Last night Travis McCrea and I updated the wordpress and SMF. The old wordpress design was problematic in a few ways, so it was proposed we pirate the PPAU's theme as a temporary measure to hold us over until the IT committee's voted-on switch to Drupal.
If you don't like the new look throw the tomatoes at me in this thread.
Here comes one tomato. (jk)
Not sure if the flag switch is permanent. But I prefer having the old Canadian version of the Pirate flag. Just my 2 cents. The color red is nice but can be confused with the Liberal color. Although not sure if there are other major color left that we can adopt. White? :P
I think we should be aiming for similar look for our website. Simple, clean and easy to access the different links.
BTW I liked the red/white/black signet we had before but the new setup looks pretty good.
I too liked the old signet.
As for style: Can the new layout (whenever its done) NOT be predominately white/grey? Sterile does not begin to describe this.
As far as positives go its nice people finally have easy access to old blog/press release posts on the main page. Its also less cluttered and (shock) dropdown bars!
Party Primary Colors
Red: Liberal
Blue: Conservative
Orange: NDP
Blue: Bloc
Green: Green Party
If you look into the theory behind colors then you would realize that parties chose these colors for a reason. When and if we consider a major revamp we should also consider the meanings and theories behind colors we are going to use. I know originally our signet and color scheme were designed with red because red is the only colour showcased on our national flag and we wanted to evoke the idea of Canada.
Now the idea of changing our colors just because another party has similar colors we should really take a look at what the colors we are considering mean and the impact they may have. For example people are pushing for a purple color scheme but the color purple is associated with royalty (and aristrocrats)and such but it's also often considered a 'girly color' as well.
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True, but I doubt many today concern themselves with the symbolic meanings behind their party's colour schemes (at least the older parties don't).
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This association is probably the only reason I haven't stormed the ramparts over the PCs descision. :P But if we need a reasoning for using purple we could say that as a mix of red and blue it envokes a respect for all ideological views. In New Brunswick I could say it reflects the provincial flower and how the party MPs will stand by constituents. You mentioned purple is a 'girly colour' which can be a positive considering how few women enter politics. If we want a reason related to the platform we could say that purple represents the benefits of sharing (sharing of some red and blue to get another, different colour). And going back to nobility it should be remembered the colour purple was a rare colour, precious, sought after, valuable, and worth having - attributes we might want people to see in our party.
James Wilson wrote:
At one point wearing purple unless you were associated with the royal family got you potentially executed ;)
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Which goes all the way back to the Roman Emperors who instituted the rule, it is theorized, to prevent the extinction of the mediterranian mollusk (the source of the dye) since everyone wanted purple fabric. Purple. Colour of the first endangered species act. ;)
Does anyone know the Pirate Party of Sweden's (http://piratpartiet.se/) reason for choosing purple as their official colour? I have searched but haven't been able to find any information related to this. Perhaps if we can understand the original Pirate Party's reason for choosing purple, it can help our membership reach a consensus as to what the colour could mean to the PPCA. As the Piratpartiet is the symbolic mother of all Pirate Parties, I personally have no problem in adopting purple as an official colour of the party.
Regarding the recent updates to the website. I agree that the new look is rather dry (*humble apologies to the PPAU*), but recognize that it is only temporary. One of the things that I liked about the old website was the appearance of the pirate ship that evoked imagery of freedom, high seas pirates, and fighting spirit.
I'm not opposed to some color changes but I like our original signet. Any changes should hopefully include it even if we incorporate a bit of purple into our forums/website color schemes or the lettering.
I admit that I like the original signet as well as it evokes a feeling of patriotism, and to an outsider might appear less threatening than the black. Before I knew anything about the Pirate Party, the black sail signet reminded me of the flag of the anarchists. I have since been educated and revised my opinion. A couple things going for the black sail signet is that the black colour itself is a powerful symbol of protest , and that this unique symbol unites Pirates around the world. I see the value in both, but my vote is for the black sail.
The forum does not seem to show new thread anymore. i.e. shows bold or new icon to indicate there have been a new post in that thread.
Ric Lim wrote:
The icon on the left of the forum title changes if there's new posts (at least it does for me).
Concerned Citizen wrote:
Since I was one of the votes on the whole colour change and signet addition, I'll add my two cents to this discussion. TBH I don't care too much about what our official colour is, as long as we can make good looking flags, posters, etc. I do think it's important to have a different colour from the major 5 parties because it helps distinguish us from them. The Swedish Pirate Party is already using purple very effectively and it's not used in Canada by any major party, so that's my reasoning.
I only agreed to the PPI signet because it was in addition to our current signet. The two symbols are fairly similar, so I doubt people will be confused by the double symbols. I've always felt that the Pirate parties need to be dealing with issues on an international level because our opponents (the MPAA/RIAA groups) are doing so. Of course I know that we are the Pirate Party of *Canada* and that our goal is to elect MP's to affect Canadian law, but we must also focus on international unity. So for that reason it seems pertinent to use an international symbol sometimes. Emphasis there on sometimes, I don't know if I like the signet change on our website.
Also, I found the combination of our flag and our colour to be almost too Canadian. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, but when someone is trying really hard to look a certain way, it makes you wonder why they feel they need to try so hard in the first place. Like if you try really hard to appear nice, then people might wonder if you're actually a bad person faking at being good. So the same goes for us and appearing Canadian, if we try too hard it may appear disingenuous.
As for the website itself, I like it simply because it's a great improvement on our homepage. The previous one may have looked a little nicer, but it failed at functionality. If we have to choose one or the other, I'll always choose the functional page. This is just a temporary setup though, so hopefully the new site will be both esthetic and functional.
I was worried about the overlap of red with the Liberals colours when I first saw the signet over a year ago, and it certainly makes sense to use the same colours internationally if we have the chance. Purple is fine to me.
I liked the old site much much better....but then again...i'm not the one who has to maintain it.
J
It's been about a month and a half since the 'temporary" site was put in place. At what point can we expect the real site to show up?
Suggestion: make a toggle between the 'new' and 'classic' website styles, from what I've heard the original had somewhat of a broader appeal...
Shawn Gray wrote:
http://dev.pirateparty.ca/
The development site looks pretty, though it's lacking in regards to contact information, candidate information, details on the leadership, information about projects/endeavours, and the join/donate bit/meet us isn't linked. Hopefully things can be switched online before July?
It's under construction, the focus of development so far has been functionality, so yes, we do not have all the information we require up yet.
I'm taking on the task of adding words to this bad boy currently, if you'd like to help, mail me at eval(unescape('%64%6f%63%75%6d%65%6e%74%2e%77%72%69%74%65%28%27%3c%61%20%68%72%65%66%3d%22%6d%61%69%6c%74%6f%3a%73%68%61%77%6e%76%75%6c%6c%69%65%7a%40%70%69%72%61%74%65%70%61%72%74%79%2e%63%61%22%3e%73%68%61%77%6e%76%75%6c%6c%69%65%7a%40%70%69%72%61%74%65%70%61%72%74%79%2e%63%61%3c%2f%61%3e%27%29%3b'))
From my understanding, they want to take this site live fairly soon.
Shawn Vulliez wrote:
Done at 5:26 PM Eastern, June 18th.
Also, perhaps we could add a link to "Through the Eyes of a Pirate". It updates far more frequently than PirateWho, with similar goals.
Shawn Gray wrote:
On a related note, your email should be fixed.