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What would you like to see more of or change on SP/BoM?

Discussion in 'Sorcerous Sundries' started by Taluntain, Feb 10, 2011.

  1. Gaear

    Gaear ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful

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    This 'good old days' refrain seems to be pretty popular, which is making me curious about a few things. So if I may ask ...

    What and when exactly were the 'good old days' at SP?

    The what - extremely heavy traffic on the BoM, multiple forums active simultaneously, etc.? How many vistors were there per day, and how many posts per day, etc.? How are the numbers different now, specifically, if you care to share? What subjects/forums were popular?

    The when (should be self-explanatory) - was this fabled time in the early 2000s or thereabouts, or when exactly? When did it start to decline? Has the change been gradual over time or sharp, etc.?

    Another thing that may be useful to ask is what you're (Tal) after specifically. Is there really something wrong here that may require some kind of major overhaul, or are you just trying to tweak things? Do you want big numbers as far as traffic goes (which would seem to make sense from a fiscal standpoint, though I don't really have a clue as to the specifics), or do you just want to serve the RPG gaming community? Or something in between?

    Off the top of my head, I would say that if you're after numbers, change the site to a DA-oriented thing and try to offer something DA-related that others don't. (Easier said than done, I'm sure.) If you want to serve the RPG gaming community, just keep doing what you're doing. That's an "it is what it is" scenario, I believe - interest in BG-era games is not going to be affected by anything other than the relative interest in BG-era games, so if that's waning somehow naturally, I doubt anything can be done about it. Somehow though I suspect that people will be playing BG for a long time to come, so the "doom" prognosticators may be a bit premature.

    Lastly, I think that internet message boards sort of evolve naturally. If the BoM is turning partly into a socio-political discussion (read: vitriol ;)) site, well, that means that that's what the members want to talk about, right? Why stand in the way of evolution? Whatever is working, cater to it, and whatever isn't working, let it go. I think you'd be better off with that strategy than with some of the reinvention schemes we've seen suggested here. :2c:

    I also think that the members of any site themselves change over time. It doesn't seem uncommon, for example, that once vocal members become a bit 'too cool' for the topics they once posted about at length, and turn to a reticent, self-conscious ("I am aloof and edgy - yes, even badass" :rolleyes:) attitude of one sentence or one word posts that promote the same feeling among others. That's ultimately very self-serving and not good for the community (not to mention sad and embarassing) but it happens.

    Lots of questions are irritating I know, but I'm really just asking them for the sake of positing ideas that could be looked at, not demanding answers. :)
     
  2. Barmy Army

    Barmy Army Simple mind, simple pleasures... Adored Veteran

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    Back in the day, a good 3 or 4 years or more ago maybe, I would visit BoM and there would be pages upon pages upon pages of content in the New Posts button. Even if you only gave it a few hours hours between visits. More people frequented the site, and there was a wider range of people. There were loads of different characters, a lot of them a bit firey and controversial, and a few of them clashed. I remember the mods were very busy people issuing warnings and editting posts - now they don't seem to need to get involved.

    More controversy and arguing etc might sound a bit 'not fun', but it was. They are the kind of things that make internet forums interesting. Forums need characters who liven things up and get in the bad books sometimes, to add a bit of spice. And obviously you get more chance of getting people like that when the member base is bigger!
     
  3. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    Aikanaro, saying that only the Alleys are active is not quite accurate. The game forums might not be a hotbed of activity any more, but they're still somewhat active. So are a few of the other forums. But naturally, nothing can compare with the activity that we've had early on after several of the IE games have been released. Or in the pre-Facebook era...

    I'm not sure how you've come to the conclusion that "games have felt like the least important part of this place for a long time" though. Do you mean based on the declining activity in the game forums?

    As for merging everything back into The Playground - that's how it was until a few days ago. Wasn't very productive either.

    Gaear, the good old days were when SP was starting out I guess - only a handful of IE forums and Whatnots. The irony is, we only had a fraction of today's members and posts at that point as well. But the posters that we did have were generally much more active, involved and recognizable. These days it's pretty much as if people didn't even feel like responding to threads any more, let alone creating new ones.

    I think this bit of soul-searching was mostly due to my noticing that the involvement in the community has dropped to lower levels than ever before. But honestly, it's been heading here for years, just very slowly. We've probably listed all the reasons for it already though.

