New Euroharmony design

[EHM-0948 Bruno]

People,

** I am writing this topic without any proposal of hurting anyone competences or design tastes !! **

I am on Euroharmony for some time (not much as almost as the majority of you and i am starting to be a little tired of Euroharmony site...

What about opening a new Forum Topic for people to help giving some design ideas to a new site design ? ..  

Best Regards,

[EHM-0361 Karsten]

What is it about the current site that you are tired off?

[EHM-0948 Bruno]

Well, i am not tired of a specific part of the site ...

I think we need to modify the general layout of the site in the objective to make it more attractive.
Of course this type os analysis is to gain more pilots, and (the main objective) to make pilots more "inside" the company.
Right now the funcionality of the site is excelent. We have a pilot area that shows much information that on other companies we dont have.
But, i think we need more activity for the pilots, on the site. And this gain of activity can be started with a new site design.
Right now, these are some ideas, and I dont know for sure since when this site design is on the air, but right now, i think it is not modern, and a little bit harder to navigate....
For instance, the first page (the logo with the airplane) why is that needed ? What is the objective of that page ? That type of pages were created on the past with the objective of create some "suspense" on the site (like, be prepared to something that you never have seen!) ... It is not necessary i think and this type of approach was abandoned some time ago.

I am saying this because I am not the area of aplication development on the real life, and nowadays VA's are more closely to Applications than to static sites .

... and I was, some time ago, the vice-president of Eurodirect. A VA that disapeared some 5 years ago, and belonged to Gateway Airlines.

Best regards,

[EHM-1281 Cyriel]

My personal opinion. I like the first page as it gives first time visitors an imediate idea what the site is about. If you were looking for something related to airplanes you will now you are on the right site. If you were not looking for aiviaton related site you will also know you are wrong. THe main page will not give this away that easy.

And I guess the more frequent visitors like members just make a link directly to the mainpage. DOn't get me wrong. I'm very intrested in any other idea's you might have.

[EHM-0948 Bruno]

Well, let's see what the first page says :

- On the top shows a name of "something" with a logo.
- On the middle, an airplane flying...
- ... and the name of the "company" as internet site.
- A button "Enter"
- ... and a Copyright notice ...

How can you have an immediate ideia of what the site is ?
It is a Travel Reservations Site ?
It is an Aviation News Site ?
It is a real aviation brandmark site ?

Of course if you read the "small lines" you notice the words "Virtual Airline" ... but what i mean is that we should have a design more compatible and more intuitive to a VA than this one, and that could start with the first page .

I should remark that this topic is sensible, and people must be opened to ideas. Right now, I am not saying that this site is bad. I am saying that we should innovate and build a better site, full of pilot's ideas and with a more intuite navigational system if the majority of the pilots wants to.

[EHM-0240 Joe]

I have to agree that the first page has always annoyed me really. When I used to use a dial-up connection it took forever to load and the way I got around it was by just adding a link to the main page in my browser so I never saw it anyway, I suspect a lot of other users probably do this. When you say that it gives an immediate idea of what the site is, the main page does this too in the whole paragraph that is clearly visible entitled welcome.

I don't know about redesigning the site completely though, there is a lot of information and a lot of complicated pages on the site and I think the current set up is a very user friendly way to show it all.

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Well, I am a a bit angry now. Maybe not the best word though... I never used the logo page for entry to the site until it was changed sometimes and I wanted to notice the changes. I always used the longer link from the Favourites window, that led me to the REAL main page. I think it is not a real problem, although you are right, the logo only does not show it is a VA, but this is not the main point.

About the general lookout of the site:
I choosen EuroHarmony almost 3 years ago, because I loved the site. I browsed through EVERY VAs site on the VATSIM VA list, and all the sites were amazing boring. They contained no graphics, they used awful colors, awful fonts, and there was not any hierarchy on the most sites. Words like Hanger, Roster, Fleet that have a meaning, were used in a very wrong place and objective.

Then I saw EHM site: superb colors, modern PHP scriptis, statistics, good design, modern forum, nice graphics...and I felt the professionalism behind the website, and felt the power, that this is the community I must join. 3 years ago, I did not know anything about what makes a VA good, but when I saw the homepage I felt this must be the VA and I was not dissapointed ! I am not saying it only because I am part of the team now.

I have to say, that maybe the top menu line is not the best at some points, but I do not care it really. If I browse through the net, I still find those problems I mentioned about. There is only a small VAs left that have a good site. And I do not think a good site is enough for raise the number of pilots. A good arganism behind it is much more important.

