Please no. Loads fast, looks clean. Don't make the mistake the Dilbert website did.
|
Somthing I would like to see on the site would be a direct section for the Paizo Blog. Just like the store blog.To be honest I dont really care for the store blog, but as business I can see its importance. Most of the time I forget that you guys have a blog and its nice to keep interest up on up coming Paizo/Pathfinder projects.Maybe Im in the minority on this one though.
|
Exciting is not a word I would ever use to describe wizards website.
Actually collapsing all the forums into each other (6 eberron threads becoming 1 in particular) pretty much annoyed me. Also their site is irritating to get around and find what you want.
But there is room for change and improvements. I especially like someones idea about a compiled art gallery.
|
I'm afraid I have to agree with mwbeeler. The site is clean, easy to navigate and loads fast. Adding graphics and other things like that tend to junk up a site. A few additional small, tasteful graphic elements could be nice and could help to reinforce the Paizo brand, but web site ease of use HAS to take president over pretty looking.
I am reminded of an old adage:
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
'Nuff said.
I think the Paizo site is pretty the way it is - clean, fast loading, easy to navigate. Also, it doesn't attract a lot of attention when I surf it from work...
it's nice as is..as others have said it loads fast and has a clean look to it.
The web site is good enough right now. Besides, I LIKE being able to look at the site from work. ~grins~ However, I am sure that my productivity would increase if I did loose access to the site from work.
This websites is one of the very, very best !
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
|
The web site is good enough right now. Besides, I LIKE being able to look at the site from work. ~grins~ However, I am sure that my productivity would increase if I did loose access to the site from work.
Agteed on all counts, well except for the productivity part. I can go ahead and read while listening to he phone
While I think that there might be some tweaks to the user interface that would make the website better, I really like the speed at which the Paizo site loads most of the time. Getting onto these pages is easy compared to other similar websites. I would rather it stay the way it is if it meant longer load times.
However, an art gallery would be awesome when they get a chance.
|
|
Please, oh please, God, No!!!!!
I spend more time per visit at Paizo's website than at any other, period. The reason, beyond the obvious, is the web site design: clean, streamlined, easy-to-navigate, fast loads, Mac-friendly etc, etc, etc.
I like the clean, white, Mac-friendly site the way it is--please don't make it a WotC clone.
Why I don't like WotC's site? Too hard to navigate, slow load; often get ?-marks instead of pictures or text, nothing is where I 'feel' like it should be: it's not-not-not intuitive, too many colors and angles and dropdowns and... it's just too busy.
This will make me sound mentally dull, but... when I navigate to the Wizards site, my eyes glaze for a microsecond--I don't know where to look first! That makes it sound like it's an impressive page, but what I mean is that everything tries to draw your eye first, instead of one thing leading to another, etc.
|
|
I loaded both sites and timed it.
Paizo's: 1.4 seconds, loads perfectly.
Wizards's: 30 seconds, and I counted five images that failed to load.
Enough said.
EDIT: I cleared my cache and retried it after realizing I had just been on Paizo's site and thus it would load faster. The results this time:
Paizo: 4.5 seconds, loads perfectly.
Wizards: 30 seconds, and this time over ten images failed to load.
Still, enough said.
|
|
While my first reaction was to say No Changes with the crowd I did some looking about and feel there is room for visual improvement.
The current Paizo site has a nice web 1.0 look to it. That is, it is old school. Nothing wrong with that per se.
Now compare Paizo.com to Allakhazam (Oh god I did the unpardonable and referred to a WOW site), then compare d20SRD site , outside gaming look at Worth100, Renderocity and Good-Tutorials .
They do not use Flash or animation, but do have a nice streamlined easily navigated and attractive site. Even with today's fast computers and internet connections, Flash and animations take an annoyingly long time to download.
Simple upgrades such as a clean background (white is boring, and can be hard on the eyes) some graphics and clean navigation can still be fast loading and express the company is up to date on Web 2.0 . Though white can be attractive (Apple) when combined with judicious use of graphics and content.
I do believe that Paizo is essentially Web 2.0, but their appearance is very old school.
Content is just fine for the most part. Things I would like to see added would require a much larger web staff and support. That will come in time I believe.