    As it is, I can keep SP around pretty much indefinitely unless something drastic happens. But an active community is just much more fun and inspiring than a passive one and if there's something obvious and realistic that we could do to steer things in that direction, I'd be happy to do it. As long as it's in keeping with the basic philosophies behind the foundation of this site, anyway.

    And yea, the "good old days" and "decline" posts are rarely much more than bouts of nostalgia injected into threads by members who've left long ago or who aren't really active any more "because it doesn't feel the same". Codex is full of such posts, and I don't think anybody could objectively say that it's on the decline. And we've had them going back probably 6 or 7 years or more as well. Still, sometimes they do provide some good food for thought.

    Barmy, spot on. Nothing to add really.
     
  4. Aikanaro Gems: 31/31
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    Well, yeah, but the Alleys certainly seem a lot more alive than anywhere else - not just in terms of volume of new posts but also in 'freshness'. The Sensorium is relatively active as well but most of the first page isn't real discussion.

    Well, that, yeah - but I also suspect that LKD's attitude is shared by the most active members. They're here to talk with the current people here about the issues of the day. The number of people who come here to talk about games is pretty low.

    Ah, didn't realise it was that recent a split. And I know it's not terribly productive either, but it makes things look less cluttered and dead than a whole heap of empty forums. I just don't think there are enough Diablo or Final Fantasy fans here who have anything to discuss about the series - especially the old games where everything that needs to be said has been said elsewhere.


    Gaear:
    When 'the good old days' were probably depends on when you signed up, but I'm remembering a time when there was a lot of activity and a lot of varied discussion (and yes, I'm full of nostalgia).

    My memories are a bit messy - but back in 2002 I remember #sorcerers containing me, Arabwel, and Sorvo (at my timezone, which isn't exactly the busiest). Naturally there wasn't much conversation. After a year or two there was a much larger pool of people - and I think that kept growing until around ... 2006? When it peaked it was busy enough that having a single coherent discussion was hard.
    Now when I go into #sorcerers it's just me and Mystra. Not that I try it very often, but it's a fairly clear decline.


    Tal:
    Do you have any kind of 'vision' for this site? I know you did way back when it was founded for it being a general collection of all information on D&D CRPGs, but it's fulfilled its purpose there. Maybe you need a new goal for it?

    The idea of SP radically changing goals is kind of weird because it's such a conservative feeling place, but there's no way you can get activity with the old goals or slight modifications of them. The world's changed, and all that - and just diversifying the content that you cover doesn't really help much. The niche is filled. (edit: except, maybe, if you had a whole heap of good original content? I may be overstating everything :p )

    I don't really have much in the way of ideas though, unless you were looking to spearhead an IE-style revival. That's something I could get behind. But ... eh, I guess it would be pretty risky/likely to fail unless you could get a lot of good content to back it up seeing that you don't really have a community full of developers sitting here already.


    Does the main site get much content these days? Does that content get much traffic? I came here first to get walkthroughs and stuff for BG1 and from there wandered over to the forums - but if there's no new content or no one really cares about it, that might be half the problem.

    Planewalker.com was recently having this discussion - they have similar problems where they're a community about something that no new things are being released for. One of their changes was how content is submitted, with new articles being written by people on the forums and then 'promoted' to the content section of the website.

    There's a pretty big divorce on SP between the content and the forum - maybe you should try and close the gap? Original content is kind of important whatever you decide to do, or there's no reason to come here over the alternatives. But then, seeing that you're not running your own software it might be hard to make any really useful changes (you don't have access to the source code, I presume?).

    ... I need to stop writing this post. Too much babble. Hope you can pick an interesting thought out from it.
     
  5. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    Regarding my vision for SP, well, in theory it's still the same (providing as much quality content for the games we cover as possible, all in one place) BUT... there's a really gigantic but here now. Things have changed so substantially that I'm seriously wondering whether there's any point holding on to that original vision any more. For one thing, the number of various standalone guides for recent games has shrunk to next to nothing. When the games are relatively easy for anyone to finish, you don't need 50 various guides for strategies, rules, spells, areas, etc. Then there are wikis - today most user-generated content for any game winds up in one or two wikis that cover it (usually the developer's own). Next, the mods - they all wind up on a single server farm that has the capacity to hold massive amounts of user-generated data, which is the norm in the case of 3D games. And finally, the dedicated fan communities - they're pretty much impossible at this point because by far the overwhelming majority of fans are chained to the developer's own communities.

