FridgeTheme
Table of Contents |
Fridge Needs a New Theme
The Ubuntu News site, aka "the fridge" needs a new look. The site has a lot of untapped potential and a fresh theme could help it achieve that goal. You can help!
Requirements:
Here are the requirements:
Design
- A new visual appearance, harmonious with the ubuntu website but not *just another ubuntu knock off*
- My suggestions would be to stick with the colours and fonts of the ubuntu site but not feel constrained to using the rounded borders with the top right drop down nav
- Attractive, people will feel the site is credible
- A layout that looks like a news website
- Possibly include a special layout for Ubuntu Weekly News, since it is a regular item and has a different format than the other news stories
Content Types
This is the types of content people will view on the site:
- News stories
- UWN
- Events
Blocks
These side-bar items will be shown on the site, this may change over time
- Popular content
- Syndication/rss
- Events
- Search
- Video podcast
Phase 1: Mockups
Post your mockups here
2. http://sd.ubuntu-us.org - I just want to throw out the theme the Ubuntu Drupal team has been creating. This theme has been written very well. Some stylesheets would need to be created for the Fridge and a different banner would need to be created. Perhaps others can build off this theme and create something specifically for the Fridge?
3. Strider's Remake Strider: I am surely for the Smartboyathome's theme. I have edited it - please see in the link. I intend to make a few changed to it later. The search box looks raw.
4. Giant Speck's Entry Giant Speck: I'm not really good at graphic design, but I came up with something. It's probably too large of a change, but I thought I'd share it anyway. I'll be tweaking it a bit over the next day or so, and I might even try to come up with another one before the deadline, if that's okay.
5. Banner - A rough concept for the head area with 2 type choices. -- Thorsten Wilms
Newz's Inspirational Attachments
Here is some inspiration:
Fox News has an interesting "latest news" "most read" etc format. This could be used nicely
The New York Times homepage has way more content this is applicable for the fridge but they have mini-homepages for newspaper sections. Here's the page for baseball which has a pleasing layout that shows one feature item prominently and links to more information on the right.
I like the way NBC's homepage features events on the left side. I also like the way they have a pretty background that isn't distracting but adds a touch of elegance to the site that is otherwise quite busy (it's got a lot of animation).
CNN shows a video block on the top right. Below that is an advert. Imagine instead of an advert the most recent podcast video featured there with other interesting videos listed above it.
Gizmodo's content probably more closely matches the fridge's than any of the other sites and their homepage style would be a nice match for the fridge.
This is a mockup of the layout it's not a design. It lacks the logo area, search box and links to related sites. Presumably these would be along the top. It is made from the pieces of the above sites.
Phase 2: Tweak design and implement as HTML/CSS
Wait until a theme has been chosen
Phase 3: Drupal theme
Wait until we have HTML/CSS