Forum Changes

Richard · #1 March 5th, 2005, 10:50 PM

I also wanted to post this about the whole thing.

I am not trying to say that the banners on the left are in no way some form of advertising, in fact everything we do is advertising. In fact this entire board is adverising in one shape or fashion as it generates sales by discussion of the merits of our games.

The only reason I made the distinction is because I think there is an automatic reaction to see a side bar and say "Man more ads" especially since the original bar looked somewhat like a typical google ad area.

The links on the left talk about games we are releasing, patches being released, new scenarios for games we currently sell, and games coming off of back order. They are informational and yes they may lead to sales, however they are not the same as the banner ads on the top of our pages.

So don't take it as us trying to avoid a question, because we all very well know that the left bar is a form of advertising like any press release is, but to chalk it up to us wanting to bypass filters or put more ads up for the sake of putting ads up is silly.

We have been trying to find a good balance of not adding confusion to the board experience, while making sure we let new folks to the board know how they can reach other parts of our site and what is happenning with the titles they currently have. This seemed like the best compromise.

Suicide Junkie · #2 March 5th, 2005, 11:07 PM

Removing the black line helped.
The backgrounds are mismatched on a number of pages though...

At least the backgrounds that are visible.
- Before the forum threads display, yes the background is the brown of the sidebar.
- This reply window is tan gray on the other hand, and the background seen after the thread titles load are similar shades of gray.

I'm not sure how to fix that except for a couple-pixel buffer on all of these forum pages.

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It may just be me, but I think the sidebar is a little slimmer than before.

Sleek and efficient is good.

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The forum announcement text... it has made the forum control panel (with index/search/faq/etc) twice as tall as before.
I'm not sure why the text is splayed across four lines with a big announcements title, when two or three lines would do (at least on my screen), and as a bonus make it fit in the original sized frame.

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The "Order SE4 Gold" and similar links in other forums.
These should probably be moved to the sidebar, in the links section, instead of continuing to use the top space which is now being used more by other items.
Make the button gold coloured, or otherwise shiny to keep it obvious.

In order to keep the same bar for all of the pages, you could perhaps make a simple but effective "Buy This Game" button in the sidebar. As a gold button sitting among pink/gray buttons it will stand out when people are looking to find the store and jump directly to the game.

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The blue colour scheme in the sidebar boxes is prettier, but dosen't really match the forum's theme.

geoschmo · #3 March 5th, 2005, 11:16 PM

Quote:

Gandalf Parker said:
Right side or bottom makes no sense. No one would ever see it. Same with options to see or not see it. Those all would work as well as "let us post what we want without topic forums because we jump straight to SEIV and never see the other stuff"

Exactly! That's why people are suggesting it!

Quote:

Suicide Junkie said:
It may just be me, but I think the sidebar is a little slimmer than before.

I agree with the impression, but it may just be an optical illusion because of the difference in color? I'm not really sure.

Suicide Junkie · #4 March 5th, 2005, 11:36 PM

Quote:

Exactly! That's why people are suggesting it!

The option to have it on the right is good.

See, the point is not to FORCE it on people. It is to have it available in case they want to use it.

A floater on the bottom might be good too.

Since we read from the top left, that is where the actual forum should be.
When we are looking for news or links, that's when we glance around the page to find it.
The main point of the forum is to discuss things and post about mods and tips and other interesting things. This attracts more customers to the place.

Having a set of links handy to point the new customers in the direction of the cash register is a good idea, but it should not be the main focus of the forum, which is to just be a forum and attract people.

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BTW, I think the background of the press boxes should defnitely be related to the actual thing being presented.

Then as soon as I see a mostly black one, with red in the middle, out of the corner of my eye, I'll know to jump on it and pre-order myself some SE5 goodness

If I see one with an RTS theme, and hate RTSs, I can ignore it.

A nice default background, like david's glass-boxed desert scene would be good for those that do not have an obvious topical choice.

David E. Gervais · #5 March 5th, 2005, 11:44 PM

Ok, I see the image now, I had to do a ctrl+F5 to force a cold refresh. I see what Fyron means about the blue now. Yellow text is a good contrasting color for placing over a blue background.

Anyway, right now the left press release frame is just a tad bit too narrow, the right side of the pic is being clipped.

just a quick observation, keep up the great work Richard, and remember to breathe in,.. out,.. in,.. out.. slowly and take all out 'fussing' with a big grain of salt.

Cheers!

Suicide Junkie · #6 March 5th, 2005, 11:54 PM

At the moment, the top-bar banner appears to link to random games. Since it appears to be 100% shrapnel stuff, why not cycle the news there...

Especially if you code things with a coloured border; new games could be green, game status changes (backorder, etc) could be blue. Major new mods (I see there are some for dom2) could be in yellow. Red could be for critical global news, such as the forum move, or an important staffing change.

Gandalf Parker · #7 March 6th, 2005, 12:08 AM

Quote:

Suicide Junkie said:
At the moment, the top-bar banner appears to link to random games. Since it appears to be 100% shrapnel stuff, why not cycle the news there...
Especially if you code things with a coloured border; new games could be green, game status changes (backorder, etc) could be blue. Major new mods (I see there are some for dom2) could be in yellow. Red could be for critical global news, such as the forum move, or an important staffing change.

Hmmm not a bad suggestion. I thought at first they were trying to keep the same little squares they used on the first page to avoid having to make 2 such squares for each news piece. But since they are playing with backgrounds I guess not.

CovertJaguar · #8 March 5th, 2005, 11:58 PM

Since you asked Combat Wombat, here you go.

You only need one filter this time, you can delete one of them if you have two.
URL Match = www.shrapnelcommunity.com
Byte Limit = 10000
Matching Expression:
Code:

<table * id="pr">**<tr></tr></table>*\n</td>

Gandalf Parker · #9 March 6th, 2005, 12:03 AM

Quote:

CovertJaguar said:
Since you asked Combat Wombat, here you go.

So you are going to post it in their forum how to block out their changes? Ever hear the term "escalation"? You will probably wish you had accepted the first effort. For that matter if everyone hadnt griped about the OT thing you might have avoided this. But go ahead and continue making it worse.

Cant wait to see what they do about the rule #5 violations filling the database just for a post count.