Let me end with the simple comment that being happy with the status quo can lead to stagnation. Change for the sake of change is not sufficient, but never be opposed to using change to deliver a richer more dynamic experience.
Please no. Loads fast, looks clean. Don't make the mistake the Dilbert website did.
As a guy who has to wait fifteen seconds or more to load Wizard's site (broadband in China) please NO, NO, NO!
Paizo pages load in 2 or 3 seconds.
|
|
... Flash and animations take an annoyingly long time to download....
And they bug me. In fact, they're so bothersome to me, whenever possible, I will actually move my window off the desktop until I can't see the seizure-inducing ads and other kewlities...
If the golem ever dances across the top of the page, I'm quits with Paizo...
PAIZO's website is excellent!
|
|
... Flash and animations take an annoyingly long time to download....And they bug me. In fact, they're so bothersome to me, whenever possible, I will actually move my window off the desktop until I can't see the seizure-inducing ads and other kewlities...
If the golem ever dances across the top of the page, I'm quits with Paizo...
Dancing Golem... now that would be a sight to see... once
There are a LOT of things I would like to see added to the Paizo site:
Interactive Wiki, character bank, adventure bank, occasional articles like Dragon and Dungeon Magazines (that is DDI done right), more fan interaction (adventures, fiction and art), a more robust search function.
Unfortunately these require a larger staff to create and maintain.
BTW I mentioned the whole Web 2.0 thing earlier and realized that WOTC has decided to NOT go that route at all. Their DDI is platform dependent. Non-windows machines are not supported. It would make more sense to make the whole thing web dependent rather than platform dependent. More college students buy Macs than PCs, and Macs have seen a growth of more than 100% this last year and the trend is expected to grow. 4E is aimed at the younger generation, which embraces the Mac more so than any other generation. Not my problem. I plan on playing PfRPG anyway.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
|
If the golem ever dances across the top of the page, I'm quits with Paizo...Dancing Golem... now that would be a sight to see... once
Heh, heh, heh... Dancing Golem
Here is a linky to the original thread if anyone is interested. =)
|
|
Now compare Paizo.com to Allakhazam (Oh god I did the unpardonable and referred to a WOW site),
Since when did that stop being an Everquest site!?
|
|
Since when did that stop being an Everquest site!?
Now compare Paizo.com to Allakhazam (Oh god I did the unpardonable and referred to a WOW site),
Allakhazam is for multiple games. That link is to the WoW version. World of Warcraft, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Final Fantasy XI, EVE Online, and Lord of the Rings Online all have their own versions.
I like the way the site is currently laid out and the way it looks. Other than cleaning up bugs (which Cosmo and Vic are constantly squashing anyway so I am not too concerned) I would like to see Tagging and tag clouds implemented. It's a nice feature that helps filter/search for content on a site.
A first page with some graphics and a sitemap would be more welcoming to newcomers (unless you want this to be an 'elitist' site, which doesn't help Paizo make money).
After that, the minimalist approach works fine - I just think first impression is everything, and this place is pretty bland.
And as far as "neat and clean" goes - so are hospitals, but I don't see people wanting to go there anytime soon either. ;)
And you folks shouldn't be surfing the web from work anyway.. shame on you. <pfffft>
Chief Technical Officer
|
You can collapse the thread on your own; don't empty your cache, and they'll always be collapsed.
Actually, we store your collapsing preferences on your account, so you can empty the cache, delete your cookies, use a different browser or a different computer—as long as you're signed in, we'll still remember which forums you don't want to see.
|
|
A first page with some graphics and a sitemap would be more welcoming to newcomers (unless you want this to be an 'elitist' site, which doesn't help Paizo make money).
After that, the minimalist approach works fine - I just think first impression is everything, and this place is pretty bland.
And as far as "neat and clean" goes - so are hospitals, but I don't see people wanting to go there anytime soon either. ;)
And you folks shouldn't be surfing the web from work anyway.. shame on you. <pfffft>
Perhaps a world map of Golarion that would allow you access to various links by clicking on locations of the world map?
Also, 1 second to load up Paizo and 10 seconds to load up Wizards. The difference in load up time doesn't really bother me. But I appreciate why it does for others.