[EHM-0361 Karsten]

I think it's important that people can express their P.O.V on this subject too. Here is mine, and then I will redraw myself from this subject at least for some time.
I have just like Robert been with EHM for nearly 3 years. One of my reasons for pick it was the website, and the fact it was a european company. Marteen and others made a total redesign of the site in 2003. I think that all here is fairly open to change, both pilots and members of the management. But I think if somebody is talking about a full redesign of the website to make it look more mordern. Well then I think it will have to be another VA with another management. Haven't said that, ideas that can make our airline better is of course welcome and all is intitle to there own opinion. But I have to say I'm strong aganist destroying all of Marteens hard work.
That's all and now I'll keep quiet

[EHM-1199 Philip]

I agree with the above. The site and the design is exemplary. Many other VAs with greater numbers of pilots struggle to do a site this good and we should enjoy and be greatful tfor the hard work that has gone in to making this site what it is. If you don't believe what I say, search for VAs on Yahoo or Google and look at the first ten websites listed - mostly they are not even close to this one.

[EHM-0948 Bruno]

Well, after I readt some of the posts, I got misunderstood in some points.

First, Merlin, I dont think that a re-design of a VA must lead to a new VA. After all I am not saying to change the logo, or change the funcionality of the site. I am just refering to the layout of the site. Not the processes of the site. That is intrinsic to the VA processes and rules.

I was not comparing this site to another ones. If we are thinking that we should upgrade only when our "competitors" are close (with better sites, and else) you should check another airlines like Gateway Air, or TAP Virtual or British Airways Virtual ...

Now, we should not "radicalize" things like dumping all Marteens work to the garbage

Second, The idea is to have an open mind and more important yet a cold blood analysis on the site, in order to optimize the navigation of the site.

We could have some things like :

- Some images could rotate on the site. Like the images on top of the site. We now have a B747 but it should show another images if we get in the site another time (like a random showimage function).

- We could have a better navigation area. Like a tree-navigation area. In that form, we could have a more dinamic information on the tree. Imagine that you need to put some branches (like special adventures, or something), it should be more easier, and people would know that right on the tree.

- The first page (not the FIRST, but the main page) should have a more organized information. Like Latest news, but with a small text beneath each newsline. Should have a poll that should change more often (i am tired of seeing the "Do you use checklists ?" ... )

- The frame is too small on the all site. Why that size ? To fit 640x480 ?

- The "Life Support" is on the main page. Why ? In the main page we should have information that should be relevant and that should change regurarly. I am seeing that message for long time ... "Life support NOT available".

Look guys, I was giving some ideas (on an open spirit basis) to modify, not re-create all of the site. Of course we could mantain the aspect of the site on colours, logos, and other things, but the information should change more often and the access to information could be more optimized

[EHM-1077 Emanuele]

Bruno, thanks for your comments.

I've been with EHM for a bit less than Merlin and Roberto, just a bit short of
two years (or is it short of three?? I can't remember, it seems so long ago and
the time went so fast!) and I've been always pleased with design of the
website and I think Gergely, Maarten, Magnus and now Roberto did and
are doing a fantastic job at it.

To address your specific issues:
Among the websites you mention, Gateway Air and Tap Virtual don't
seem anything special to me, and they actually feel cluttered and unfocused.
BA virtual has a lovely website but they aim at a professional look while we
aim at a friendly look. I think both our website excel at the choosen aim.

Some images -do- rotate on the website. Like the header on the World
Tour page. From a technical standpoint this is not too difficult, but it
means that for every page where so far we use one picture we need,
say, three or four more. Multiplied by all pages on EHMwebsite that's a
lot of work and a lot of time to do it. Are you proposing yourself as the
artist taking care of providing us with all those pictures? Or would you
prefer to organize a team?

Your tree-navigation idea is a bit vague. Are you talking about a
directory-like structure explicitely used as navigational mean?
I wouldn't like it, be I'd consider it if we had a lot of nested level
of information. We don't. We have about three levels and they
are all confortably reachable through the existing menu icons and
menu bar. Still, I might change my opinion if can I see a visual example.
Can you provide one? And would you be able to implement
and  support the scripting for such navigation tool?

The first page is fairly organized. Admittedly, it hasn't been updated
too frequently lately, other than for the automatically generated content.
If you have a nice idea of a different layout, why don't you prepare
a prototype html page and show us what you mean?

Frame too small: my 17" monitor is normally set on 1280x1024.
This size allows me to confortably browse the website without
covering the whole desktop while it allow people using lower
resolutions and smaller monitors (14"  800x600), to also browse
the pages confortably. What I'm saying is: if me and you are
lucky enough to have a big monitor and high-res, that doesn't
mean everybody else does too, and we should think to the
people with the minimum specs, not those with the highest.

It's technically possible to create a different look for each different
resolution, but it would be a fairly long and boring work to reshape
the whole website in that direction.  Again, a lot of time to spend
when we already have plenty of things in store.

Life Support: indeed it's something that hasn't been taking off
so far.  There's not much to argue about that.

