Attraction Source Forum

I think the site is clean-cut, colourful and invites you into the site. You can see the effort that has gone into the homepage and it seems very interactive which is perfect as I allows you to navigate easily and explore the site rather than just click plain links and buttons. Fantastic job

I like it,don't get me wrong,but I feel as if there is too much going on in the homepage.

Rob-TT wrote: Designing it the way we have works on all tested devices / browsers with no issues. Most mobile devices are perfectly capable of displaying standard websites correctly.

Displaying correctly doesn't mean it's usable….

I stand by my original points, the design is neither good or bad, it's amateur in places and I think not going responsive is a big mistake you'll come to regret in 12 months.

Altontowersbarlow wrote: I think the site is clean-cut, colourful and invites you into the site. You can see the effort that has gone into the homepage and it seems very interactive which is perfect as I allows you to navigate easily and explore the site rather than just click plain links and buttons. Fantastic job

That was our aim and hopefully we can continue this throughout the site.

Update:

This morning we have launched a phase of V3. The 'menu' tab found in the navigation bar has been changed and is now called community. This section of V3 is now complete and live.

This is a small step in transforming & revamping the whole of the TowersTimes sites.

More good work Rob! I especially like the team profiles

The team profiles are really cool. The whole thing is really cool to be honest.

Can't help but wonder how others would get described if they were team  :P

The community page is looking absolutely fabulous! A lot of work has gone into it, and I can't wait to see the site map and events page (and any other page not fully updated too)!

As well as this, the new banner that's replaced the CBeebies one looks much more professional, and shouts out that it's TowersTimes. This being said, I think that the edges to it don't fade enough and look a bit too hard and solid.

As most of you are aware, we released the V3 events mini-site this evening. For anyone that hasn't seen it yet, here's the link!

www.towerstimes.co.uk/events

I have a suggestion for the v3 forum:

I would like to see member ranks, so when you get to a certain post count, your rank goes up! These could be at 50 posts, 100, 250, 500, 1000 etc, and the rank names could be themed around Alton Towers!

I think it would be a bit of fun, but perhaps not add anything to your rank count in the Dragon Bar.

~Tom.B

Tom.B wrote: I have a suggestion for the v3 forum:

I would like to see member ranks, so when you get to a certain post count, your rank goes up! These could be at 50 posts, 100, 250, 500, 1000 etc, and the rank names could be themed around Alton Towers!

I think it would be a bit of fun, but perhaps not add anything to your rank count in the Dragon Bar.

~Tom.B

Hi Tom, we try to avoid anything that gives members a rank over others, we think it creates a negative environment on the forum. All our members mean a lot to us, from the people that may have only posted once or twice to the people that are in their thousands. Member awards are our way of recognising those people.

Hi all
I was just wondering if there was any news/time as to when the forum was going to V3?
Everything else is looking great by the way. 

The forum will follow very shortly. We should have something to announce soon.

I do apologise, but can I just say that that new banner on the site doesn't look very professional. The background colour of white really contrasts in a bad way with the dark navy blue, and I think that the previous banner was much better.

Have to agree, it looks hideous.

I thought these people were being harsh, so I looked myself to see you've changed it, and I must say I agree. The navigation buttons need to be the dark blue to match the logo. And a dark colour background to the top banner is needed otherwise the whole page looks boring.

As you're aware, we're forever playing around with the homepage, and all of V3 for that matter, to see what works, but we don't intend to have that header there for too long. As always we appreciate your feedback, as it's great to see you taking an interest into what you future incarnation of TowersTimes will look like!

Is V3 forum on its way?

We'll have more information to announce on the V3 Forum soon.

We're just performing some rather extensive maintenance tonight so thought we would have a little fun whilst we were at it!

To be brutally honest. The new site design, particularly the homepage, looks a bit of a mess. While the design is simple (simplicity is the way to go these days) there seems to be far too much text all over the place which makes pages feel far too busy.

For me this new design seems a bit of a step backwards when you compare to older designs. For one of the 'top dogs' of Alton Towers fansites when you compare to the likes of Towers Nerd (the previews of their new site) and TowersStreet this new design looks like something a 13 year old would create when they're attempting to create a fan site.

Don't get me wrong. It's not bad. But it lacks a lot. Perhaps just moving a few things around and making sure there's less text could be a start? The homepage is a bit too much for me. I think with some text adjustments it could work out far better! Maybe some different fonts too. The one on the homepage looks like it's a standard font for a plain template? Maybe go for a simple font that is a little bit more interesting than the current one.

Agree with other posters that the banner on the events page looks dire too. A white box against a purple background looks very unprofessional.