Forum improvement thread #2

[hool10]

Ok right now is the time for the site to go under changes. As you can hear, the crickets are chirping, and the tumble weeds are rolling. Shrubs took really great footage but it showed the same stuff (not saying that's bad). It's obvious that TRS is hard at work smooshing bugs, building the other levels, and just mainly making L4D. It's been said that new info will be coming out early '08 as stated by Mike. What we need to do is take advantage of this and change the site. The last thread exposed some things that needed to be done. Nothing was done and people mainly bitched about stuff. What we need to do is to actually do something about it this time. Squerl and Frog both have college. I'm sure others have jobs and in fact I have college myself.

What we need to do though is to work on this site as a community effort as a whole. On our spare time or whatever it takes. Two people cannot change this site on their own. Not only do you read this site but TRS and other competing fan sites as well. We are the second major L4D authority on the website next to TRS itself. So I say if you are talented in photoshop, put those skills to use! If your great at coding, then help out too. So on that note I'll list some of the biggest topics.
1) More ways to make a thread, poll, or message.
2) Smilies.
3) Sigs.
4) Forum layout, color, etc.
5) The main banner.

If I offended anybody in the past, I'm sorry. I was just frustrated that nobody was hearing me to make changes to the site. Also I saw the website dying as a direct result of thinking the mods didn't care about the site. I was wrong. On a final note I would like to say that we cannot keep this style people. Change is inevitable and whether you like it or not, it will happen. The current design is better than the last design too. At least I can read the text now lol.

[Xerosnake90]

If you push the quote button you should be able to quote everything the person posted, BUT also keep the option of highlighting certain things to quote. Only thing I want changed. Change the forums back to Main, off topic, and whatever else. The new ones are stupid now.

[basic]

well i threw together some banners for L4D and made a thread suggesting people make their own banners and images to help out. some people seemed interested in helping out, but low and behold the thread gets deleted...

doesn't sound like they want help if you ask me

PS. i have no problem with squerl or frogopus, i think you guys do a badass job with the site and everything. i just think the moderating goes a bit far sometimes in the forums

[frogopus]

Just one thing I want to point now regarding forum color schemes.

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa40/drgndrums/th_Colors.jpg (http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa40/drgndrums/Colors.jpg)


Theres a method to the madness sometimes.

[basic]

i like the new look of the forums... the main page not so much :)

[Redfox]

I'd be happy to do some Photoshop work; I have a lot of experience with sigs and avatars. Never tried main banners or forum layouts before but I'd like to give it a shot.

[Puscifer]

we need the official logo on the main page and in the forum...

[iRelentless]

1) More ways to make a thread, poll, or message.
2) Smilies.
3) Sigs.
4) Forum layout, color, etc.
5) The main banner.
1) Meh. (although polls would be nice I guess)
2) :O :P
3) As long as theres a way to disable them in my user profile I'm fine with it. (after using the 411 forums for a while I actively try and disable them an all forums I frequent because I cant stand sigs with images anymore. :P
4) I'm not bothered how it looks so long as it's at least semi-neutral or has a fixed color scheme.
5) The new (well, not so new now) forum logo seems like a downgrade from the logo from the beige layout.
we need the official logo on the main page and in the forum...
I like this idea. Maybe with 411 in the same font, or something similar, to the ENTER SITE text on the official site. So long as the TRS dev's don't mind. (I doubt they would, but couldn't hurt to ask anyway just to make sure)


Heres a couple more:
6) Make the main site standards compliant, I can do this and then send either squerl/frogo the html for integration if you don't have time and don't mind the help. It's mainly nitpicking like missing alt attributes on images and missing /'s at the end of self closing tags. But theres some missing container end tags for paragraphs and stuff too, which could actually break the layout in some browsers.
Theres also some <br>'s on the forum which should be <br />'s, but I cant see them causing any problems so theres not much point in you taking the time to find/change them in the template.
7) Unless you've intentionally not done this: Fix images stretching the layout - Add this to the style for span.postlinks3 in bb_l4d_style.css:
&quot;overflow:auto; width:100%;&quot; Then you'll just get a neat scrollbar at the bottom of the post, instead of the layout being stretched. (might need to change them to div's instead of spans in the template for it to work, I can't remember if spans can have width's set or if they just wrap around their contents)

[QuotidianTemerity]

Move the ads to the sides of the pages. There's much more space available there (equating as greater revenue), and I won't have to feel like I'm playing Minesweeper every time I browse the forums, avoiding suspicious ads that I'd never click for my life.