    That really leaves us with very little to work with. We could, in theory, generate content ourselves until we were blue in the face, but that's neither realistic, nor really feasible. And in the end, I believe futile as well, because the only kind of theoretically unique content that isn't available elsewhere is of minor importance for less complex games (i.e. walkthroughs and the like), but in reality a decent walkthrough's source doesn't really matter to anyone. You'd really need a spectacular life's work of a walkthrough ala Simpson's to stand out at least moderately as far as walkthoughs go. If not, one site's walkthrough is as good as another's as far as most of the gamers are concerned.

    Altogether, that pretty much spells the end for the concept of fan sites as we used to know them. If I think back 5-10 years, practically every new game had a bunch of fansites pop up before or as soon as it was released. Most of them didn't last more than a few years or months, but at least they were there, and some even made it to the top. These days, you only get a handful of fansites for the games selling 10x+ as many copies as games did in the past and most of them are pointless and dead before the games are even released. The end result are such travesties as developers creating their own pretend "fansites" (e.g. Greywardens). Because, obviously, when you go to great lengths to make real fansites obsolete, the next step is to fake them yourself. :facepalm: Not that it doesn't work for companies like BioWare... it works very well. It just makes me want to say "so long and thanks for nothing".

    So yea, "need new goals" sounds about right.

    And no, the site and content don't really get much traffic any more, but that's understandable as most of the content is there for very old games. And our content is more specific than general articles - here you really need to know a subject very well to be able to make any sort of relevant content for it. And there has to be an actual audience for what you're writing...

    As for connecting the site and the boards more, I've thought about it before but in the end, the boards are always a separate system from the site. I can't really think of any website that could integrate the two beyond simple linking or putting the boards in the site's layout. Can you think of anything that goes beyond that?
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2011
  6. Blothulfur Gems: 1/31
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    As a wet behind the ears newbie with not much time on my hands i'm damn impressed with the breadth and scope of the site and how you manage to maintain it all, as for changes erm maybe you could post some reviews of mods, games or books by the more literary regulars up on the front page, make editorials on subjects you hold dear or seek web interviews with a few willing rpg veterans.
    Then again that all sounds like a damn lot of work and like everybody you've probably got limited time and resources, still respect for the site as it is.
     
  7. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    Blothulfur, thanks - I'm glad you like the site!

    Those are all good and valid ideas and we do in fact have quite a few mod reviews (as well as book and game ones) that were featured on the site at the time of their publishing, but at some point they simply dried up - nobody wanted to write any mod, book or game reviews any more. This is quite consistent with the feeling of general apathy in the community. Unfortunately I've got my hands full with everything else around here so I don't really have the necessary time for producing such content any more. Interviews, editorials and such are also always very welcome, but when done right, they also require quite a lot of time and effort, so I'm out of luck here too. But all these areas have always been open to anyone willing to contribute to them - unfortunately in 9 cases out of 10, the enthusiasm shown by any volunteers for these tasks turned out to be just talk... or it turned into nearly as much work for myself to get it right as it would have if I'd done it myself.

    But any member is always more than welcome to give it a shot - just PM me with your idea and we'll discuss it.
     
  8. Splunge

    Splunge Bhaal’s financial advisor Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    I have to admit - when I think of "main site", I think of the BoM main page. I almost never go to sorcerers.net itself.
     
  9. Beren

    Beren Lovesick and Lonely Wanderer Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    @ Tal

    In all fairness, I think a large part of it where mods were concerned is that the IE community has become so glutted with half-baked or even outright terrible mods. I can see this as killing a lot of the initial enthusiasm that was present earlier. How many rules tweakers, created over the weekend NPCs, or super-ridiculous cheesy battles can you go through the trouble of playing and reviewing before you start to dread taking on another review assignment?

    By now I've pretty much confined myself to a select few mods that for me create just the right BG2 experience. It will take a lot to convince me to give anything else a serious look.

    By the way, I noticed nobody has done Sword Coast Strategems II. If you're willing, I'm game for that. ;)
     
  10. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    Beren, heh, that's true as well, but in all the quantity of the mods, there should be some quality as well I guess. Quite a lot of people were still playing with dozens of mods installed (and many still are), but most of those mods never got reviewed here. If they were that awful, I assume people wouldn't be using them. Not that every mod needs to be superb to be worth installing.

    An SCS2 review would be great!
     
  11. Beren

    Beren Lovesick and Lonely Wanderer Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    Will do, it will take a bit of time though.
     
  12. Shardnax Gems: 6/31
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    Really? SP is pretty much my sole news source on CRPGs, I've been visiting the main site since around 2001-2002.

