in your software so always users could see interesting and up to date news stories.

    Display headlines and short summaries in the news section.

    Make sure to credit the original source.

    If you can mine the images from feeds and show a small image next to each headline to make it more engaging, kind of like what google news does.

    I hope it helped
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    • Profile picture of the author amacg
      Originally Posted by fellowgeek View Post

      I like the minimalism in design...

      For your news section try to have multiple sources, it would be nice if you could have categories for the news section.

      Find a bunch of good sites and reformat their RSS feed and use it in your software so always users could see interesting and up to date news stories.

      Display headlines and short summaries in the news section.

      Make sure to credit the original source.

      If you can mine the images from feeds and show a small image next to each headline to make it more engaging, kind of like what google news does.

      I hope it helped
      Some good suggestions. I initially disregarded news entirely i.e the site was purely created as a discussion/q&a site. I guess we want to focus more on news but not lose the former entirely. Maybe there's a way we can both offer news and discussion.
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      • Profile picture of the author fellowgeek
        Originally Posted by amacg View Post

        Some good suggestions. I initially disregarded news entirely i.e the site was purely created as a discussion/q&a site. I guess we want to focus more on news but not lose the former entirely. Maybe there's a way we can both offer news and discussion.
        I have an idea, why not make it like reddit, so people can submit news stories but in the beginning write a code to read a bunch of cool RSS feeds and generate news stories so the section would not be empty.

        Try to display images, use the opengraph tags to load a tiny picture.

        on a white background site with minimalistic design the small pictures
        will stand out and draw more attention. good job
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  • Profile picture of the author Pathway Insurance
    I was curious on why there are no images? Will not images be better user experience? My thoughts are to incorporate at least a few.
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    • Profile picture of the author amacg
      Originally Posted by Warrior Machine View Post

      Its ok now. I can now access the page fully. Nice job indeed. I use google chrome.
      Thanks a lot. Glad the site worked second time round.

      Originally Posted by Pathway Insurance View Post

      I was curious on why there are no images? Will not images be better user experience? My thoughts are to incorporate at least a few.
      Good question. Images would add to the experience, I guess we could re-design the news layout so that any images submitted with content could appear as thumbs. The problem we have is then we'd have to drop user avatars. What would you do? Drop user avatars or do without submission image thumbs?

      Thanks for the feedback guys, will take on board.
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      • Profile picture of the author Pathway Insurance
        I would drop the avatars, but that is my personal opinion, please take it with a grain of salt. :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author shantanu
    the website is too simple and clean with non professional fonts, the colour combination is just fabulous but i recommend you to design ur template or download some flash or premium templates designed on wordpress which also got the SEO inside itself.
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    • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
      Originally Posted by shantanu View Post

      the website is too simple and clean with non professional fonts, the colour combination is just fabulous but i recommend you to design ur template or download some flash or premium templates designed on wordpress which also got the SEO inside itself.
      Whoever recommends flash as "design improvement" and answers to any question with "use WordPress" - probably, shouldn't be allowed to post here
      Signature

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      • Profile picture of the author amacg
        Originally Posted by Istvan Horvath View Post

        Whoever recommends flash as "design improvement" and answers to any question with "use WordPress" - probably, shouldn't be allowed to post here
        I was going to say that also - his point was valid until he mentioned flash.

        I have an idea, why not make it like reddit,
        There's only one reddit...I think they have set a benchmark though in community design. It's fast, it's easy to use and basically, it works. I think we want to get to this point eventually but we need to look at some of the suggestions above first.

        Thanks all.
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