[squerl]

Make the main site standards compliant

Holy crap. It was standards compliant before, I swear. I'll fix that.

Edit: Front page fixed, the rest of the pages will come..

[KashMunni]

I'd like to be able to have a better quality avatar and maybe just a bit bigger..

And some sigs would be nice.

I'm tired of using these plain old smilies.. There is a simple solution for the over usage of smilies which is quite obvious.. A Smiley Limit !

I always like a change and I hope that sooner or later we can use some sigs n' stuff and I do hope some people really do try to hook up the site a bit :D

I wouldn't be much help cause I never really did photo shop any thing but, maybe my friend could be of some help..

PS. Welcome back dude !

[hool10]

People we can't keep it simple. We need it to look like a normal looking forum. Forward people! The sigs never include pics usualy, just text with links.

[frogopus]

Hrm sigs would be cool. Oh wait I can still do it long hand :P

People we can't keep it simple
Except simplicity is the design philosophy for the site, its not laziness or ignorance. Easy and clear tools to exchange information and build a community. Improvements would involve suggestions that aid in these goals. Keep in mind that signatures and smiles are not going to be what keeps a person involved on a forum, its the people and content of such. Its not meant to be a personal playground, we have myspace for that.

Keep them coming though, you may yet convince us otherwise!
__________________________________
www.left4dead411.com (http://www.left4dead411.com)

[Shrubberyjsc]

Move the ads to the sides of the pages. There's much more space available there (equating as greater revenue), and I won't have to feel like I'm playing Minesweeper every time I browse the forums, avoiding suspicious ads that I'd never click for my life.


Lol.

I forgot there were ads.

I adblocked them a long time ago.

[iRelentless]

Except simplicity is the design philosophy for the site
Tell that to the front page... :P

But yeah, simplicity in design is good and content should always be the most important thing when designing; but simplicity doesn't always mean it has to look plain. Small areas of higher (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/) detail (https://steamcommunity.com/) stuff (http://www.l4d.com/) can go a long way in a simple design.

[caboos]

Except simplicity is the design philosophy for the site, its not laziness or ignorance. Easy and clear tools to exchange information and build a community. Improvements would involve suggestions that aid in these goals. Keep in mind that signatures and smiles are not going to be what keeps a person involved on a forum, its the people and content of such. Its not meant to be a personal playground, we have myspace for that.

Keep them coming though, you may yet convince us otherwise!thats what i think ,I like the simplistic i hate other forums that are crammed full of unneeded shit

[Kenny]

People we can't keep it simple. We need it to look like a normal looking forum. Forward people! The sigs never include pics usualy, just text with links.

Says you. Teach each his own, though.

I think the forums are fine as-is.

[Shrubberyjsc]

I think the forums are fine as-is.


QFT.

Maybe a little bit darker/congealed blood on the main page.

But no complications.

[Rannos]

Zzzz...

*Wakes from Hibernation*

Yar! Change site good!

...Zzzzz

[QuotidianTemerity]

I adblocked them a long time ago.


Wherewhenwhat.

How do you accomplish this feat.

HOW.

[Teknobry]

Quoting: Kenny
I think the forums are fine as-is.


QFT.

Maybe a basic smiley pack, with a few icons, but not hundreds. I like this forum alot the way it is, hope it doesn't change to much.

[Shrubberyjsc]

Wherewhenwhat.

How do you accomplish this feat.

HOW.


Right-clicking: is there anything it can't do?

[dontleave]

We need a 'show spoilers' thing like they have at relicforums.

You can pretty much hide a message in a tab, someone clicks and reveals the message... TBH Spoilers are quite rampant when something new comes out.

TBRH, I want it so I can put surprise images in the tab.