WHO THINKS LETSRUN DOESN'T NEED A "RE-DESIGN"!!

Just-thought-id-add-it-up wrote:

And Wejo, fix your link on the front page regarding the change!

"After 8 years of getting sick of having to apologize to people for our lack of design, we're having a homepage re-design contest for letsrun.com."

==> points to the Kamel Citizenship article.

Got it!! Thanks. Don't blame wejo, blame me.

I don't agree

At first I thought I'd be against the redesign, but then I remembered the first time I visited letsrun. I didn't know about the message board at the time, so I just saw the homepage and left immediately because it was so hard to read. I have some ideas to improve the layout. Is there a limit to how many we can submit?

This website has a lot going for it, or it wouldn't be as popular as it is. It's nice to see all the recent news stories conveniently accessible on one homepage. Do NOT change that – EVER!!. But perhaps a horizontal break (a thick line with a date within it) could be used to separate each day's entries. And perhaps slightly different color coding could to used to make it easy to spot different categories of articles (pro, collegiate, high school, doping, and miscellaneous). Perhaps keep up all articles that were put on the home page for the last 2 weeks. After that move them to an archive that is easy to access, and also easy to search.

Even with its major flaws the letsrun message board is far superior to its competitors -- because one can see all recent posts across all subjects on one page. This makes it very easy to see what is now being actively discussed and then easily jump in and read/post. Other running message boards force one select from among 5 to 20 different categories before being able to see or read and content. That is a disaster for those of us with a broad interest in what’s currently being discussed. Go visit the message boards used by Trackshark, T&F News, etc. They are too compartmentalized for my liking.

But it would certainly be nice if the message board had a better search function, and allowed parts of MS Word documents and Excel spreadsheets to be copied without the total loss of formatting (and readability). I have lots of interesting T&F data in spreadsheet format but I can’t post even parts of it without losing the formatting and readability of what I’d like to present.

Leave it alone. I like the blue collar-ness of this site.

it would def be alot better if the website was updated...it kinda sucks now

So, is the logo going to stay the same?

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

At first I thought I'd be against the redesign, but then I remembered the first time I visited letsrun. I didn't know about the message board at the time, so I just saw the homepage and left immediately because it was so hard to read. I have some ideas to improve the layout. Is there a limit to how many we can submit?

Are you sure you aren't just illiterate?

If it ain't broke don't fix it, LetsRun.com is the market leader for several reasons.

What they are individually is unknown even to the savviest analysts. But mess with one link and the whole chain may break. . .

I submit my design

ih.fotothing.com/69758.jpg

any re-design is going to reduce the number of readily visible stories on the front page and slow down the loading of the pages, both of which are bad. keep it simple, like google.

Thank GOD. I knew the http://www.trackjabber.com mini-campaign would work. I guess it served it's purpose.

Easiest way to clean it up:

Leave everything as it is, just remove all links more than a couple days old on the main page and create an archive. How hard could it be?

I like it how it is, i.e. a lot of threads on one page.

If it was changed so it loaded slower (avatars and rubbish like that) it would be a shame.

The reason it works is that it is simple

gromer wrote:

Easiest way to clean it up:

Leave everything as it is, just remove all links more than a couple days old on the main page and create an archive. How hard could it be?

And use a sans-serif font.

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

And use a sans-serif font.

I like serifs, but I don't believe the homepage specifies a font-face - except for some specific headings and/or links which are Times New Roman.

So you should be able to change the default font on your browser and get the font of your choice (for most of the page at least).

Now the messageboards are a different story... Arial is specified for the boards and that's my least favourite font. That part does need changing.

Regarding the homepage redesign - the main thing needed is a spell checker and a bit of time spend proof reading and perhaps some more regular moving of the really old stuff into an archive.

Look at me im being a non conformist cuz i dont want the crappy letsrun logo to change. Lets all rally together and be emo non conformists who hate everything thats popular. At the same time lets dress up in tight black pants and comb our hair to the sides and where old 80s jackets with chuck tailors because no one is doing it. And when we get all the attention we desperately seek inside, we can all pretend to flip out over the attention we are getting cuz its not cool to be popular or the center of attention.

I know that it is probably off limits, but I have always thought that the logo was a bit childish. Is there someway to reuse the colors, which I think are a bit trademark, but maybe update the logo to something less dated than the old Geocities-ish look?

Also, my girlfriend was looking over my shoulder and read, "Where your dreams become reality... No wonder you were single for so long, Sam."

I know the logo/motto-slogan is perhaps off limits, but since we are talking about redesigning the site that is what I might revise. Feel free to slam for criticizing what might be canon, but I can't be the only one who has read the website header and thought, "That's a little weird for a running news site/forum."

BUMP