NATS Template Design Contest! $1000 for each winning set of templates!
 

We're doing another design contest but this one is going to be a bit different.

What we need are some different "skins" for NATS. These will be sets of templates that NATS clients can use for the visual look of their program. Not all program owners want to spend the time and money creating a custom template set and we are the first to admit that our "default" templates are not the most beautiful.

This contest will run like this:

We will take entires in this thread until the end of Feb, 2005. We will pick winners both as we go and after the contest concludes. We may pick one winner and we may pick 20. Once we pick a winning concept we will work with the designer to complete the rest of the required templates (easily done based on the two required for the concept). After all of these templates are complete we will pay the designer the $1000 prize. Again, this is open ended and we may pick 1 winner or many.

Here are the rules for the entries:

1. Every entry must consist of two things:
a. A design of the "join program page" on the outside of the program.
b. A design of the "stats" page on the inside of the program.

2. You should use the respective pages on the NATS demo at http://natsdemo.toomuchmedia.com to know which elements you must include on these pages.

3. Other than the required elements the designs are totally up to you. You can move elements around. Display them as text or images. Make your design simple or fancy. Use radio buttons instead of select boxes, etc. etc. You have total design freedom.

4. The designs should have a "placedholder" for the client's logo to go.

5. This is a reseller interface design. You should not include any of the adminstrative stuff.

6. We would like to see designs which use CSS as much as possible to allow customization of the design.

We would like to see some really creative work on these concepts. You may want to view some of our clients for ideas (tho you should not copy them directly). We have a clients page which is not officially released yet which you can use to view some of them. It is a partial list which we are still putting together. http://www.getnats.com/clientlist.html (if you are a client reading this and you would like to be included on the list please contact me)

We of course may have changes to some things as this develops and there will of course be question to answer so please feel free to post them here.

Great contest

Good stuff :thumbsup

Also, I almost forgot to add. We will be distributing the info of the designer with the template set(s) they do so that any clients using their template set may contact them for customizations to these sets. (Graphically and what not). This should lead to additional design work to the winning artists from NATS clients. Which is a win-win situation for everyone.

Nice contest, can I enter my templates? LOL :winkwink:

If you make them a bit more generic, sure, why not? :)

Very cool. I think it would also be cool if webmasters could change the skin in the stats area by their own preference. You could have a couple of skins so webmasters could change it to their liking. :)

Mark

very cool... cant wait to see some of these :)

Very nice contest

These templates will of course be editable like the templates we provide now. They are just to give everyone several starting points to choose from or some nice templates to use without editting them should they want to.

EVERYTHING in NATS visually is editable by the client. You can make NATS look however you want as you can see by viewing a few of our clients and seeing how different their programs look.

Sorry for the confusion on that.

*bump bump*

this is the best contest i have seen in a while

That is awesome John. Can webmasters auto disable the system do it does not email them when they make a sale?

Mark

Thank you :anon

Yes you can.

bump .. maybe ill give it a try ... i like joining contests anyway :thumbsup

I just love the NATS green layout. Simple but to the point. No eye candy needed for statistics :pimp

affiliate program design 1500-5000.

contest prize 1k.

Gonna sit this one out, there is a high percentage that the clients contact me at the end of day anyways to design a template:)

This is nice contest.

I could use a more simple template with smaller text. looks neater. I just like it. :thumbsup

hrm. anyone know the URL's of the exact pages to design? I don't see a "join" page at the link provided..

nice contest!

by the way, can you direct us to "join program page" and "stats page" so we have an idea. i can't see it. :(

Amazing contest

/me bookmarks this thread ;D

yeah we'd love to see those pages :)

pls post it here.. :)

Signup Page:
http://natsdemo.toomuchmedia.com/signup.php

Stats Page: (login first)
http://natsdemo.toomuchmedia.com/stats.php

thanks :)

Nathan - in order to make real proper skins shouldn't you guys make available the base templates?

Rui,

we did not do this specifically because we do not want it based on the templates that much. We need the same ELEMENTS on the pages, but you can make them look however you want, as long as they can do what the real ones do.

We also do not expect you guys to create actual smarty templates, just the HTML, we will make them dynamic.

Its probably best for the stats page to check the Admin Stats also (http://natsdemo.toomuchmedia.com/admin_stats.php) so you see what it would kinda look like with rows of data in it.

You can of course also check any other NATS program to see how they made them look to get some ideas and the like.

Great idea, because it's hard to find designers who can design this...(personal experience)

Nathan - basicly, what somebody needs to do in order to make the skins is to look at those 2 locations you mentioned and rip the form info and just make one from scratch using the same forms and that includes the links is that it?

bump bump bump

Yes, thats exactly it.

Like John said, once you are picked as a winner you need to create the other pages too, but thats not a lot of work once you have the base design done. Those 2 pages we ask you to do now are just sample templates we feel are good pages to test the design with. If those look good, all others will look good too.

out of curiousity, how many pages would it be in total (if chosen), since i am assuming that would be part of the $1k...

good and very important question...

bump tha bump

More than 10 should not be needed. The page structure is very similar through the site, unless ofcourse you want to make it totally different. Most work on the other templates really is the graphics if you use graphical headers and such things.

Like we said, we do not even require you to do the smarty coding, we do that.

How many entrys did you guys have so far? Any approved skin?

Hmmm...when does this end?

I've got an some old affiliate program designs I was working on at one point for learning purposes and still have them sitting around here somewhere.

I can not wait to see what you guys end up with. It should be very good

Please view my Template Entry

Hope I made it correct :1orglaugh :thumbsup

damn, pushbutton - do you have a portfolio and some prices online somewhere?