Style
Because this site isn’t really so big, I think it can contain some nice imagery. Maybe we can include news footage that people upload somehow.
But since there’s not much to show other than news, this leaves us a lot of physical room to play with. I think the main question for this site is simply : how to make news look appealing?

Again, there should be some shared elements with the other sites for easy recognition that this is an LFS site.

Pages / elements
-Main page with latest headlines
-Page with specific (selected) new item

-News submit page

And that’s pretty much it. Of course options like filters to show only news from e.g. a certain league should be added. But page-wise, there aren’t many. Ideas welcome.

big pictures of recent leagues, user created stuff (lynce add-ons) and patches etc.

and they slideshow but have option to click them easily. just something simple.

I think simply the main page should be similar to metro style with big grids, each showing a highlight of a respective section (skin, mod, video etc), then in each section have a simple and tidy grid layout similiar to this.

http://brandoncampbell.tv/

Quote from JJ72 :

I think simply the main page should be similar to metro style with big grids, each showing a highlight of a respective section (skin, mod, video etc), then in each section have a simple and tidy grid layout similiar to this.

http://brandoncampbell.tv/

My complaint with that style is each of the buttons tell no information. As we've learned as a company.. Icons mean nothing. Text is meaningful, but even simple icons like a page with a pencil.. a client is like "WTF is that?".. which is stupid because one would think that's pretty logical.

I think the focus on Metro isn't not a good choice. Yes it is "cool looking".. but in terms of actually showing any information about anything.. it seems to fail. It might work for news.. especially if it reacts in a cool way.. but otherwise I think it's kinda backwards.

I agree with Dustin, I just registered as a bounce on that page because I didnt know what the site was about, what was it in for me, or where I should click. It was, by all account, 5 seconds of my life wasted. In fact it was so bad that it wasted those 5 seconds despite me only being on the page for 2. The other 3 seconds where spent pondering any merit at all as to what I had just seen!

But of course my parents toughtme to offer something constructive when I speak, and in that spirit...

I think it is important to understand what the nature of the site is. As this is a news site then the number 1 problem to solve is how to get the news on the site.

LFS already has an active community willing to produce content - the problem is any site that is too far off to the side is not in the attention span of the users - so how about moving it under the forum. This also gives an easy method of inputting news stories - although improved picture and video embedding in that section would be beneficial.

The downside of a forum is that the layout isn't right for a "news" feed, so retheming that forum section would help it to stand out. Perhaps it could be displayed at the top of the main forum index in a different colour.

Consider the merits for a second, news written by the community about the community would have pride of place at the top of the forum index... Making the league competitors into superstars! So for existing users it's kinda cool - but also for new potential customers viewing the page they get to see the positive side of the community before they click in to the other forum sections to read up on the latest flamewar It's win win.

The downside is that forum layout isn't very appealing as a "news" site, but re-theming that section would solve it.

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An alternative method and the one that I preffer is keeping news submission forum based but generating a monthly pdf in newspaper visual style once a month with an aggregate of the posts which resulted in the most comments/views. This can be done pretty much automagically with just a few tweeks to get the visual layout right.

This newsletter could be sent via email to the user base to keep them abreast of the latest happenings in the community. The web site would then just be an archive of back issues.

This approach allows you to reconnect to your old users.

Of course the email would need to be opt-in, ala ye olde checkbox for [x] Receive Community News & Events

Keeping in touch with your users is important, it lets your customers know that you love them (see the result of the dev silence for the wrong way to do it :P).