New Upcoming Site Design!! Also Facebook and Twitter

[Maxine MagicFox]

Ok, got quite a few announcements here. I'll start off with the smaller ones:

Facebook and Twitter:

We now have both a Twitter page and a Facebook account for ItL.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/IntoLabyrinth
Facebook: ....
Actually, I'm waiting for Archaic on the Facebook thing. He told me he set it up, but the link he gave me was broken. So... I'll update this when he gets back to me.

Obviously, both pages have JUST been set up. Not much there. The main important part is that it is connected with the ItL Site updates. Every time a post is made on the main site, these pages both are instantly updated. They will also be used if a situation ever arises that the site goes down and we need to get notices to you guys.

FYI: I am NOT Facebook savvy. Twitter I have no problem with. I'm a big Twitter user. We are actually thinking of asking maybe the mods or anyone else interested to take over the Facebook to update and make look nice for us. This is some time in the future, though.

^ This is Archaic's updates. He created them, so give him the credit for it, haha.

Image Gallery

More minor announcement that barely deserves a breathe: We are fixing the image gallery here soon. We were hoping to fix the forum/gallery bridge which is really what's broken. Archaic, however, cannot find a fix for it. We can either wait for one to MAYBE be made or... I think we are going to decide once and for all that we are destroying the bridge. This means: there may be galleries lost from personal users. It's a risk. What this also means: You will now have to create a whole secondary account to sign into the image gallery. They will be two separate entities.


New Site Design Part 1:

Now for the bigger news (my news... so maybe I'm bias here?):

I'm working on a new website design for the site. There are two parts to this. First I'll describe the simpler part: the design.

Obviously the site is very dated. I've never updated it since back in '07 when I opened the site up, minus the few button changes.

The change is actually going to diminish the website by a LOT. For most purposes and appearances it's basically going to be a blog. I'm done trying to even pretend thinking I can do game cheats and stuff. I don't have the time or the energy. It's going to be a news site and I'm going to put quite a bit of focus on forums. We're also intending to allow comments to be left on the individual news stories.

Here are snapshots of the new design. THIS IS STILL IN PRODUCTION!!!! I'm still actively working on this design. The first shot is the front page of the website. This probably won't have many more changes, but who knows~ And obviously I like to hear feedback.

Front page:

The two black boxes are youtube video sizes. I wanted plenty of size for images and videos. To the right you will notice that there are game pages. What's going to be really fun: see little medi girl? She's probably getting changed (maybe I dunno). But the character will also change whenever you scroll over the game page buttons. In other words: if you scroll over EO2 button, it will probably change to gunner girl.

Just a fun little element. Though there is also a part of me that is tempted to do an image rotation as well with the characters. Just have like ten characters that randomly get shown. Dunno~

Now, the second page... isn't done AT ALL. Actually I just started it today. I had wanted to get this farther along but Kimiko made me excited for the announcements. You'll notice a few notes on the page of mine, too.

.... I'm going to be completely honest. I don't like it AT ALL so far. I'm debating of scrapping it or trying to salvage it. It's not what I want.



Archaic had wanted me to try different colors for the site and while I spent three days on that idea... :\ I couldn't fall in love with any other color scheme. I would have liked to for more of a pop effect, but I don't think any other colors fit the series. There was a very nice blue scheme, though... Still just... not for Etrian Odyssey...

Now: what does this mean for the forums and the image gallery? Not much at all. I WILL be updating the tops of both designs. I have a mini plan in my head that I want for it, but some things don't always work out until I'm sitting with my designer and creating it. For now, it will still run the same exact way.


New Site Design Part 2: (the boring, unseen part most won't care about)

Now, there's the second part. When I'm done with the design I will be placing it up and the site will run on the current news script that is already in place. However, the next phase is that I have every intention of creating my own CMS system that I want to run the website. This will allow current writers (Sirth) and future ones to have an easier time writing up articles and make it easier for me myself to run the website.

When the site is first put up, the comments is not going to be in place. This feature will not be added until the new system is up. The comments system will hopefully run off facebook. You will use facebook accounts to leave comments, but it will be right on the webpage, but you can also visit facebook to see the same posts and so forth.

