|
|
This text is replaced by the Flash movie. Navigation.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
The Pixel Punk Diaries |
The Extremely Minor Makeover
It's been almost a year since we launched the latest version of lifeteen.com. It has been a difficult task to maintain such a big website on such a small staff (two of us.) We've learned a lot over the course of 2005 and because of that, we've rearranged some things on the website over the past few months to make the site cooler and easier to use.
Here's some highlights:
- Media: On the right column of every page is the brushed metal "Media Launcher" and the yellow box of "Community News." But most people didn't realize that that metal thing was called the "Media Launcher," so I redesigned the top with a big glossy title that reads "MEDIA." (I know I should've made it say the full "Media Launcher" but it didn't look as cool.) Now hopefully people will use this module to access all of our video and audio content. The final step was to remove "Media" from the black button bar. I know it is still redundant to have "Olivia on Air" and "XLT" on the button bar, but these routinely-updated sections that we don't want people to miss.
- New Names, New Places: Over the course of the last ten months, some sections have grown up and deserve more attention on our black button bar. We've created 36 original features since February, and we decided it was time to give the "Feature Archive" it's own button. Then we slid "Reviews" further to the left to draw more people to this fun and informative section. Finally we renamed "Downloads" as "Wallpapers" to eliminate confusion. We chose the name "Downloads" in the beginning because we hoped to make more than just wallpapers this year, but we didn't have the time. What ended up happening is that people clicked on "Downloads" and expected to get LIFE Nights, MP3s, or Podcasts. It was pretty anti-climactic. So now we're back to "Wallpapers."
Thank you for making lifeteen.com your homepage. - Better Photo Albums: A former LIFETEEN.com intern told me that our old photo albums were, "The back alley of the website." This hurt my feelings, so decided to redo this section so that the photos looked more at home with the rest of the site. We still have some more work to do in the section, but you can see that it has come a long way.
- Be Right Back: We took down the "Girls & Guys" section because it took too much time to manage the two team of five writers. In the future we want to relaunch this section with a better system in place to keep the section fresh and updated. We took down our "Lovelife" section on dating and sexuality to do some upgrades to the chastity pledge system. And finally, we have had coding problems with the "Activate" section. We're having someone who knows more than me try to fix this problem. It'll be back up when it's back in working order.
- The Look: We made a couple small changed to the look of the site to make it a more pleasant place to spend time. We increased the width and color of the right hand column on every page so it didn't cramp the main content. Then we changed the background you see on the far right of the page. You may remember a tiled background of pixel flowers. I thought they were fun, but the site was so busy looking we decided it was time to get rid of them. We hope that the new charcoal background makes the site a little more manageable to the eye.
We hope that 2006 will be an exciting year for everyone who visits this site. Thank you for making lifeteen.com your homepage. We love coming into the studio each day and sharing a little bit of life together.
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
 |
Matt Smith is the Director of Internet Ministries for Life Teen, an international Catholic youth ministry based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the creative force behind Life Teen's cluster of websites that receive nearly 2 million visits a year. Since staring on MTV's "Real World" and MTV's "Road Rules Challenge", Matt has traveled the country speaking at colleges, universities, schools, and Catholic parishes.
 Read
More
|
 |
|
|