    As you can see, I never worked up the courage to join the forums until much later :lol:.
     
  13. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    Well, maybe more in the sense that very few people bother to comment on any news... I guess you can't help but conclude that people don't really care much about it when they comment on it so rarely.
     
  14. Aikanaro Gems: 31/31
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    Yeah - I don't use SP for news. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but the number of games covered by it was never all that broad and the front page design is kind of ... bad.

    Hmm - taking a look at the main site (something I haven't really done in a while) - the 'Fantasy Books' and 'SF/Fantasy DVDs' section stick out. Was this going to be an attempt to expand the range of content covered by the site, or was it always just intended as a jumping point to Amazon?

    Maybe you should consider a serious attempt at broadening the site's scope to cover all fantasy things? I don't have any clear vision of what that might look like - but obviously you'd need a big redesign and crowdsourcing for content.

    The section 'fantasy worlds' feels like it has potential to be interesting. Some kind of database detailing fantasy settings could be a valuable resource - especially for PnP gamers. Quick googling doesn't reveal anything similar.

    Is a big site redesign/relaunch outside the scope of what you're looking for?
     
  15. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    We've got most of the RPGs except the indies covered now. As for the front page, what exactly bothers you about it? As far as the news presentation goes, I don't think it's much different from the other RPG news sites...?

    There are also book and movie reviews in there... there just haven't been any new ones in a long time.

    I'm not really sure where fantasy-wise we could expand beyond what's already being covered (more or less actively). I guess the first thing that comes to mind is pen & paper games and such, but there are literally dozens of long-standing communities covering this out there already and I don't think that we could seriously compete here.

    The big redesign is also a problem as we don't have any coders or designers on the team who could really commit to such a large project. Obviously I could hire them, but SP is a large website with a decade of legacy content that would need to be brought into a modern content management system, so this would really be an enormous effort. Given the current economic climate and the donations and advertising income at an all-time low, there's just no way that I could afford the expense.

    General descriptions of the settings?

    Not necessarily if we had the manpower for it...
     
  16. Silvery

    Silvery I won't pretend to be your friend coz I'm just not ★ SPS Account Holder Adored Veteran

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    That's a problem right there. People aren't getting pulled in because it's the same as so many other places. There's nothing to make it stand out!
     
  17. Aikanaro Gems: 31/31
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    Well, I have some specific dislikes about the front page design. When it comes to it being a news site - there's a lot of clutter to scroll through before getting to the actual news. In general, I think there's a lot of clutter and the content column feels too squashed. The 'Sections', 'Subsections', and 'Features' navigation columns are kind of ambiguous - I'm not sure where I should be looking to navigate to where I want to be. The background texture makes the text kind of hard to read as well. It's doable, but it's not as pleasant as reading on a simple background.

    Not saying that you should just rip it or anything, but compare to the Codex - the first thing you see is the latest news. All screen real estate is used. The most important navigation links are where you'd expect them and even when there's convenience links to deeper parts of the site, they don't seem as redundant/contradictory as the ones on SP's homepage. Just in general it feels uncluttered and more spacious.

    For a quick fix, just get rid of or move everything that comes in front of the first news item - especially rubbish like the Facebook plugin and the ad (I realise you need ads, but no one's going to look at your ad if they don't get some content quickly)

    Mmm - but there's not exactly a good process for getting more. There's no Web 2.0 going - it's more like if you were submitting an article to a paper or something rather than to a website.

    I'm not sure how much you can offer here that other people don't, but if you're going to play in the space at all some kind of automated review or comment submission process is a minimum - though I guess that would be too little too late currently.

    Anyway, I'm not convinced you should go there either - but if there's something that you can do that Amazon or, say, Goodreads doesn't already do it might be worth a shot. Otherwise though, those pages at the moment just kind of look daggy.

    Well, possibly - though specific is probably more useful. I'm not sure the best way specifically to do it, but given a good setup and people who care, there's no reason you couldn't get in-depth descriptions.
    Obviously this is more useful for settings that don't already have huge wikis and fansites already, but I think it's definitely an interesting idea.


    As for manpower ... well, I know I'm one of those people who gets excited about a new project and then quietly disappears, so I won't stick my hand up. I wouldn't mind pitching a bit in if you find someone more serious than me though (and if you're doing something interesting with it, of course). It's probably premature to think about that until you have a vision for what you want it to be about and what kind of stuff you'd want in there though.
     
