Forum Revamp Ideas Thread

Hello there

A forum revamp is scheduled after May 20th,when i would get more time to do things.

The following things are planned-

>New theme made especially for AoF or it could be a big CSS customization of some existing theme.

>New nav bar,maybe Flash.

>New banner,animated.

>Music in forums,it will be seen whether it would be alright to add music when the site loads after checking download speeds of forum and playlist in forums.

>New chat system.

>New shoutbox.

>About 5 HTML pages would be created that would have info regarding AoF etc.

>New buttons.

>Extra forum functionality.

>Possible switch to phpbb 3.

A team would be created that would need 2 coders and 2 gfx designers.If interested pls reply here with ur name and skills.However u must be good at what u do.
Ray,a very good gfx designer and former AoF member would be helping so mainly coders are needed.

Post ur ideas here for the forums in detail.

This will be open till May 20th,agter which all the ideas will be compiled and it wil be seen what can be done and what cannot be done.

-Geromix

please please please be careful with music choices if you add any.....

I would hate to come on and have some terrible music start playing, will we be able to add our own music or something to listen to? Or will that change the music for everyone?

i know something that means we can have a music player, that doesnt automatically start, but can play ANY song frmo ANY band

its called dizzler, it doesnt meam the music will auto-play, but we'll have music, and there are many themes for it

only problem is, once you move page, it'll stop playing

Code:

<embed  src="http://www.dizzler.com/player/pod.swf" FlashVars="p=U49db240f5e070&ms=1" width=500 height=340 quality="best" scale="noborder" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" allowFullScreen="true"></embed>

thats my one, i'll set up one for us, just tell me where you want it, what username, and what theme(more info can be found on www.dizzler.com)

>New theme made especially for AoF or it could be a big CSS customization of some existing theme.

- Good idea, It would be cool if the site colours were limited, and following one main theme. It is kinda like that at the moment, but it looks kinda messy. Escpecially the background being tiled.

>New nav bar,maybe Flash.

- That would be cool. It would be nice if the Nav Bar had similiar fonts, colour schemes and style as the rest of the forum, nothing fancy as.

>New banner,animated.

- Once again cool idea. See above

>Music in forums,it will be seen whether it would be alright to add music when the site loads after checking download speeds of forum and playlist in forums.

- As long as you give the forum users the chance to turn the music off, I'd say it's a cool idea. It would also be cool if we could upload our own music!

>New chat system.

- Sounds cool, would be good to be able to chat to other AoF's in real time!

>New shoutbox.

- Not essential, but still very cool!

>About 5 HTML pages would be created that would have info regarding AoF etc.

- Very cool, would be good for the new players so they don't get lost.

>New buttons.

Awesome, same advice as Nav Bar


My Own Suggestion:

Clear out all of the *#$@ from the forum sections into the archive. Keep it clean and simple, or it starts to look cluttered and confusing. Not good for new players arriving having to delve through old post to find what they want, and overall not very tidy.


Thanks a lot mate! Sounds like a really good plan you got going. I would love to help out but this isn't my kinda thing, I wouldn't know where to begin in the scripting department.

Can i suggest more and better images for some of the forums. for example the ALC & maybe making something for the ACC & ALC for the portal with a small comment about their functions. I would also suggest a clean up of the portal we have. abit of a change is always nice.

maybe start trying to enforce the use of the profile and the diffrent options that have been provided to show your roles with and the branchs you are in so that it is easyier to keep track and understand for everyone who belongs to what.

you should enlist 2 of our players expertise from ogame i think lordfenrir and this other guy who i kept forgetting his name...they can help us out on the revamp.

@Kevlar-Yes i hope they would be interested in this forum revamp because i need coders,especially those who know CSS otherwise i will have to learn it on my own.

@Ghosty-Functions of ACC and ALC would be displayed clearly.There would be a HTML page with ACC names and a common contact.

AoF Hall of Fame would become a HTML page.

@Titan-When u open the AoF page,the music would be there as long as the page loads,so it will be short.
What that will also be added is an MP3 player,u can add ur own songs to the list and play it.Something like what Sang suggested.

The trick would lie in putting the code in a place that is easily accessible from every page.In some forums it is put on the top and in some forums there is a separate portal widget but we will have to see.


Some more things that i forgot to add in the original list-

>Flash Games,some simple games u can play in the forums and compete with each other.

