Check it out and feed back. It’s not finished, so we’re expecting to get a bit. I also want to run through and make it a bit more exciting-sounding, but retain and build upon the clarity that exists in this version.
Credit mostly to Ryan, also to me for what we see so far. I’ve mostly been working on project/affiliate sites to link to from this one… which I hope to unveil soonish.
Looks good, maybe it should have a link in the top bar to the diatribe forum? Maybe also a page with the boring official stuff - ie, info that we are incorporated (and the official full name), list of committee members, copy of the constitution for download, recent meeting minutes…
Nah, they’re riddled throughout. I think people will find their way there if they want that.
nzlarps.org/new/contact.php
Some of it’s there. Maybe I can put some more there too, and link it from the about page.
My feedback…
Overall, great. I think the colour scheme is subtle and easy to read. I like the idea of having two panels but maybe when there isn’t much on the bottom of one of them we could have photos?
On the Membership page.
Since it is now half-way through the nzLARP financial year (starting September) do we want to start giving people a half-year discount? $10 for all and sundry, or $10 and $5 for students?
Maybe change “Current LARPS you are involved in” to something that doesn’t sound like you have to already be a LARPer to join? Perhaps put an “Any” in front of Current.
On the Projects page, Border Princes and Mount Olympus link back to the main ‘new’ page.
Affiliates page. So, I get to be first to know about any new affiliates? What do I do with them, just announce them at the next meeting?
Contacts page. Obviously you specifically haven’t posted the address. Would it be better to say ‘email so-and-so to find out where the next meeting is’? Should we have the Committee Members’ emails (or even phone numbers) up?
I like the general layout and display. Below is my feedback with my first run through the web site.
About page:
=> I think this should be changed to ‘Home’, most sites have a home page and people are used to going to home as opposed to an ‘about us’ which is more like a history thing which we can add later.
=> We should add a ‘benefits’ list as to why people should join on the front page. Like what is in the diatribe forum.
=> ‘The New Zealand Live Action Role Playing Society Incorporated is a non-profit organisation that promotes live action role playing (larp) in New Zealand.’ The live action role playing’ should be have capitals for the first letter.
=> ‘who want to run larps and discounts to society members who want to play in them.’ Don’t know why but I don’t like the word them, I don’t know what to replace it with.
=> ‘Being a member gives you discounts on numerous larps and larp products’ add the word ‘all’, ie ‘all the society’s numerous larps.’
= ‘We want to lend you money, equipment and advice to help run your dream larp or larp-related project’ add the word support and put in the front eg ‘We want to give you advice and support as well as lending you money and equipment to help you run your dream larp’.
Membership:
=> Details for half year fees.
=> Benefits should be on front page to get them to this page. This page is the details section on how to join, not the why join speal.
=> The pay your fee on the right should be broken down into 2 easily seen parts;
• Pay by cheque, let the secretary know and they will give you an address to send your cheque to.
• pay via bank transfer etc ……
Project page:
=> ‘An nzLARPS project’ should be ‘A NZLARPS project’.
=> ‘The society lends funding, equipment, and expertise to the project’ add support to list as well.
=> ‘The society owns any resources and profit created,’ Add the word ‘will’, ie The society will own any resources and profit created,’
=> Step 2 ‘You’ll get constructive feedback from the community.’ We should be using ‘You will’.
=> Step 2; ‘Ask on the nzLARPS forum if you need help.’ Change this to ‘contact the society President if have any questions or need help filling in the form’.
=> Both the financial forecast and project definition should be in step 2. ie ‘Download and complete the project definition and financial forecast documents.’ It is easier to do the 2 together and to have only 1 point of contact for the beginning ie the society President. The treasurer and project officer should only come on board once approved.
Affiliate page:
=> ‘An nzLARPS affiliate is an’ should be ‘A NZLARPS affiliate.
=> ‘larpers, and societies’ remove comma.
=> ‘web page hosting, gear building or storage, or helping with events.’ Should read ‘web page hosting, gear building, gear storage or helping with events’.
