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Post by pdbq on Mar 14, 2013 20:00:37 GMT -5
With the new DFT coming around the corner, I figure Rx will be getting more exposure in terms of people coming to visit our website. Currently, the website isn't really easy to navigate, and parts of the design look outdated. I mentioned this before, but I believe it's time for us to get a cleaner/easier to read forum. If we want DF to really come back to life, teaching new players how to play is important. Our tutorials should be heavily featured, and information about our servers and the throwdown should be easy to find. Getting the new forum up by the time of the first DFT is my goal. Here is a modified design of the one I was working on earlier. Thoughts and feedback please ;D i.imgur.com/VT1fia4.png
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kira
Rx.Captain
Rx.Freak
Posts: 154
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Post by kira on Mar 14, 2013 20:26:55 GMT -5
This time, I won't be saying I dislike it because I think you did a nice job. The right div will hold elements with a bit of white in them, so it will come together nicely. The tutorials can be moved to a separate page, using a portal, that will also give a homepage to the site. The down side is that we need to move off of proboards if you ever want this to happen. Setting it up is easy, but the layout, eh I suck with images. I still suggest a move to SMF, but I don't know if Duke can give us a database backup that would allow us to convert to SMF. On that note, I also don't know if you would want it. It might be kind'a nice for a clean start organizing everything where it should go rather than copying it all over. And your goal is 1.5 months away. We could have it up in a day or two, lol. The layout can be modified over time, but we can get the forums and everything set up. --- Questions --- Where are you hosting this? I assume on Duke's east server, as that's where the domain points? We're gonna need to get him to confirm we can, and that the server wont be changed any time soon. When you get permission and you guys wanna do it, let me know. I can set everything up for ya and get it running, plus get the forums set up (categories and boards), along with groups and whatnot. I will need help on images if I do it though, because as I said before ... I don't do images. Also, someone else will have to do the layout. You can go off of a premade layout and modify it though. What you have in that image ain't anything out of the norm, so there would be no troubles finding one to modify colors / images on to get the result we want. Lastly .. The SMF portal plugin can be modified to get as many pages as you want, so clan roster, tournaments, tutorials, rules, etc. can all be organized correctly. It basically makes a website out of the forums, then a link to the actual boards.
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Post by pdbq on Mar 14, 2013 21:13:17 GMT -5
I don't have any problem moving off of proboards, but I would like to be able to archive these forums in case anyone wants to read old posts, or wants to link to an old post from our war stats page or something.
I don't think it's necessary to bring all the posts over to the new site, it will probably be nice to have a fresh new forum. Yeah, you will lose your post count, but if people really care, we can add something like "old post count" below the normal post count.
I can do the images for sure, I may need help w/ the layout code, but I will help do that as well.
I will email duke and wait for a reply...
Also: Ideas for other pages we should create: a "Hall of Fame" with bios about influential members. a History page, detailing the birth of Rx and major events. a link to these archived forums.
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had
Rx.Lieutenant
Posts: 326
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Post by had on Mar 14, 2013 23:49:19 GMT -5
That looks great pd. I just think it needs a little more red (I'm happy with the way it looks now anyway).
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Post by Vibe on Mar 14, 2013 23:50:04 GMT -5
I think you guys might be making this a lot more difficult then it needs to be. Moving the forum off of proboards, while being a great move toward autonomy, would be a logistic nightmare if we're trying to keep any of the old posts.
I think the least labor intensive way to go would be to take the sleek streamlined design theme you have and redesign the current forums, that way none of the posts would be effected, and instead of completely redesigning and building a new forum and worrying about transferring data, all you have to do is delete a few things, recode a few things, and move a few boards around.
Just my opinion.
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Post by iNoob on Mar 15, 2013 0:25:38 GMT -5
what the fuckkk so much gray. it looks gay imo, i liked the first one you made. it was awesome
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Post by pdbq on Mar 15, 2013 2:23:32 GMT -5
Vibe, My idea is to not transfer any posts over, and just leave this proboards forum up and lock all the threads so people can go back and read old posts. The new forum software (SMF) is much more functional than proboards, I mean it's probably easier to set up a new forum with it than to try and make a bunch of changes on this forum. Another thing I don't like about proboards is that they deleted posts of ours that had "offensive" material in it, which is stupid. With the new forum, that wouldn't be a problem.
It might actually be a good idea to attempt to streamline proboards first, and see if we can get it looking where people are happy with it. But it isn't very difficult to set up a new forum either (if we don't transfer posts). Maybe do both, and then see which one people prefer?
iNoob, after looking at it, I do need to do some work on the colors. All the grey kinda flows together and is boring. I will work on it. Also, I'm pretty sure in the forum software there's an option for users to select their own theme. So it would be pretty easy for me to put in different color themes that you could pick from. But we would have to choose which theme would be default for all users. People could vote on their favorite theme after I make a few.