>Download section.Or/And Possibility of File Transfer will be checked out.

>Dynamic Countdown-Its a countdown for say a particular event etc.(Countdown for AoF B'Day etc)

@Mightybean-Yes all that u said would be considered.

Old posts would be out into Archives section.

And few more things-

>Certain Template modifications that will make things a lot better.

>Roleplaying Game,RPG Module

Well, I have skills in (x)html, php, css, javascript and ajax. I Could help you if I have time and I'm not too lazy.

Ok got another couple of issues.

For branchs if their are promotional videos for example the one that Ogame has or one of the videos to attract people to FL that have been realised that are really pro looking we should see if its possible to get permission to add them. ones from Utube etc would be easy to get but the one from like ogame site maybe would have some issues.

Also if everyone agrees when you go to the forums the imediate image on the side of it is...


THEY SUCK! CHANGE THEM!!!!!!!!!

Another thing, is it also possible to add a button on the menu bar at the top of every page when u make a new one to instead of putting all the leadership on the portal blocks. can we make a leadership button similar to the ideas of this ofcourse when you make a new bar that lists all the leaders and their roles.

The real issue would be is it possible to create the page for it rather than to get the button because the button part is actually no offence not very difficult. all you need is a button image and a link.

so that we could move for example this is on the portal. can we make a page for ti on the menu bar and put every branch in it and put job discriptions or something decorated with images.

Quote :

Void Leaders
Primary Leaders


-Presidents-
[AoF][A]Titan
[AoF][T]Albert


Secondary Leaders


-Vice-Presidents-
[AoF][A]Comfort
[AoF][T]Benice


Tertiary Leaders


-Pirate Lords-
[AoF][X]Rayenden[X]
[AoF][X]Pyromatri[X]
[AoF][X]Phantom[X]

-Chief Merchants-
[AoF][T]Albert
[AoF][T]BeNiCe


-A Wing Leaders-
[AoF][A]Comfort
[AoF][A]Cugix

The next idea i had was maybe a medal system were medals or badge thigns could be designed and earned by members who have shown gr8 protential within the community. diffrent branchs could request extra awards to be added and earned. these could be such as Best Recruiter, Voidian Top Gun, Ogame Top Fleeter etc.

for example BF2142s award system (mainly lookign at how their awards look)


Also on another note maybe the designing of an ACTUAL AoF Gaming Community logo and not just AoF TAX for Void etc. yes branch logos are good but i think the community forums should have one to reflect AoF in general.

First off, see the following sites for two examples of my experience:

- www.designaweb.us
- www.safefilestore.com (Much Modified Template) & (I've edited, updated and reconjigerd relay ajax file manager for use with this).

Second, I've got advanced skills in CSS, XHTML, HTML, PHP MYSQL and VBScript (also stuff like .htaccess).

Thridly, new web styles (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/14/web-design-trends-for-2009/) point to cleaner designs with proper colour palettes. Using the ogame background (http://uni18.ogame.org/evolution/img/background.jpg) you can find a suitable colour palette using the tool at http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/index.php.

Fourth, icons have been pointed out above by DarkGhost and they should be changed to suit the new theme.

Fifth, the location of certain elements has also cropped up and it is easy enough to add buttons in various other pages, maybe a post box at the top as well as the bottom etc etc...

Sixth, I can provide a testing environment for any forum script which would dramatically reduce transistion problems.

Haha i think that was all very serious so for the last bit of trash, i would be happy to help with coding and i don't know how far the admins can mess with the scripts etc. but i know that i can offer you a deal (if you get some donations):

Unlimited Disk Space
Unlimited Bandwidth
Free Domain Name (For A Year, £5 per Year After)
30 Subdomains
500 you@yourdomain.com Email Addresses
2 Mailing Lists
5 FTP Accounts
2 Cron Jobs
24 / 7 Support

Of course it can all be extended but you could then install other scripts (chat scripts, comunity scripts, ad management scripts, etc.) and have your admin@yourdomain.com, no_reply@ (blahblahblah). I might also point out that's less than cost and it means i'm paying some donation as well.