=> Step 2, add ‘any questions contact the president.’
=> Step 3, change secretary to the president.
Contact us page:
=> ‘Members of the public are welcome’ Change to ‘Both society members and members of the public are welcome’
Overall:
The text on the right hand panel appears to be to faint.
Cool. Thanks to Craig for moving this here and thanks to committee members for comments. Will go through them ASAP.
Keep adding comments if you have them, please.
[quote=“dariyan”]On the Membership page.
Since it is now half-way through the nzLARP financial year (starting September) do we want to start giving people a half-year discount? $10 for all and sundry, or $10 and $5 for students?[/quote]
I agree that memberships ending in September will put people off joining now.
Why don’t memberships last a year from the date the person joins? That way membership can continue to have a set price and people can join anytmie and get the same value.
I’m working through the suggestions implementing them. The ones that I’m not sure about implementing yet I’m listing here with my reasons.
Once I’ve implemented an initial bunch of changes I’ll post here.
I agree we should try to fill any big blank areas. Let’s get happy with the text content and then see what blanks are left.
I imagined that you’d thank them for the application and then raise it for them at the next meeting. There has to be a point of contact. If not the Secretary, it could be the President.
I haven’t posted the street address because I couldn’t remember it. I think if you want to have meetings that are open to the public, you need to publically announce the venue and time.
The committee email addresses are already up there, although not for the general committee members.
[quote=“adam”]=> We should add a ‘benefits’ list as to why people should join on the front page. Like what is in the diatribe forum.
(…)
=> Benefits should be on front page to get them to this page. This page is the details section on how to join, not the why join speal.
[/quote]
This could be quite a lot of text to go on the homepage. Currently we have it on Membership page, which wasn’t just intended to be a “How To” page.
However, I can see why you’d think we should bring the benefits of membership out on to the homepage and slap people in the face with it. If we can fit it and make it work without overcomplicating the homepage then it could work.
I disagree. It’s not a proper noun, and capitals make it less readible.
Again, I think this September-September membership thing is just weird. Can you re-iterate the reasoning behind it?
I’ve used nzLARPS throughout. Can we have a decision on whether it should be nzLARPS or NZLARPS?
This is an intentional part of Craig’s design. It’s worth discussing whether the design looks the way we want, including things like the text colour.
The official name of the society is:
The New Zealand Live Action Role Playing Society Incorporated.
Thus, it should be abbreviated to NZLARPS (all capitals) and, I suppose, should be completely initially capitalised when it is given in full.
I think nzLARPS is more aesthetic, although in graphics we should capitalise and raise the “NZ”. It emphasises “LARPS” and makes it obvious how the name is pronounced. “NZLARPS” looks like it might be pronounced “inzilarps”. If you know what a LARP is, it’s easier to recognise nzLARPS is a LARP group.
The faint text is purposeful, it’s a contempoary design feature. The headers on the left are also a little fainter. The technique is used to show “read this second” when used in combination with darker text - hence on each of the pages it’s obvious you should read the black text first, which is always more helpful for newbies.
The AGM is in September each year. This suggests a good financial year turnover, and membership turnover (at least to me).
Otherwise, we (I) have to do a lot more work about exactly when everyone’s memberships end, and probably print membership end dates on their cards, rather than generally saying ‘Sign up at the next AGM to have your vote and free pizza (or whatever)’. A concise list would have to be made of whether people’s memberships would run about before the next game or not. As well as making sure people put the right date on their membership papers, or to when they paid, or what. To tell the truth, the dates I’ve got are somewhat dodgy, and mainly from when Committee members posted on the forum that they’d recieved money from people.
I see what you mean about the value of joining, though. But wouldn’t that get people to want to join up earlier rather than waiting?
I dunno. It just seems easier to have a September AGM turnover.
I think this is pretty normal stuff for a society. It’s not like we’re a university association with members who tend to think in terms of the uni year and join up “for the year” at the start. People will be wanting to join willy-nilly.
