Since the arrivale of J2Ov2, I began jotting down things that I noticed about the site, and coming up with possible improvements to suggest. I've now had the time to go through what I wrote down and organize it in a presentable manner. So here follows my thoughts and suggestions.


When I first browsed through the site, I felt kind of lost. The pages and sections didn't seem to be organized in a very intuitive manner. I went through the site map and rearranged the structure that seemed a lot more intuitive, at least to me. (My site map at the end of the post, because it's kind of long.)

For the links across the top of the page, I think these should be reserved for links that would be of use to newbies or visitors. These links would be: Patches/Important Files, About the Game, Help, and Forum. Seeing as that's fewer links than can fit up there, it might also be good to fill in the rest of the links with commonly viewed sections, such as: News, Downloads, Articles, Pictures, and Links. My suggestion for the final order of the top of the page links is:News, Patches/Important Files, About the Game, Games in Progress, Articles, Downloads, Pictures, Links, Help, Forum. I'm not too set on that order, so they could be shifted around if someone thinks of a better order.

You may notice I put Games in Progress in there. The current location for the Games in Progress link (at the top left) seems out of place and decieving. The link appears as if it is attached and part of the entire Jazz and Spaz image, however it is not. If you click the bottom half of that image, you get the games in progress. But if you click the top half, you get the front page. Aside from that, the link is seperated from any other group of links, thus making it seem out of place.

The left side of the page seems horribly underused. Right now it displays navagation within a section. Navagation is good, but what I think would be more useful is a full site navagation. All the sections would be listed, and the section that you're currently in will be expanded in a tree-like structure. What would be even cooler would be to have this navagation in a panel, and make customizable panels be usable on the left side of the page just as they are on the right.

The "Forums: ... / Quick links: ..." at the top of the front page look as if they were hacked in. Quick links like those would be particularly useful as a side panel with which users could customize which links it lists. The Log In/Log Out/other user profile stuff I think also would be better as a side panel. One reason I want to remove the links from this section of the page is to limit and simplify the possible locations for links to be, but also to clear that area so that the title of the current section/page can be put there instead. Most pages have the title somewhere around the top, but it isn't very consistant. Putting the title in larger text right at the top there will make it easier to recognize what page it is you're looking at.

A couple of the sections have a Random feature, such as in the pictures section, or links section. This would be nicer if it actually redirected to the randomly selected picture/link rather than blabla/whatever/view.php?act=random. If you got redirected to the actual item, then you could (if you wanted to) bookmark the page, or more likely, pass it along to some friends (for example, pasting the link in #jj2).

In the About Index, it would be nice to be able to click on the images to go to the sub-sections as well.

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Site Map:

• News [Latest News]
  • Submit News
  • News Archive
  • RabbitJournal
• User Control [(new) User Control Index]
  • Edit Profile/Preferences
  • Private Messages [Inbox]
    • Send Message
    • Sent Messages
  • Adjust Panels
  • Change Style
  • Log Out (function)
• Games In Progress
• Patches (Necessary Downloads To Play Online)
• Downloads [Browse]
  • Search
  • Submit File
  • Review Ideas
  • Downloads F.A.Q. (link)
• Forum (JCF)
• Pictures [Browse]
  • Submit Picture
• Articles [Browse]
  • Submit Article
  • Approved Articles
  • Unapproved Articles
  • Articles Info (link)
• Jazz Creation Station
• Help
  • Jazz Jackrabbit F.A.Q.
  • (new) Important Articals
  • Multiplayer
    • Multiplayer F.A.Q.
    • Show My IP Address
    • JJ2 and Gateways
  • Jazz2Online.com
    • Jazz2Online F.A.Q.
    • Downloads F.A.Q.
    • Articles Info
    • The Rules
    • Text Formatting
    • Admin Contact Information
    • Sitemap
    • Site Credits
• Links [Browse]
  • Submit Link
  • Random Link (redirect to a random link info)
• Community History (The Community)
  • Jazz2Online.com
  • About #JJ2
• About the Game
  • About Jazz Jackrabbit
  • Creation of Jazz
    • Creation
    • The Sequel
    • Design
    • Programming
    • Visual
    • Sound
    • Story
    • Before Jazz2
  • Characters
    • Main Characters
    • Bad Guys
    • End Bosses
    • Nick's Thoughts
  • Levels
    • Formerly A Prince
    • Jazz In Time
    • Flashback
    • Funky Monkeys
    • Shareware
    • Holiday Hare '98
    • The Secret Files
    • Home
  • Basic Game Types
  • Weapon Information
  • Keyboard Shortcuts
  • Multiplayer Strategies


• (removed)
  • Haze's Site

(There might be more sections that I do not see.)

what's wrong with Haze?

Originally Posted by ConkerHS

what's wrong with Haze?

Haze's Hideout is external to J2O. Nothing's wrong with it, it's just not part of the site.

• Delete RabbitJournal
• Delete RabbitJournal
• Delete RabbitJournal
• Delete RabbitJournal

Anyway, Mono's list is very well. I agree with possibly everything there ;o

What warrants deleting RabbitJournal?

SPAZTJUICE's question regarding:

a) deletion of RabbitJournal - It doesn't have a point at all.
b) deletion of RabbitJournal - It doesn't have a point at all.
c) deletion of RabbitJournal - It doesn't have a point at all.
d) deletion of RabbitJournal - It doesn't have a point at all.

I think I can pretty much ensure you that the layout won't be changed. JJF just doesn't have the time. It took two weeks for just a background image to appear.

I was talking with Frank a bit on #jj2 last night about this, and noted that puting panels on the left side would greatly increase the database usage for every page. To avoid that, I suggested that there could be static panels for the left side. These panels could be changed in the user's settings, but once they save their settings, their personal left side panel configuration will be written to the database, and just getting that one item would be a lot less stress on the server.