What sort of graphical look do you want?

Something that conveys the spirit of discussions and conversation, and gets people into our conversations quickly, and also provides us with some affiliate revenue.

I've seen a number of Spring logos around here. Do you have an archive of them anywhere? Could you give me a list of them. (In other words, I need some place to start. I'm not an artist, and I need something to work from.)

Okay, I've started to do a design based on: Hope that works for you!

Yup! A sentimental favorite of mine, actually!

Here you go...not many of the links work, and it will mean a redesign of some of the pages that are being linked to (for example, I couldn't tell if there was much difference between the "Shop" link and the "Store" link, so I figured they could be combined. Also, is there a way for someone to browse the conference list without signing up at all? Okay, here's a prototype: New Spring Home Page?

Wow!!! Looking great Ann!!!

I made the "Contents" page too. That is linked at the top of the pages. I tried to sort of combine the list of favorite conferences, the list of hosted websites, and the full list of conferences.

Going cross-eyed staring at this!!!

Give your eyes a rest and please check this for me. I'll check yours now. http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/geo/all/new

I like your divider bars. Very pretty. Your buttons at the top are ending up on 2 lines. You might want to force that more. Perhaps by putting in a {br} tag before the "Search" or "Users" button. That way, you'll end up with 4-5 buttons on the top and 3-4 buttons on the second line. I like the background, though on my laptop it might be a little too dark--not by much though, and laptops are a strange breed.

I really love it, Ann. Wow. I'll have some detailed comments later, when I get off work, but I'd go ahead nad archive the present page and put that up. There are more Spring logos if you search through the gifs and jpgs. Contents is great!

Excellent redesign, Ann! *clap clap* One minor suggestion: Do you want to emphasize the locale so prominently? In this day and age, where something is shouldn't be important and most of Spring's participants are from all over the world. While it is interesting that Spring is based out of Austin, having the two mentions [Austin, Texas Community Town Hall and Everyone's a Texan Here] might be a turnoff or lead people to believe that only Texans would be interested in the goings on at Spring. You know, like it's a local messageboard. Do you understand? No slight to Austinites or Texans intended. Also, Terry are you getting any money from Visto? Have you applied to actually get the rebate? If not, why are you advertising the affiliation so prominently as well?

I wondered that too, Karen. I agree with you; the internet is international, and relating it too much to one city might be bad. I made the Membership page too.

We want to emphasize it some, but empasize our austen.com and firth.com sites and developing sites. Let's tone down the Austin, Texas thing to not turn off folks but still make mention. I don't want to emphasize it as a local messageboard at all.

...and about that Membership page... Is that how it will be? Have payment methods been set up? I wouldn't put something like that up unless it were 100% accurate. Evidently the Springcom steering group is coming to naught. Will delist myself.

I just copied the page that was already there for Membership. Working on webhosting now. (just changed the top buttons a bit.)

Ann, as soon as I wake up gonna do the breaks where you suggested. Thanks!!!

Ann: The question was directed at Terry.

OK, i can't get in to see ann's design, what gives?

I moved it to the front page, just do http://www.spring.net .

I changed the Visto ad at the top to be an include. That will make it easier to swap it with something else, if that's ever needed.

oh wow! ann, you did a great job!!

Terry, according to what I'm seeing, this page: http://www.spring.net/webhosting/features.htm is only linked from one other page: http://www.spring.net/webhosting/support/cgi/unix/autoresponder/autoresponder.htm (which is pretty deep into the site) It's quite a usefull page there, going mostly to waste :(

I agree. We need to add a little version of the webcam gif with a sound link like we had on the old page because quite a few folks are paying me to run this ccontent. The gif is at http://www.spring.net/cap.jpg and the sound link you can grab from the old page. I'm thinking of supporting educational courses on our site, which could be tied in to Barnes and Noble University. I'm not quite sure how to forge this relationship yet, but it's incubating in my mind. So NEED AND IMAGE needs to have the /cap.jpg link to a little jop that will clikc to a bigger picture like on the old page with no size restrictions. Great work Ann, you've done a bunch in very little time. Thanks!@!!!!

I almost like the page with all the conferences as the main page with the other buttons that are centered on the main page moved to the left, what do folks think?

Can you pic a particularly picturesque picture for the cap.jpg? Since they shift around a lot, I'd like to pick a single one that is attractive.

I like the conferences on the front page down one side, too. That was our original reason for being here, and still attracts a lot of attention that austen.com does not first attract. I am working on abbout 5 different and interesting and knowledgable men to post in here.....we need to make a complete list of conferences on the front page...not just one of the dozen options (IMHO, of course!)

I don't stop by for a few days and HOLY SMOKE! You re-arranged all the furniture!! I like the new look, though I find the colors a bit dark for my taste (I'm a pastel kind-o-grrl). But it's very nice... Congrats to Ann, who ever you are ;-)

Sure, let's let it run as the webcam and pick one, anyone who sees a great picture do a right mouse click and save on it and send it in and we'll use that one.

Geba, gotta turn on the lights when you come back in... trip and you might miss that race.....

Ann, I put the link to cap.jpg but it needs to be sized to fit in that little frame. Can you do this, 'cause I've been doing all my gif sizing w/ frontpage and am hesitant to impose it on the page after your redesign.

Where is the cap image? (Usually, you are better off using a graphics program to resize the images than if you use HTML width and height tags to do it. Different browsers treat those differently, and the images usually end up looking funny.) BTW, I've finished converting all the Webhosting pages--there were a ton and a half of them! It took me about 3 days to do all of them--and the Help pages. Only area left is the Affiliates, which shouldn't take long. Terry, do you have a page for webcasting services (like webhosting)? If you are offering that as a service, people should be able to get info for it.

It's in the virtual_html directory. Since it's an image that changes every 30 seconds, it would be better to use width and height tags in this case. Would you create a basic webcast page at http://www.spring.net/webcast as index.html? If you do I'll go in and add some text content. thanks thanks thanks!

BTW, I used Front Page to do the work, so you needent fear using it.

I made up the Webcasting page. /webcast/index.html.

Hey thanks and more thanks Ann. It's wonderful what you're doing. I'm winding up an 18 hours day at work and it's so great to finally get this bunch of suns on the Internet. Sot he first thing I did was look at your latest handwork. I'll add some text to that webcasting page. You're so good, Ann!

I finally got the chance to look at the redesign on a different computer. Didn't like what I saw :( I'll have to do some tweaking, I think.

What was the difference between computers? Browsers?

Terry or wer: Someone just created a new topic at Drool. Thought that feature had been shutdown and that only the hosts could do that?