While it might make things simpler for the society to have all memberships start and end at the same time, it doesn’t make any sense from a member perspective.
I’ve made some of the changes to the site but haven’t uploaded them yet.
[quote=“Ryan Paddy”]
I’ve made some of the changes to the site but haven’t uploaded them yet.[/quote]
When are you planning on putting up the changes so we can review again?
Will have it done this wek.
I want to do a full set of changes, I’ve only had time to do a few so far.
A possible problem with the half-year memberships is that people can join very cheaply just to buy larp weapons at a large discount from Paddywhack. They may not be interested in further involvement in the society.
Although to be honest, that doesn’t really bother me as Paddywhack. And the society at least then has a foot in the door with them and may get further interest from them.
These are the outstanding questions for the committee that I can think of.
Some of these items are being disagreed on, others just haven’t been addressed yet. Add any questions I’ve missed.
Once we have answers we can get the site finished and live.
1 - Overall
a) Are you happy with the greyed text in the right column?
b) Are you happy with the overall layout and choice of pages?
c) Will the abbreviation be nzLARPS or NZLARPS?
d) Are you happy with the text, especially its tone? Does it need to be more friendly and welcoming, have more personality, or be more formal? Any other comments on the text overall?
e) Should the term “live action roleplaying” be capitalised throughout, and should the term “larp” be captialised? I don’t believe either should be capitalised as I think it’s harder to read and larp has become a word in its own right (like the acronym “scuba”), but that’s just my opinion.
2 - Home Page
a) Are you satisified with the brief description of the benefits of membership on the home page or do you want it to be expanded further? Expanding it would probably mean adding a “Why Join?” title and paragraph to the page between “What is nzLARPS?” and “How to”. Bullet points of the reasons could be a bit ugly on the home page, but that might be the clearest way of expressing the points. .
3 - Membership Page
a) Should benefits of membership be removed from this page (and moved to the home page)? Personally I think it’s enough to briefly outline the benefits on the homepage (as the site currently does) and then explain them in detail on the Membership page. Repeating the benefits in this way reinforced them and means they can be found easily.
4 - Contact Us Page
a) Do you want to give the address and time for meetings? What is it? I think the address should be given so that people can attend meetings easily, it makes the society feel more open.
b) I’ve assumed that Craig will be creating generic email addresses for the committee. That way new committee members can just take over the old addresses. Are you happy with the email addresses I’ve used? They are community@nzlarps.org. Craig, are you happy to create these on the server? I haven’t given any email addresses for general committee members who don’t have named roles, is this okay?
c) What other contact information is needed? A mailing address? A phone number? Does the webmaster need an email address to be presented here? Any other information needed here? A description of the current geographical layout of the society (totally in Auckland, but expecting to expand)?
I think we should have a link to the forum in the top tile bar ( add “- FORUM” to the HOME/MEMBERSHIP/… list) since this is where most discussion of upcoming things and the calendar are located. Possibly even a separate link for the LARP Calendar, too.
I like the layout, in general. Also, I now think that ‘nzLARPS’ looks more aesthetically pleasing than ‘NZLARPS’ although the latter is more accurate.
I would still like to have a copy of the current constitution document available for download from the website somewhere. Maybe have a documents menu somehwere with the constitution, plus the various forms? I know these are available on the other pages, but it might be good to have a Document Central where you can get it all together…
Seeing these are both links to off-site things, perhaps they could go in the bottom box? They’re different to the site navigation.
Funny, I’m starting to sway the other way. 
Maybe we should put it to a vote on the forum?
How about an area of the Contact Us page that describes the society really briefing (AGMs etc) and has a download link for the constitution? I’d forgotten about the constitution, that’s a good document to make available. There’s lots of space on the Contact Us page.
Is the committee going to address these questions at the next meeting, or will there be answers before then?
One thing I wonder about is whether the website should show a list of upcoming events. But that’s something that could be added later.
Here’s the website of a Canadian larp society that might be useful for comparison: lrpsedm.com/