Keira Knightley.com Forums - KKW2007 "Dream7" Edition

Jagshemesh!
This is the thread about the forthcoming 2007 edition of the KKW website. Because we're really poncy and like to feel all overimportant (especially Digital Ice :icon_lol: ) it's got the codename "Dream7" (the current one is "Indigo" in case you didn't know)... because, well... we're on Dreamhost not and it's going to be 2007. Uh huh.

First of all I'll have to let you know I'm writing this from work since my local wireless co-op has gone tits up, so development has halted somewhat.

Why redesign?
It took a long time to get to this point, well over a year. I have an enormous dislike for all the other fansites that feel the need to redesign themselves entirely every other month - Indigo was supposed to be 'the end' as near as fathomable. Of course it never really works that way; bits and pieces slowly being added over time. I think that at the moment Indigo is a great design but it's become a bit messy and unwieldy. With the server move to Dreamhost, the necessity to rebuild portions of the site and with the new year coming, this was a good opportunity to redesign it.

Whassit Look Like?
Right now the beta is located at www.keiraknightley.com/dreambeta.php and I'd appreciate it if you didn't give out the address. As you can see it's more of a refurbishment than a redesign. Think of it as Indio the way it was always meant to be. I wanted to continue the recognisable Wavefront design (I think it has a certain branded feeling of its own) but strip it back to a more streamlined, efficient, elegant and good-looking design. Please let me know what you think about the layout. Streamlined is the key.

The Flash Menu
This might be a bone of contention for some people but let me explain. You might notice an uncanny similarity between the Flash menu and the Indio menu bar. To be honest I entirely lacked the skills to develop a Flash menu back in 2004 when Indigo was made. I knew what I wanted and how it was to look, but couldn't achieve it. So I made a poor-cousin GIF facsimile; that's what exists currently. Fast forward to October 2006 and I've acquired enough Flash testosterone to build the original menu. Huzzah.

As you can see it allows a good deal more information to be presented quite elegantly. I don't think its intrusive, overly animated or gratuitous in any manner. I think this is how Flash *should* be used - to subtly accent a design and aid with the efficient presentation of options. It's compatible with the lowliest versions of Flash, weighs in at only 12k and there's always the complementary Site Map if you get in trouble. Google has recently taken to indexing Flash menus too.

The Content
I'm eager to see that KKW2007 becomes more content-orientated. That is, presenting more stuff for our users. Right now we've got a fairly well-regarded site, but it's really just a sloppily maintained image gallery and a forum tied under a homepage and I'd like to change all that. For starters there's the new Wiki (you might not have been aware of it) which Ice and myself are slowly piecing together. We want it to be a central resource for the KK fan fraternity online, as well as a showpiece for our own community. We would discourage you from editing it until we have all the templates nailed.

In addition I'd like to develop some proper content pages; reproducing and archiving articles (could run to hundreds of pages), maybe some more esoteric pieces and comments. Maybe you might have some ideas about how to build our content?

When will it be ready?
Never on the promised date. We know that much. Obviously before January 1st, most likely to be around 20th November. Depends on a) how quickly I get this semesters papers done and b) whether my wireless starts working again.

Anything else?
You might have noticed a declining use of the word "Wavefront" recently. It's not accidental. Since acquiring keiraknightley.com permanently earlier in the year i'm eager to eventually see kkwavefront.org retired for simplicity (and google doesn't link multiple domain copies). References to Wavefront may be more tenuous in Dream7.

Can I help?
Yes, of course. You can do the following:

edit the Wiki when we're ready to roll for real.
collect, transcribe, write, copy, beg, borrow or steal any articles relating to Keira and process them into unstyled HTML pages before emailing to my regular address if you fancy.
fill gaps in our galleries by downloading images from other sources and compiling them into their own folders and FTPing them up to /media/albums (contact me if you don't have permission for this)
post insightful and engaging things on the forum (riiiight)

Really though, your comments are the best thing right now....