What would you like WMPU to look like?

August 30, 2010 | By WenWP

Having the right look for a site we would like you to visit on a daily basis is important, so we thought it should be your decision on what it looks like. This design change has been coming for a long time, and it is now down to three designs, and this poll will decide what it should be.

Design One:

This design is made for a blog with much content, videos, and comments. The theme would look something similar to the above image except no Steve Jobs on the home page. This my favorite but the worse to Surur, so vote design one if you like it.

Design Two:

This is the second design and Surur’s favorite. The design takes a very… Very simplistic design approach and is also thumbnail based like the first theme. I do not like it, I say it’s too simple, but this is why we are asking you, the reader, what you want more.

Design Three:

This is the last theme to choose from. This is also fairly simplistic, but has a more colorful look with many articles based sections and other things to make it for the news blogs like us. Vote this one if you like it the best.

[poll id="24"]

Okay well those are what you have to choose from. I hope you like at least one of them. We also hope to include a new forum with this redesign, so all users will have their comments and other activities connected with the forum and can interact in a deeper faction.

Comment below and let us know what you’re thinking.

About Wen M

Working for WMPU is awesome. Love to write personal articles, and I do it very often. I am the reviewing editor (self appointed), so you will see alot of reviews and giveaways from me. I own quite a few devices not just Windows Phone but Android and others. I live in Minnesota, USA and love traveling to other places.

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Hate #FFFFF BG

None of above, they are all are too nichee and really bright for my taste. I'm used to the current look and fine with that. But if you guys must, they pick another theme that is calmer to the eyes. Anything but a bright white background.
leo

i like the simple one (#2), but wouldn't it be so cool for this site to come up with a design inspired by the WP7/ZuneHD metro look, maybe tiles fore the left menu and a panorama style page that could take better advantage of today's lcd screen… or something like that.

Diego!

I agree and that's why I chose design #2. Because it's minimalistic "á la" WP7.

But you should change the background to black and all the tiles of the same color

P.S.: What the heck is SJ, the devil himself, doing here? And in two different designs, aaaaahhhhhh!!!!

http://twitter.com/WMPerson @WMPerson

Lol I guess SJ is just that popular with designers…

Lennard

I choose design 3. but I would go for #2 also.
Ramon

Most of all, I would like the site to be faster. This can be accomplished by putting the loading of the advertisements at the bottom, so it doesn't block loading of the content.

http://www.martinschmidler.com martinschmidler

First and foremost there are too many ads on WMpoweruser. It feels like some Warez-Site (except for those are filled with p*rn and such stuff..)

pradeepviswav

Metro themed site would be the better..None of the above suits..
Stephen

This all looks like it's designed for infrequent visitors or sites with lots and lots of long form content.. When reading a blog I want to read/skim all the posts and then click into a post for comments/videos only occasionally. Putting each post on a seperate page that I have to click to from a homepage is ok for a newspapers website – but for the most part these are short entries that could have been read in the time it would take for the page to load. Also there arent nearly enough posts on the site to make having all these categories available from the home page necessary. I highly recommend finding a theme designed for a blog and not for a magazine or newspaper.
erlern

I think a Metro styled design would be perfect.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=646490523 David Talbert

A metro style look would be excellent. Instead of scrolling down you could scroll across.
doministry

I think the main thing is to make WMPU readible and easy to navigate with simple aestehetitcs. And easy for mobile browsers too.
Current one is quite aging and is not really pleasant so we welcome changes with pleasure.
Alex

oh, comon… design 1 is functional,
design 3 is fancy crap! It is not usable.

Who let Apple kids to vote?
Markos Kyriacou

None of the above.
The current layout works, blog style and anyone needing comments can click. WP7 metro style would be cool, so do a mock up. All three look like screenshots by a lazy man, not done or focused for a site like this.
Jos Dewey

Don't care, as long as it isn't riddled with so many crap ads.