  18. Old One

    Old One The Old Warrior ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    I don't know how to liven up this site much more. I am constantly finding new things. My only problem is how to find what I want to read. Could a blog list be easer to see all that is there and don't get me started on photo album listings! These are the personal sections and provide a connection to the members. New people on the site might be interested in this content and some of us cannot find things twice in a row. (like me) I realize almose everyone here finds -look up- and navigation simple after being here awhile, try hitting a new site and getting lost. Is there a way to make our content more visable? How about making RBP more of an open conversion area? I admit I have no idea how to do these things, my knowing how to set up anything is long past and dated.
    I have found two sites worth going on and this is one. The other is now dead. The site owner had not signed on in more than two weeks the last time I was there. This is in spite of great content and layout.
    I have tried two new games we do not cover, what are touted as exclent sites suck compaired to Sorcerers net with no real info and I have found 1, one early partial walk through for ONE of the games. I have been hearing a lot about expanded content covering other games and seen resistance from Tal in changing this. (sorry Tal, personal opinion only) There are games with really bad home sites (real bad) and no content being in the main just sales sites. We need newer games to cover. Look at the bump in traffic when something new is released. Motb or SoZ for an example. Just becaues it's not Atari or Bioware does not mean it's not fun to play. Before I get flamed for not being fair I know we have coverage of other games but how about solid suggestions for other games that might fit the DND discriptions? Ones we do not cover? Does anyone play the Sacred games? Or anything else?

    This is the best fan site out there I have ever found. Must be a way to get it more active. I don't show up much myself and plan to correct that, my way of helping I guess.

    OK, kicking my own backside! Went to Blogs and the listings are exactly what I wanted. Sorry Tal, been a long time since I was there. My error! :-/
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2011
  19. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    I guess we could add pictures of scantily clad babes next to every news post... :D

    Can't say I can see where you're coming from here regarding a lot of scrolling... the news headlines are visible with no scrolling and it takes me only a single wheel scroll to get to the first news piece. Incidentally, clicking on a news headline gets you there with no scrolling at all...

    The navigation could definitely be done better, but fixing that would have to be done along with a redesign - as it is, it's not really changeable as it's a core part of this layout.

    The background could be changed, but this is really the first time that I heard from anyone that it's annoying... This would largely depend on individual monitor and colour settings though. I've got mine set to relatively neutral and the background doesn't stand out in any way. Does anyone else feel that the background on the site stands out too much too?

    Well, you have to keep in mind that Codex is predominantly a news site, whereas SP is predominantly a content site.

    Also, I've changed the layout from fluid to fixed width some time ago. This is actually the norm with most websites and for a good reason - fluid layouts stretch way too much on wide screens and in large resolutions (much harder to read text when you need to turn your head for every long line) and make content formatting very hard because you need to test how tables and such behave in a number of different resolutions and on different monitors. So a fluid layout was something that sounded great on paper but in practice, it's anything but. It was relatively ok before the onset of wide screens, but today when they're the norm, it's just not any more. But again, this is all design... when we'll be doing a new one, it'll definitely be better than what's up now.

    The Facebook plugin is in a very visible place for now for a reason, but eventually it could be moved. The ads need to be as high up as possible as an advertiser requirement though, so I can't change that. Aside from that, there's really not much left. There's no better place for forum activity in the current layout and the news headlines have to be above the news too.

    I agree with that... we'll be tying the reviews into a CMS with the message board update as this makes sense to integrate with the forums.

    Indeed... all we need is some volunteers to actually work on it.

    That's sadly the norm that only really collaborative efforts like wikis can survive because anyone can pick up where somebody left off without too much effort. It's much harder to do with non-wiki websites.

    That's one of the eternal problems - how to make all the stuff we want to give preferential exposure easily visible and findable without pushing it into everyone's face. Blogs and albums definitely need more exposure and that's something that I'll probably need to tackle myself because the software providers aren't doing anything to improve the situation. For the RBP, do you mean in the sense that it wouldn't be confined to a specific forum thread or something else?

    Well, not resistance in the sense that I wouldn't want to do it because I don't like other types of games... which games are you referring to besides Sacred?

    Thanks! ;)

    No worries, the blogs obviously aren't visible enough yet - I hear this all the time.
     
  20. Fly2tHeSkY

    Fly2tHeSkY Southern Comfort Veteran

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    I'd just like to say, I like everything the way it is right now. Even though you guys are intent on making a vast amount of changes, I really love everything that sorcerers has provided us with thus far :)
     
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