Concerning the "open spirit basis",  it's always welcome.
I'm sure you have been as open reading the reminder of this post
and you understand that while something is obvious for you,
or simply not to your liking, the judgement of other might, sometime,
differ. Slightly.

Ciao ciao!

Manu

[EHM-0948 Bruno]

Well ...

The idea was to "measure the pulse" of people and see if everyone shared my opinion or not.

I can see that everyone (ok, the ones that made a reply ) are satisfied with the site, so I dont see what a preview could bring better chances the optimizations that I talked before.

Maybe one day we could get this conversation again on the air ...  

Best Regards to all of you,

[EHM-0001 Gergely]

Of course we're open for suggestions... but creating a new site is enormous work... currently no one is able to deal with it... we'll see about it in the future...

And of course we'll change several things on the current site too, I guess we'll remove Live support, I will change the poll etc.

What do you mean by 'the information should change more often'?

Kind regards,
Gergely

[EHM-0948 Bruno]

Gergely,

From my comentaries i am not saying of build a new and fresh site.
When I say that I am tired of the site is that we could modify some things (CSS styles, images, etc etc) and with that we re-fresh the site.

I never meant to dump all the site. That's the point I get misunderstood .
I think like I have opened a pandora box, and now everyone is saying that I said to build a new complete site. That's not the point of it. You have brilliant PHP scripts, you have many things automated, and that is right.

When I mean the information should change more often is based on get in the site (first page) and see new things, new news, and more dinamic context.

For example, you could have 4 ou 5 polls, that could change everytime someone goes to the site.

You could have a part on the first page of real-aviation news based on a crawler that goes to another aviation news site and grabs the news and posts on our page ... (of course with the permission the the real aviation news site).

You could have a part on the first page of last Pirep's reported. For example, when someone posts a PIREP you must there the codename, time, dep and arrival ....

This type os things call attention of the users that goes to the site ... and shows that the site is live.

I am making you thinking on this type os things because, as you say, EuroHarmony really is a VA that is worth of flying for .. and I thought about it and decide to write my feelings about the VA in the Forum.

See ya again in more selvatic posts! ...

[EHM-0962 Zhen Yi]

Hmm.......the live support is a really good idea.....sad to see it scraped :[ Just curious to know......is the live support "technically" completed and only needs people to man the system or is the system not even done yet? If it's the former case, how about volunteers?

[EHM-0641 Rico]

Originally posted by EHM-0962
Hmm.......the live support is a really good idea.....sad to see it scraped :[ Just curious to know......is the live support "technically" completed and only needs people to man the system or is the system not even done yet? If it's the former case, how about volunteers?

Good question... I'd be happy to volunteer;)

[EHM-0001 Gergely]

The system is ready. Basically it's some management member entering a chat room, so a link will be displayed on the page and others can enter too. We tried it a few times but didn't have success... maybe if we had scheduled sessions... but anyway, we have the forum to give support, don't we?

[EHM-1365 Benjamin]

Yep....forum works for me.

Must say though, there are two things on the site i didn't quite know what they are because they are offline:

• the Live Support, now answered:]
• and the e-ticket system, not a clue about that:8

[EHM-1001 Robert]

I think we have to make clear objectives, what is important about a site, what is the task of it...

In real life, at my company there is a small war between the colleagues, that how a MODERN website should look like. The final decision was, that we want to show our products and knowledge simply, and NOT that we can paint fine graphics on the webpage. Situation is similar to this website too.

---

Say I am conservative -which is not true- but I think of the EHM, and every VA website is something like an office for the pilots. In the morning, the pilot comes in, takes his flightplans and airplanes, and then go to fly. Of course, the site must be an interesting place, as this is an advertisement for the outer world, but it should not be a NEWS portal. There are several sites that provide aviation news, or such. We should post OUR news, that shows what is going on at the VA, like a real message-board with lots of news and "post-it"s. I agree in that, we should present more NEWS on the site, maybe not on the opening page.

To have 4-5 polls is useless. After some monthes nobody will have idea for a poll. Also a poll's task is to collect votes, and then present the results, which is now not happening. I think 1 good, really working poll is enough.

To show a complete PIREP is also useless. You should see, how frequently pilots do not post any messages to a PIREP, which can be very boring then. I would rather show a small statistic, like "Favourite countries/divisions/aircrafts... of last 24 hours" or a very simple text that "EHMxxxx filed the last PIREP. He flew from xxxx to xxxx on a xxxx aircraft."

I think we should divide the webpage into 2 parts: the "front office", and "back office". The "front office", is the place, where the lookout of the site shows its face to the world. This is the place, for presenting the VA, telling its history, the Management, the E-ticket (which is a kind of Virtual Ticket Booking...so it puts more fun into the game), the Screenshot Gallery, polls, On-line and VA general statistics... The "back office" would be the pilots area. It would be the place for PIREPs, HUB statistics, fleets, timetables, downloads...

