OT: Why Can't Sixers Have A Site Like The Soncis

THFM · Post #1 » by **THFM** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:27 pm

http://www.nba.com/sonics/#

Look how nice it is, our site is so confusing to look at and not even pretty.

UptownPhilly · Post #2 » by **UptownPhilly** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:32 pm

The Sonics have, by far, one of the coolest sites in the league. The format is similar to jumpman23.com

There's a lot wrong with the Sixers, but things are gradually being corrected.

BTW Our site looks much better than it used to look.

Post #3 » by **dbodner** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:35 pm

meh. More or less, I hate the overuse of flash on sites. It looks nice, but it's not functional at all.

Welfare Fraud · Post #4 » by **Welfare Fraud** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:38 pm

I agree.. I can't stand lots of flash

I haven't seen a team page I like yet. They need to take a page out of Google's book.. keep it simple

Post #5 » by **The Guilty Party** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:40 pm

I've e-mailed the guy who runs sixers.com a couple of times and he seems pretty receptive to suggestions.

I just looked for his e-mail address on their site and it's not there anymore. Oh well.

Post #6 » by **dbodner** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:46 pm

Just as a proof of concept on why building full sites in flash is a bad idea, go to their stats page:
http://www.nba.com/sonics/#/team/stats

Try copying something from the table.

oops!

Or
Give me a link to donyell marshall's biography page.

Post #7 » by **The Guilty Party** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:50 pm

I'm of the belief that it's because the Sonics built a flash site that they aren't able to get a new arena hence meaning that the team will not be in Seattle for long. :-)

It's hard to support a team that is anti-copy and paste.

CPops57 · Post #8 » by **CPops57** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 8:00 pm

The Sonics site is poor, but still much better than the Sixers site.

There's about a thousand things wrong with the Sixers site. But just one thing that amazes me. The Sixers site uses red text on a slightly darker red background in certain places. WTF!

dbodner wrote:meh. More or less, I hate the overuse of flash on sites. It looks nice, but it's not functional at all.

I'm not a fan of using Flash for most types of websites due to the usability failings. Here's an article I wrote on the topic last year.

http://informationrain.com/2007/07/25/w ... -websites/

For games and for generic video sites, Flash is great though.

Post #9 » by **The Guilty Party** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 8:07 pm

I'm not a fan of the new "rottweiler" look that sixers.com has gone with. I guess that I like the fact that sonics.com doesn't look like a messy coffee table whereas sixers.com looks like a 4 year old's messy room.

LieCheatSteal · Post #10 » by **LieCheatSteal** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 8:24 pm

Somewhere, some Sonic fan is wishing why can't the Sonics have ownership like the Sixers.

Post #11 » by **Sixerscan** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 8:27 pm

And somewhere, Ed Snider is wondering why the hell the Sixers don't go on the Power Play more.

Ravi · Post #12 » by **Ravi** » Sat Mar 1, 2008 12:51 am

LieCheatSteal beat me too it but that site may be defunct pretty soon. Read Simmons blog its a sad situation.

sixers_610 · Post #13 » by **sixers_610** » Sat Mar 1, 2008 3:39 am

LieCheatSteal wrote:Somewhere, some Sonic fan is wishing why can't the Sonics have ownership like the Sixers.

Seriously. Do you know how many years we've had ridiculously high payrolls? Heck, we had two guys that made a combined $40 million. And people complain about the website.

Post #14 » by **tk76** » Sat Mar 1, 2008 4:54 am

None of them hold a candle to what the Eagles do at their web site. They have daily TV shows, tons of articles, constant updates... I guess that's what happens when your franchise is worth $1,000,000,000.

Dedicated_76ers_fan · Post #15 » by **Dedicated_76ers_fan** » Sat Mar 1, 2008 10:50 am

Because of the inept GM'S he stuck with for Iverson's tenure. Billy King AND Larry Brown attracted FA'S to Philly for all the wrong reasons: OVERPAYMENT

Cookin Baskets · Post #16 » by **Cookin Baskets** » Sat Mar 1, 2008 4:41 pm

I disagree whats wrong with the sixers site looks much better than sonics, sixers is like any other nba team site, some are different then others all nba team sites are basically the same and it does not look unorganized.

arjwdotcom · Post #17 » by **arjwdotcom** » Sat Mar 1, 2008 10:17 pm

The Sonics didn't need Flash for all of that on thier site. They could have done all of that in nice semantic HTML with some CSS and JS thrown in. Design is nice, very clean and easy to read, but its not as functional as it could be, and part of that is the UX caused by the Flash.

The Sixers (and most other sports team sites) suffer from what I call the ABC.com issue; they want to pack so much stuff on the front page, that readability and usability become distant relatives to common sense. The Sixers site could use a substantial redesign, but given what has appeared on the site over the past years, I would wager to guess that the person making the decsions on what goes on the site has little eye for web usability and UX.

FYI: Flash can be done where one is able to select text, and other "normal" features, but this is something that the Flash designer/developer needs to understand. When the designer (as in the case of the Sonics website) doesn't know this to do it, then they should be pushed back to a junior level position and relearn the fundamentals.