Yes, I know you have maintenance costs but come on, I've never seen any serious website that had as many ads.

You also need to fix your spelling before you fix your UI, there is no excuse for tech savvy people to make so many critical spelling mistakes. Just one line through this post you misspell basis and bases.
Northerngeek

Premium WordPress themes can be great for some things but I'm not a fan of many of these, I'd check out WooThemes personally- then you'd get 3-for-1 and could set up subdomains so we could test each template and vote.

P.S. If you're going for a WordPress theme like Deadline, why not just go with Twenty Ten, the default WP3.0 theme and modify it? I used to do WordPress theme design, it took about a week to learn.

EDIT:

Sorry to double post but I found this:
http://www.woothemes.com/demo/?name=rockstar

It's a free "premium" theme, with space for advertisements built in and a very geometric UI, which anybody could easily change to better suit the colour scheme you'd desire…. I think it could make a good alternative.

Or perhaps even more "Metro" inspired: http://www.woothemes.com/demo/?name=big-easy
Racedriver

METRO Thats what we want to see! None of this pre made template nonsence
efjay

Just make it so it doesnt slow my HD2 to a crawl when I try to load the site, so painful trying to read a story and watch the device slowly choke.
Strangerx

I would rather appreciate the design you had up on April 1st…
Tyler

agreed on the Metro design, although if I have to pick, #1 is best for functionality. Agree also with LESS ADs! And get rid of that mobify.me crap for mobile like on my HD2. I can almost never view your site on my HD2 because it redirects to a mobify.me version that doesn't work at all, not even text flow.
Simple
Metro
Less Ads
Scanable
more blog entries for the main page
stoolzo

Personally what appeals to me more and more for a site is speed of loading and unobtrusive advertising. There are several sites I have stopped using for this very reason., Engadget are getting very close to being dropped as I am sick of their crap loading times due to flash adverts, however their overall look is ideal for this type of site, I would look to mirror them but with less crap
Chris

Some said they want this site look like Metro so i thought about how this might look like. here's the result http://img192.imageshack.us/f/wmpkopie.jpg/ , though it just took me 10minutes I have to say I'm impressed how powerful the metro designlanguage is. Sadly this will probably never come true

John Doe

Or just go for this.

Great design, Chris!
Shawn

I want to see a really good metro theme but that's too simple. You should've brought the post title, the author name, date and tags together and in a neat format. The navigation menu shouldn't be so spaced out either. I have no idea how to make WordPress themes but I was working on a making a metro theme a couple months ago but I got tired of trying HAHA! It's also funny because I used the same colors as yours. Check it out here: http://new.demadayz.com

Keep in mind it's just a test site and is nowhere near finished and completely unrelated to anything Windows. I took the month, date, and year block idea from the Windows Team Blog. I like your tweets and comments boxes a lot.

Chris

i've tried to improve the mockup a bit by your thoughts. http://img641.imageshack.us/content_round.php?pag…

Ramon

Your idea is good but needs tweaking. You might wanna take a look at metrotwit twitter client or zune software for Metro done right.

majg

It will be tough, but the only way to go is to be inspired by Metro (WP7, Zune)
John Doe

Add another vote for the the Metro-based design.
Shawn

Many are saying a Metro-ish theme and I agree. But, here's some other things to keep in mind…these themes in this post take out the element that makes a blog…a blog. Where are the full posts? The excerpts are too short in those designs. I don't really think you guys need a magazine-like wordpress theme unless you're going to broaden your topic to other things Windows. If I don't like the ways things turn out, then I may just start my own blog with a metro-ish theme and broader topic. Less clutter, less adverts, more in-depth, longer posts but still keep the brief updates/news, and keep up the good work.

I understand this is probably a small operation you've guys got going on but I think it's probably time to organize, grow and think about broadening the topic to Windows Slates when they arrive. Quick point: If you actually do decide to build your own Metro-like theme, then don't make too simple and boring.