footballURLs is a blog & news aggregator based on the Alltop and popurls formula instead of the usual “river of news” format used by most aggregators. As always, the design is kept light and simple. However, though it might not look like it on the outside, the back end is pretty complex and riddled with customizations and hacks to the WordPress platform.
To be blunt: I’ve broken my own rules on simplicity and allowed the scope of what the site’s purpose to spread beyond what can easily be managed. For that reason, development of the current version has been halted, but a new “back to basics” replacement isn’t a million miles away.
Nevertheless, here’s a quick tour of v1.0:
Branding/Identity
Perhaps a tad obvious; the two ‘O’s in ‘football’ are replaced by footballs, but the addition of the arcs from a standard RSS icon identifies the site’s purpose. Smaller, simplified versions of the logo can customized with club colors for use on club-specific Twitter accounts.
Navigation
The feed sections feature a dedicated navigation bar and, where relevant, parent pages use large buttons with visuals that visitors will easily recognize.
Layout
Each feed page uses three 300px columns; two for the source feeds, laid out in a grid; the third for a side bar to display related ads and links. It’s fairly important that the ads are relevant, but it’s vitally important that they don’t conflict with the content: Man Utd fans would not appreciate seeing an ad for Liverpool kit and vice versa!
Menu Page
Feed Page
Bookstore
Tables