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Post by Vibe on Mar 16, 2013 15:36:26 GMT -5
Proboards didn't delete offensive messages, they threatened me to do it haha, but I agree with that point, censoring is bullshit. I'm all about a forum transfer, as long as we go about it smoothly and make sure everyone in the clan knows what's up so we don't repeat the NbK saga. I don't like the idea of leaving this site up if we're moving to another board though. It not only has potential to cause some confusion to members, but anyone interested in checking Rx out will be like "well which fucking site is the right one?" IMO
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Post by iNoob on Mar 16, 2013 16:30:42 GMT -5
We could just put a big announcement instead of the chat linking them to the new website how can we throw this away?!
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kira
Rx.Captain
Rx.Freak
Posts: 154
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Post by kira on Mar 16, 2013 17:08:41 GMT -5
We could just put a big announcement instead of the chat linking them to the new website how can we throw this away?! Anything worth keeping can be moved over, and the forums won't be gone, just linked to as a board, linking to the past board. I don't see much worth keeping since everything can be remade to actually fit into the site, because most of what you would want to keep is stuff that shouldn't be a post, but a web page.
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Post by Vibe on Mar 16, 2013 22:08:28 GMT -5
Agreed.
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Post by Internal on Mar 17, 2013 2:35:27 GMT -5
^ But what's wrong with pro boards? Did you just want to start a new fresh forum and make it organized? or is it just "proboards" Lol ?
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Post by leadsnipe on Mar 17, 2013 4:06:39 GMT -5
I have been stalking this thread for a while now, and I say I have to agree with a move. Complete restructure and a fresh new start. As for what we have ATM? I say we cut the crap and only link important things. And an apology to everyone for not voicing my opinions earlier, but not being as active as I used to be , I might not have known the whole story so I chose to wait it out(applies to alot of threads) Also an apology to you ,Vibe , we should have thought this through last time we talked about it, because it would have kept you from renewing Proboards for another year.
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had
Rx.Lieutenant
Posts: 326
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Post by had on Mar 17, 2013 12:40:41 GMT -5
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Post by Vibe on Mar 18, 2013 17:23:47 GMT -5
I don't pay money to be on proboards, so it's no worry. The only site-related funding that happens is an annual registration fee for the domain, which is negligible at best, so don't sweat it Lead.
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Post by iNoob on Mar 19, 2013 17:55:20 GMT -5
Is someone going to get to work on this?
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Post by pdbq on Mar 20, 2013 3:01:31 GMT -5
Honestly I am waiting for duke to respond to my email to make sure it's okay that we host the forums on his server.
In the meantime kira and I will start doing some preliminary stuff so we can put the new forums up all at once after we get the OK from duke.
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Post by Internal on Mar 24, 2013 14:52:23 GMT -5
Great st00f
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Post by dukevin on Apr 8, 2013 4:43:52 GMT -5
Sorry for the extreme activity but I think it's safe to say I'm back now.
I think a website change is way overdue and I'm really digging the portal idea. Keep clan info separate (roster, tutorials, links, whatever) from the discussions. I was originally planning on switching to SMF also after researching available forums software, and Light's knowledge with SMF should help even more as I've never worked with it. I'll make a few wireframe mockups of what I think the site(s) should look like. I really like pd's mockup but I do want a bit more color. Not too much like this site, but red is our color so maybe a tinge of that somewhere. It'd also help the logo from being the only colored obj on the screen.
As for forum backup, we need to do it asap. Proboards sucks major elephant dick and does not give us access to the DB with our posts. Basically their TOS says that everything we post is their property and they will not give it to us even if we ask. If you notice we have no ads on the page, that's because I used some CSS tricks to get rid of them like a year ago but if they notice, we will be shut down. Even if I restore all the ads, Proboards is moving to version 5 which sucks no less elephant dick and basically our whole site will be broken around April 29th.
I've already backed up these forums using a python script about a year ago but we need to do it again. BTW backing up forums is also a TOS violation but they will never know we did it. I think I ran the script 5 times and they didn't notice.
I would very much like to move everything off of proboards onto the new forums which should be somewhat easy to do. I know this means not starting fresh, but there is really good history I would like to preserve which defines Rx. Our proboards data could be lost any day any minute. I've also seen forum migrations which killed past clans. Keeping our old stuff should minimize the impact.
I'm buying a new West VPS tomorrow and we'll use that to host the new website and some new servers.
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had
Rx.Lieutenant
Posts: 326
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Post by had on Apr 8, 2013 8:21:01 GMT -5
Based Duke.
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