2003 Fire Site

Hey Fire Faithful:


Just wanted to let you know we have done our annual overhaul of the official Chicago Fire site in celebration of the team's opening day.

We here at Tribesoft and the entire Fire front office know how much you rely on the site for information on the club and felt it fitting to spruce up the site a bit in honor of the team's new look roster.

As always I welcome your comments and suggestions on the site so feel free to post them here and I will do the best to address them for you.

All of us here at Tribesoft hope you like the new site and be sure to check back often as we addd new features and goodies throughout the season.

Hope to see you out at the home opener on Sunday...Who's the best?

Go Fire!!!


Best Regards,
Tony Passero

 

Fire Girl:

Thanks for your kind comments on the new look f the site.

It is nice to hear such strong feedback from halfway around the world. Given the current situation in that country it is very awarding to hear that the site has given someone a brief moment of escape and made an impression.


T R I B E S O F T
A Solutions Agency

 

Burden and Fireman451

Thanks for the early feedback and glad you both like the 2003 site.

And now a few quick notes about the white color scheme for this year.


In 98 we went with Black Background and White color
In 99 we used Fire blue as the base and lots of Fire red as the touch colors
In 2000 we had a pure Fire red background
In 2001 we went with a blue background with Fire red as the key accent color and splashes of Fire Grey
In 2002 We went with a White Scheme with Strong Touches of Red

The color scheme this year is in support of the Traditional Fire Ad campaign for 2003, which I'm sure all of you will be seeing soon in the papers and on billboards.

What the Fire are attempting to do this year is make sure all their potential points of "marketing contact" with current and potential fans are consistent and thus the color scheme.

Plus we are going with subtle touches this year in the hopes that pictures really pop off the site.

Once again thanks for your feedback.



Best Regards,
Tony Passero

T R I B E S O F T
A Solutions Agency

 

Levante

Thanks for the Kudos...but it is not all me only : )

A bunch of folks here at Tribesoft worked on the design and programming and naturally the Fire's front office contribute greatly to the content and ideas behind the site.

I'll be sure to share your kind comments to all involved.

 

Alf:

I can see where you coming from because I know you are a Fire news hound : )

Last site revision we only had one listing for features and we got some feedback that if the feature changed, because of a new posting, some people missed the previous posting all together. So we expanded the feature section to always have the three most current postings.

This caused the section to grow on the home page and naturally eats up a little bit more real estate on this premium area. So we split the difference and designed the feature and news section to run side by side.

This year the Fire plans on adding more Fire based content into the feature section to keep folks like you more in the loop. The feature section will have interviews, columnists and probably most important to you expanded news stories.

So maybe think of it as the best of both worlds as both sections are right there in the center of the page.


Best Regards,
Tony Passero

 

NC Fire:

What I meant by Fire grey was the color found in the middle of the Fire's logo that the C rests on.

Now if we got real technical about it and went by an official stitched patch of the logo it is actually silver

So I guess in way you are correct in inquiring about Fire grey comment.

In my humble defense I was referring to how in print and online applications the silver is represented by grey.

I guess this is not one of the black and white issues and it falls into a gray area : )


T R I B E S O F T
A Solutions Agency

 

Hala:

That is definitely something that needs to be fixed. You get the eagle eye gold star award for catching that one. Thanks for pointing it out!


Best Regards,
Tony Passero

 

perhaps Coz could wear a wig and some makeup : )

 

Panch:

Thanks for the detailed and blow by blow list of what you think of the site.

Most of the things you point out were put into consideration but left out for a wide variety of reasons such as budget, time constraints, aesticts or just the plain old fact that ice cream comes in a bunch of flavors.

Even though I'm a working stiff I'll whittle out some of my time to address your vast issues.

Here are my thoughts Tony:

1. The gray is a little bland and watered down, but since I have yet to see the ad campaign, I will wait a little before i decide whether it is appropriate.

Supports the ad campaign


2. The header seems a little lost. The lettering is a little too small and the spacing is off.

Header uses the exact Font and pre-determined spacing from Special font created for the Fire when the team was realized. Because it is custom font kerning and letting may not be as precise as your eagle eyes may like.



3. Not sure exactly why this bothers me but the Features/News table does not line up with the bottom of the Calendar table. I know that on the other pages they dont line up either but I think I'd rather see the tables line up, even if its empty. Maybe not, I'd have to see it. On some other pages (like gamerecaps.asp) the left table is too short compared to the calendar table. I know this table will grow as the season goes on but...

All these promotional sections are database driven. These sections need to be "liquid" in nature to accomadate ever changing text input which changes on a daily basis.


4. The "Recap" link on the "Last Match" should go directly to the recap, not to an intermediate page. I would have probably already read the previous ones. People want to see the recap for THIS game not a list of all of them. Its a waste of a click. A link to the other recaps should appear at the bottom of each recap page if people want to read other ones.

Some would argue that they want to see all current year recaps with one click and all recaps are presented in chronological order sorry if an extra click puts you out but on something like this we can only please 50 percent of the people.


5. The "Highlights" link should either be removed or grayed out if there is no actual highlight. Waste of time clicking and returning.

To counter it would be a waste of time to gray it out there will be highlights after every game just like last year. We just are working out details/issues of getting match tapes and ran into a snag after the first home game.


6. Not too crazy about the duotone photos of the players in the header, but I am assuming that this is also part of the ad campaign.

Supports the print campaign

7. Also not too crazy about the cut off baby blue subtitles. I think I would prefer navy. Maybe its the red repetition of the subtitle that bothers me. Its a little redundant.

You can get your coffee black, with sugar, with cream or with cream and sugar the list goes on : )


9. Maybe repeat a silver version of the logo as a wallpaper background. Might add some variety to the layout. Just light enough to notice but not too dark to distract.

We have done background treatments in the past and got an overwhelming stop it for regular visitors because many people print out pages and hated it.


Otherwise, its clean and well layed out. Navigation is intuitive (like the last site). I know its tough to design around print campaigns and other peoples work.

Thanks

 

Hala:

trust me I have had way worse ideas : )

 

jjayg


Thanks for the feedback...hopefully the site grows on you in a good way and not a moss like way.

The page treatment headers are definitely a style thing