BUT NOW WE HAVE THESE ALL! If we want to reform the site, I think grouping the parts of the site / changing the menu system in this way would be more than enough.

I have to say I agree with you on that, some images should be replaced. Maybe some animated GIFs, or some simple flash animations would be also enough here.

OK it is too much for now...

[EHM-1343 Jonathan]

The only thing that I could fault is some of the headers. I think we need to make the titles more realistic, instead of saying Pilots, It could say Office, instead of home it could say center of opperations or something like Base. Instead of the Roster it could become the human rescources. No the last one is a bad idea but you is getting da big picture

[EHM-0948 Bruno]

Hi,

Well, with all respect, sirRoberto,. did you read what I wrote before ?
Am I saying that we dont have what you talk about ? (you dont need to scream)
Am I saying that we should not post our news there ?
Who is saying to POST  a complete PIREP ??  I said 2 or 3 things, not more than that.

Right now, with all of this conversation of everyone we got a bunch of new features (READ NOT-BUILD-EVERYTHING-FROM-THE-BEGINNING) to implement for ...

And about the polls, i am saying that polls should be done, but could stay online for 2 months. We could have 3 polls per month that would change every 2 months, for example. Do you think it is hard to have questions to ask on a poll and to retrieve information ?

- What is your favorite plane to fly on EuroHarmony ?
- What kind of flights (regional, medium, long, trans.continetal) do you like more to do and why ?
- What things would you like to be on site to improve it ?

- Do you think we could make some alliances and code-sharing with other VA's ?
- What do you think of having special adventures ? Will you align on ?
- What airplane do you like to have on our VA ?

I took 2 minutes to think on this, and now you have polls for 4 months .

In conclusion, and I will not continue posting replies on this topic, I think that all of us could think a bit more, and make a conclusion if it is useful or not make some CHANGES on the site.

I think it should be worth of it. But I am only one person in 700 or 800 persons is our VA ...

Best regards,
Bruno.

[EHM-0962 Zhen Yi]

Originally posted by SirRoberto

BUT NOW WE HAVE THESE ALL!

Hmm......i don't think so! we don't have the "EHMxxxx filed the last PIREP. He flew from xxxx to xxxx on a xxxx aircraft" or not any that i know of

bfalcao does have a point though......polls are not too hard to think up of......plus they don't have to change that often.......once per month or per two months is good enough...instead of the current 4 months

[EHM-1001 Robert]

All right, all right

First of all I did not want to scream, when wrote in capitals, I just summarized the things.

About the NEWS idea I wrote that, if we want to give more space, and more dynamic space for news on the website, then lets try to show our news better, and not show the real aviation news with simply copying them from a news portal.

I am sorry, I did not understood your idea about the PIREPs. I have to apologize, sometimes I cannot express my thinks correctly. I need to improve my English skills. If I understood well, you thought about a brief description of last reported PIREP show up on the front page, so everyone can see who was the last pilot that flew, and where did he fly. I think now it is a good idea, and probably is not too difficult to program.

I had a similar idea, that a short, 4...5 rows of the timetable could be shown too. Like at the real airports, you can check departures and arrivals. We could also check there which flight is arriving, or departing in any part of the World/Europe.

When I said: "we have these all", I meant, the website contains many good things, and if it was organized a different way, refreshed with some little changes, it probably will not look boring for anyone.

About the polls, I thought it is useless to have 4-5 polls at the same time! To have 4 or 5 per month is okay, and I also say go for it, lets have more frequent votings.

I also think that many ideas presented here are worthy for implementation. But it sound too much for the first time. I mean that it needs much work to do, and I scared a bit that who could do it...

You can post here your opinions, that is why the forum for. And should not think that you are a so small point in the community, as we are alltogether about 100 persons only

[EHM-0948 Bruno]

Hi again people,

Well, not we are getting to common point.

I think we have some things that we all share and agree with :

- Better polls and rotative.
- Small last flights flown timetable (upgraded SirRoberto idea of mine, and I agree with SirRoberto).
-  A more detailed news area.
- Change of the first page (the one with the big plane).
- Rotative images on some strategic parts of the site.

Now, how can we make an oficial decision ? Is there a person responsible for the site development now ? Or Gergely is doing everything on programming the site ?

A message to Gergely, I think he should have a point to say about this. After all I didnt saw more messages from him.

After an oficial decision, there are some steps to be taken (i think) :
- Grab people to help and done things till the end.
- Post some news messages on the site about this.

I can help is somethings like this, because in real life I am a PHP senior programmer.

See ya again people,

[EHM-1077 Emanuele]

You are really pushy aren't ya?

Manu