Again, I recognize that I'm the minority here.
|
|
Wizards is ok as far as load time, but I HATE their presentation. It is a nightmare to find anything. The link for forums takes you to their old dead forums. I can spend 10 minutes just trying to get to their forums. By then I am so disgusted I don't want to look at them anymore.
There are some sites out there though, that even with fast downloads, can take literally a minute to open. OK one minute is not much in the grand scheme of things, but comeo on, it is still bloated. And it is almost always a Flash presentation that always underwhelms me.
Wow. I can't believe the number of people opposed to making improvements to Paizo's rather simplistic site. Amazing.
I'm also shocked at the number of people making silly false dichotomies that it's either no-feature Paizo or the abomination of Gleemax. Whatever.
At the very least, I'd expect the features of something like vbulletin.
|
Wow. I can't believe the number of people opposed to making improvements to Paizo's rather simplistic site. Amazing.
its one of those things that I can find anything on this site better than most sites, and I'm not distracted by evil flashy avatars and signature lines, and it is very professional and plain looking so I don't feel bad being on it at work...
|
|
I'm very happy with the way Paizo is as well. Its simple and straight forward and clean, I find that a lot of sites that do things like adding images to bboard posts and such quickly become very cluttered and hard to read and I don't want that here(and I'm glad to see that most seem to the feel the same).
Bug fixes and new features are good things, but the site has a great look and feel to it and that really doesn't need to be changed.
-Tarlane
|
|
Wizards is ok as far as load time, but I HATE their presentation. It is a nightmare to find anything. The link for forums takes you to their old dead forums. I can spend 10 minutes just trying to get to their forums. By then I am so disgusted I don't want to look at them anymore.
There are some sites out there though, that even with fast downloads, can take literally a minute to open. OK one minute is not much in the grand scheme of things, but comeo on, it is still bloated. And it is almost always a Flash presentation that always underwhelms me.
Finding anything on Wizards site especialy archived material which is still present is an increasing nightmare.
Flash content is fine the first time you see it. Then the 2nd through 100th become extremely annoying when it adds to your load time. I've got better things to do with my time than weight extra seconds for it to load.
Keep it clean, fast, and efficient, and give us new content without slowing down.
Wanna find stuff on Wizards? Easy get a site crawler, one of those programs that you tell it to download everything on the site, and have lots of space. Let it run a few hours and browse at your leisure. You also get all the old content and some odd stuff they put up you could never find otherwise (I once found a picture of someone's shoes on their-go figure)
Does not work on Paizo as they have secured their site.
|
Ugh... yes WotC did wonders to the front page like the 90 second movie that loads every time I do to the front page and I cannot stop or disable until it's done. Please for the love of all that is decent do not go the way of the D&D homepage.
The Paizo Site is very good. I'll take the readability, speed, and functionality of Paizo over the Gee-gaws, flash, and l33t color schemes on the D&D site every time.
The Blog is awesome, a continuous source of your very excellent art work, good product summaries and it just plain works. The message boards are... not stellar but they do just fine. It would be nice to have some more BBCodes... [code] or [pre], image support... but I can hang with this.
-- Dennis
One of the things that WotC is doing right is keeping up its exciting website. I am hoping that Paizo has great plans on gussing up its website, too.
I respectfully disagree. For me, Wizards.com is something I dip into for a minute or two, checking to see if there's any new content that's worth the wear and tear on my hard drive. As for their messageboard... er, no. In contrast, Paizo.com is the website that I save for last, because it can eat hours of my time if I'm not careful.
Any changes forecasted?
The only changes I'd like to request are:
* add an art gallery, and* hunt down that post-eating monster and beat it into paste.
* hunt down that post-eating monster and beat it into paste.
But I have a wife and kids to support...*sob*
its one of those things that I can find anything on this site better than most sites, and I'm not distracted by evil flashy avatars and signature lines, and it is very professional and plain looking so I don't feel bad being on it at work...
Well, that is pretty much exactly what I said when I mentioned a minimum expectation of having the features of vbulletin...
Here is another vote for keeping it the way it is (but I do still long for wish lists)!
Make sure to put that on a wish list... Errm?
Elcian