A Brand New Crown Platform Website
Weeks of hard work by a dedicated band of Crown contributors, led by @crowncoin_knight, have come to fruition with the release of the new crownplatform.com website.
The idea for a major overhaul of the website was first publicised in early June. The existing site was over two years old by that point and starting to look tired and in need of a revamp for a new audience. The stated objectives were:
- A fresh look with a clear message of who we are and where are we going
- Emphasis on low carbon footprint
- Less text
- Encourage community participation by (social) network interaction
- Mobile friendly
- Prominent links to the Crown Platform Monitor
Implicit in the first item was simplification and updating of the roadmap. The map now shows with a timeline how we got to where we are, and where we’re going next.
Over the course of a month or so the objectives were refined and design details ironed out. Then the content was updated.
Some old favourites received their marching orders (no more knights or kingdoms). Some textual content was simplified and reduced, some stayed about the same, some was expanded. Completely new content was created for some areas, like carbon neutrality.
There were lively discussions in Discord about the content changes. Search engine optimisation considerations played a part in the decision making, especially in the context of text reduction.
Eventually the static launch content was agreed. Dynamic content is provided in the form of:
- Live stats on key Crown network metrics
- Live social network content mirroring.
We may add development activity mirroring if people request it.
There are light and dark themes, easily switchable from a header button, and GTranslate automatic translation functionality to make the content accessible to the widest possible geographic audience. Machine translations may not be the most accurate or natural sounding but they are constantly improving and require no additional resources or maintenance effort. The Crown Platform Monitor has a link button in the header for easy navigation to our visualisation and monitoring tool.
Analytics on the old website show over 50% of visitors are on mobile devices. The new site was designed from the ground up to be mobile friendly with a responsive layout that adapts to all screen sizes. Designer midnight also proposed the addition of a new green pastel element to the theme. It did look nice but was deemed too much of a departure from the established Crown style guidelines at this point. With the increasing emphasis on carbon neutrality though this is a strong contender for future evolution of the style guidelines.
