Site changes | Page 21 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Hi. For anyone who can visit the site, does it look OK or is the design completely haywire? Although the files should have been moved to the new server, it seems to be missing certain bits – basic layout, some smileys (but not others) etc.

It looks fine on my work computer, just not at home. Domain name changes can take up to 72 hours to fix themselves, so it might right itself, but I’d like to know what people are seeing.

OK, time for an update. An old colleague recently returned to my workplace for a web project. I got chatting to him and he's doing a bit of freelance work here and there, and I offered him some cash to redesign my website.

The site's current design is something I did a couple of years ago over a weekend. As I've said before, I'm a writer not a designer, and it shows – the site works OK, but it's clearly made by someone without a flair for design.

The current white design was because I originally wanted it to be fairly minimalist, as a nod to the White Album . It hasn't really worked out that way, as it's all too easy to keep throwing extra features, functions and navigation at a website.

Fortunately, my friend does web design, 3D modelling, animation and illustration in his spare time, so he's far more qualified to do this. He's starting work on a redesign, reworking it from the ground up, and it'll look a lot better. New banners, better typography, a whole rethink on where things are positioned on the screen. I might get rid of some things and add others – I'm not sure yet.

I've no idea how long it'll take, as we want to get it done properly (it's a portfolio project for him, so we both have a desire to make it as good as possible). One stipulation is that it has to work on mobile/tablet devices as well as normal web browsers, so it'll scale depending on the size of the screen you're viewing it on.

[Don't worry if this paragraph means nothing to you] For those who know a bit about web coding, the forum is built using html tables, meaning it can be clunky and awkward to redesign. Fortunately, Simple:Press (which is what this forum is based upon), are rebuilding their forum plugin from scratch, which should make it leaner and faster and will be built using <div> tags rather than tables. This will make it far easier to make it render well on a mobile. From what I understand, the new Simple:Press is going into beta in November, and it may take a little while longer for this site to switch over, so the redesign may be phased in over time. Hopefully the reworked forum software will also help with some of the weird functionality that people have experienced (trouble registering/logging in, caching issues etc), though I can't promise anything at this stage.

The current logo and picture frames at the top of the site were made by the brilliant Chris from The Beatles in 3D. However, I'm planning to start afresh. Here's a new banner idea that my designer friend put together – it's not finished, but his thoughts for it were:

The idea here is that the background would be one of several 60s style colourful patterns (this one was inspired by a sleeve from the galleries) and the foreground silhouettes would also randomly rotate with different figures (Abbey Road etc.) and recognisable portraits of the four at different points in their history.

It's just an early mockup, nothing's finished, and the “Not quite as popular as Jesus…” strapline will be retained. However, I wanted to share it with you to show that plans are afoot, and they'll (hopefully) be really good. Bear with me – I'll post another update when I have more to share.

I wasn't planning on opening this up to a general discussion, but if anyone's always thought “I wish the Beatles Bible did x and y“, let me know and I'll see if it's feasible. Bear in mind that this is a redesign, and the content will largely remain the same, though over time (if I ever find any) I'd like to add more photos and videos to the site.