Oopppppsss... went a bit formal there but yeh you get the point.

umm well we got an offer from a guy that owns the server we played which is void server of the freelancer branch...he offer us a professional looking website but we are to donate some $$ to them, although they say we can donate if we want to but we have to turn them down bcoz we cant achieve the 300+ membership, second theres more students here than those that actually work to pay the donations and thirdly we like the forum now as it is and we can make it abit more interesting and cool.


also not to mentioned that the "new" website depends on the server existence as well the hassle of copying all the important post over 2 the "new" website.

and my personal fav quote "money and internet dont work well together".

but techno-kid thanks for the offer as we could use your skills here by revamping this home of ours thank you

kk if who ever does the modifications does want a testing server i'll give u that free

@techno_kid-

I think Kevlar missed out on one major reason-
We don't have access to database in forumotion,no matter what we do.(Maybe in future...)

.sql files are inaccessible.

So all the posts and members cannot be transferred to a new forum.We are kind of stuck here.

I dont think we are going to need a test server.This is how the testing is planned-

1.3-4 test forums will be created with one major test forums.In forumotion it is easy to create test forums and one can create as many one wants to.Coders can create their own forums,be the forum founder and then test various things in the forums they have set up.They will then be added to the main test forum.This way coders will get to know the limitations and capabilities of foumrotion forums on their own.

2.Initially test forums won't be available for general AoF members,it will be closed with only Web Team having access to it.Once things are done general AoF members can take a look and suggest things which may be incorporated to test forum.

3.Finally it will be added to normal forums in a phased manner.

Only in phpbb 2 do we have Free Template Editing so we will have to sticck with phpbb 2 for now at least.

Forumotion uses some kind of custom CSS due to which themes from other sites cannot be added to forums here.Hitskins.com is from where one gets forumotion skins and upload skins there.But since i want a "unique theme" for AoF we won't make a skins and upload it to Hitskins because it would the become freely available to everybody.
So we will have to customise an existing theme.

I don't think we can have mods as such here.

@Ghost-All that would be taken care of and is part of plan.

There will be new rank buttons and we can get some medals etc as well.

Want to know if people would be interested in RPG in forums here?

Some possible additions-

>An Intro Page(Do we want one?)

>A friend referral system.

>A four section forum,meaning four forums can be visible in one category.

Ah ok it's been a long time since I used forums in restricted conditions but that seems fine. We usually use a testing server before we use it on a production server, just minimises the risks. I wonder why you're not allowed to access mysql data? I think they've trapped all your posts for ever! Oh well

techno_kid wrote:

Ah ok it's been a long time since I used forums in restricted conditions but that seems fine. We usually use a testing server before we use it on a production server, just minimises the risks. I wonder why you're not allowed to access mysql data? I think they've trapped all your posts for ever! Oh well

Well we don't have access because all the successful forums or communities which have grown a lot over course of time would leave forumotion to switch to some other private forum etc and that would mean doom for forumotion as that would lead to a fall in ad revenues.

rather depends what the RPG is?

wow now you want to incorporate an RPG, Rocket Propelled Grenade....cool.

RPG is Role Playing Game in forums.

You have a-
1.Game Master-By default forum founder but this can be changed.

2.Game master makes RP universe for board members to play in.History of uni,events etc.

3.Typical RP universes have the usual fantasy stuff-Orcs,Elves etc.They are the races and then u have classes like-Warriors etc.

4.Gamemaster generates a char sheet of the Board member.It could have fields like XP,Health etc.(U can check ur profiles now,there would be an option to generate a char sheet or something like that,but since there are no fields it is empty i think)

5.When u post in a topic,maybe RP topic, there is an option to "roll dice" where u have the option to "attach sig".A random number comes out and that influences ur RP char.
U can gain points like XP etc and get weps which boost some part of ur char.

It is a bit strange and difficult to understand initially but possibilties are endless,i suppose somebody like Comfort might like it a lot.

I too haven't gt the hang of it,some forumotion forums are completely RP,that is the forum becomes the game!
I am planning to join one of these forums later to understand how this works exactly.

If it works well,it can be done here as well with a special RP Forum or Board for it.That is if u guys want it.

might aswell. whatever does not kill the site makes it stronger... lol
take what u can get and use it to the best u can.

Kevlar_Uranus wrote:

wow now you want to incorporate an RPG, Rocket Propelled Grenade....cool.

I'd rather my RPC anyday. Rocket Propelled Chainsaws ftw.

RPC = Rocket Propelled Comfort

@ Gero

Intro Page would be great for the new visitors! I also support Ghosty's medals thatd also be cool, as long as I get one

yeah give him the Baked Bean of the Month award