NuttyTree wrote:

I got a suggestion, Why not have the community chat like IMVU's or even facebook? Therefor no matter where you are on the site you can just give a reply?

So you want the shout-box on every page of the site? That would be rather resource intensive on the server. I'll see if I can draw up plans for something do-able. DM was wanting to make a new shout-box anyways. Maybe I can come up with something, and maybe only have it visible to higher up members.

We use to have something like that, but it ruined the site. People refused to use the rest of the site. The only thing they wanted to use was the silly little chat bar. The forums went completely dead. People did not even want to send PM's. They would wait hours for whomever they wanted to talk to ... to come online in the chat. It completely killed business. It also confused people. People would be on a thread about credits and instead of replying to the thread with their related question, they would send their question over the chat without any context ... so we had no idea what they were talking about.

Awesome design. I think the nav bar needs a little update too

Hydra wrote:

Awesome design. I think the nav bar needs a little update too

.

Which nav bar?

D.M wrote:

Hydra wrote:Awesome design. I think the nav bar needs a little update too.Which nav bar?

i'm thinking he means the main dropdown lol and yea i agree it could use some love lol

Don Von Alpha Dom wrote:

So you want the shout-box on every page of the site? That would be rather resource intensive on the server. I'll see if I can draw up plans for something do-able. DM was wanting to make a new shout-box anyways. Maybe I can come up with something, and maybe only have it visible to higher up members.

yea that would be something nice to see something thats not too fancy in terms of server but still something with a nice simple design

Don Von Alpha Dom wrote:

We use to have something like that, but it ruined the site. People refused to use the rest of the site. The only thing they wanted to use was the silly little chat bar. The forums went completely dead. People did not even want to send PM's. They would wait hours for whomever they wanted to talk to ... to come online in the chat. It completely killed business. It also confused people. People would be on a thread about credits and instead of replying to the thread with their related question, they would send their question over the chat without any context ... so we had no idea what they were talking about.

maybe like you said make it available to only higher rank members and also with some basic rules to use i dont know personaly i think if you do that and lets say add the chat future to a higher rank new members will try harder to be active and unlock that feature.i think if you give some new feature or something worth working for people would be more active to achieve that


And last but not least on my post since we already are at the improvement suggestion part DM what about a color change of the site?
you start to get bored of this blue over time lol why not try to add some other themes? i'm sure thats posible since this is a forum and most forums have more then one theme color.I dont know maybe give the users ability to change the theme for their own account depending on their mood?

adryan87 wrote:

if you give some new feature or something worth working for people would be more active to achieve that

That is something I'm wanting to work on by adding more things to the medit shop. I plan on giving the profile pages an overall soon which should hopefully make them look better, function better and just generally be a place people will use again.

D.M wrote:

adryan87 wrote:if you give some new feature or something worth working for people would be more active to achieve thatThat is something I'm wanting to work on by adding more things to the medit shop. I plan on giving the profile pages an overall soon which should hopefully make them look better, function better and just generally be a place people will use again.

lol you were fast to reply i just finished the topic

also i had another suggestion about the color theme im not sure if you seen that since i was editing it at that time lol


and i was just talking about medits with ax lol yea thats a great ideea

adryan87 wrote:

what about a color change of the site?
you start to get bored of this blue over time lol why not try to add some other themes?

Alright, I have a few things to say about this.

1) Don Von owns the site. He pays for the server hosting and domain names. Therefor pretty much what he says goes. Now, years ago he asked the community what color scheme they wanted and they chose black and blue so I have stuck by that.

I also have to stick with color schemes and designs that he approves. I have a lot of leeway when it comes to designing but I always have to get his approve. He prefers darker colors therefore I have to use darker colors.

2) I've chosen to keep the blue as part of brand recognition.

adryan87 wrote:

I dont know maybe give the users ability to change the theme for their own account depending on their mood?

I have thought about this but there are 3 things that have stopped me:

1) Getting the css elegantly and efficiently written to support color changes. Right now my custom css is kind of all over the place. I've added about 10 new css files to our server which have completely broken away from the format phpbb uses. This not only has cluttered our css directory but has made finding the exact code more difficult thus making maintenance harder. This is something I'm trying to address with this new design.

2) Lack of understanding regarding implementation. In order to allow users to choose their own colors, I am pretty sure we would have to add a new table/column to the database in order to store the setting. I am not good with databases yet so I don't know how possible this is for us. Also, we would then have to add a new option to your profile settings to allow you to select the theme.

3) The PHPBB upgrade. Here soon we plan on installing a newer version of phpbb (the software that powers pretty much the whole site) in a test directory. If all the tests go well, we'll end up rolling it out for the real site to use. This update is going to be huge, not only from a back end standpoint but also a front end one. It will be like deleting this site and starting fresh, everything could be different. So any changes to the templates and themes will get deleted.



That said, I'm not against the idea and actually like it so it may be something we add in the future. But that's something I would have to discuss with Don. We normally have meetings when either of us is going to change/add something because there are so many factors to think about that you guys as users don't have to worry about such as SEO, Security from other mafias, competitor websites, legal issues, Special h4c|<s we've created to perform some vital function etc.. Plus we'd have to take into consideration that lots of our users have troubles navigation around and following instructions so if we made tutorials telling you how to use the site, I am sure some people would complain or misunderstand when the site in the tutorial is one color and the site they see is another.

D.M wrote:

That said, I'm not against the idea and actually like it so it may be something we add in the future. But that's something I would have to discuss with Don. We normally have meetings when either of us is going to change/add something because there are so many factors to think about that you guys as users don't have to worry about such as SEO, Security from other mafias, competitor websites, legal issues, Special h4(|<$ we've created to perform some vital function etc.. Plus we'd have to take into consideration that lots of our users have troubles navigation around and following instructions so if we made tutorials telling you how to use the site, I am sure some people would complain or misunderstand when the site in the tutorial is one color and the site they see is another.

well dm i didnt contest the factthat all you guys do is hard i know it is and i also know as everybody else that Don decides in the end but since this topic is about changes i thought i suggest one that came in mind.

Glad you like the ideea though and yea you would need another column in the database
and if you make the ability for every user to pick their own color the default color can stay blue at first load that way it wouldnt confuse people and they change the colors only if they want too.

as i said was just a suggestion as we are at the improvements topic it doesnt have to come to be lol thats up to you and Don

im not sure a starting fresh ideea is suh a good thing though maybe better to clean this one up

and another suggestion if you could make moderators control panel visible to just the mods lol i know that 1 pm reported is a bug you said so in a previous topic but people shouldn't see it

adryan87 wrote:

im not sure a starting fresh ideea is suh a good thing though maybe better to clean this one up

The PHPBB upgrade benefits are far too valuable not to do it. I won't get into the technical details but it will make site maintenance a hell of a lot easier meaning more time for us to work on adding new things or interacting with you guys. The new design will be just a side effect of that. Which is a good thing.

D.M wrote:

The PHPBB upgrade benefits are far too valuable not to do it. I won't get into the technical details but it will make site maintenance a hell of a lot easier meaning more time for us to work on adding new things or interacting with you guys. The new design will be just a side effect of that. Which is a good thing.

well then i do hope tests go as smooth as posible i'm sure you know best.
love the changes you made