These are the current plans, but obviously I've not even started on this, and things always change as construction goes on. If worst comes to worst and something really FAILS, the website will run off of WordPress. However, this is Plan Z. I DO NOT want to run the website like that. If there's a problem with facebook, we'll adjust, maybe taking the feature out if we have to (though I imagine since I see this feature on several other sites that it cannot be that difficult).

I am, though, looking forward to building the system, because I've got every intention of using the system on other future websites that I create for future clients (granted all sites are different in their own ways).

I guess this doesn't need to be said: this is going to be MONTHS of work. Once the design is complete, I will start coding it and start installing it. My goal is to have the new design up and running before Christmas.

While I will try to keep the forums up and running at all times, the website will obviously be down for a while when I start construction on things but I will try to make things as quick and easy as possible. Still, that's a few months ahead.

^_^ I will hopefully provide newer screenshots of the website as I go along and am more satisfied.

[Kimiko]

Yay, announcements! \o/
(ahem. I've been reading a lot of Yotsuba& recently, so please forgive any overenthusiasm :P)

I don't use Twitter, but I'm really not a fan of Facebook (or other sites like it). So please consider my vote as against Facebook anything.

Nice to see you working on the site design again :) Fingers crossed that it won't be abandoned halfway through ;)

As for the design,
- For me, the forum is the main part of the site. The rest is just something attached to it that I rarely notice. I know you're designing also for random visitors, but please don't forget the regulars.
- Looking at the thumbnails of those mockups, my first thought was that the site is called "Select a Game". You might want to shrink that text / make the actual title stand out more.
- The background color of the blog part makes it look like it's something separate from the rest of the site. Also, I've come to appreciate slightly darker background colors in general. The popular white or near-white is very tiring when you use it for longer periods.

Building your own CMS, isn't that a little too ambitious for a small site like ours?

(why my smilies no work?)

[Maxine MagicFox]

[PLA]

^ Bah, hubmug. I don't like change.

[Maxine MagicFox]

Trolls be trolling...

~_^ LOL, nah. "hubmug"? I want to believe that's a typo, but that's too funny to be XD

[Reynard-Miri]

[zamisk]

Don't have a twitter and facebook isn't laid out that well for this kind of thing. The new site looks slick, though. Nice work!

[PLA]

[Trifkin]

Hurray! I hope you have fun with it, Maxine! And I'm sure it'll all look great once you're done.

[negzee]

Cool! I like the new design better than the current one.

I am against Facebook integration for the comments. Twitter as a side thing is fine.

Although there are several perfectly good CMSes out there, building your own is fine if that's what you want to do, and is a good exercise. Have fun with it. :)

[Maxine MagicFox]

Most of the CMSes I've ever tried, (which I'll admit aren't a lot), I've hated absolutely every single one of them. Coranto, the one I currently use, is a good news posting system, but even it hardly qualifies as a CMS.

Plus, you'll have to forgive me. CMSes are still relatively new to me as well. I'm still old school enough to be like WTF DO I NEED A CMS FOR? I CAN UPDATE SOMETHING ON MY HARDDRIVE AND JUST UPLOAD THE DAMN THING! *waves a cane in the air like an old lady* BACK IN MY DAY WE DIDN'T HAVE CMSES.

Also: why are you against the facebook commenting integration? I know so little of facebook, but I see it used everywhere. I would be interested in hearing the reason? Is there something that you know that I do not?


And another note: the game page isn't going well... I think the problem is my photoshop not making the text look nice enough to tell if I like something or not. I'm going to go ahead and start coding the design and work on that later.

I'm also going to go ahead and start on an initial mock up of how I want the new forum header to look. Remember: forums are staying the same, the only thing that will change is everything from the news headlines up. Where the Home*Faq toolbar starts, things will stay the same.

[noodles]

I'm also against Facebook integration. Facebook for me (and most other people on my side of the internet) is a thing to be kept separate from my online life. If I have to sign into facebook anywhere to do anything on this site, it's going to display a picture of me and my real name and anyone on this side could click to see all of my family etc and anyone watching my activity on the facebook side could click to dig up all of my online life, unless I can go in and adjust privacy settings, which itself is a tedium I should not need to go through just to feel comfortable talking about some article.

On top of all of that I don't like facebook in general, I don't like the way it gathers and tracks information, I don't like the way it promotes itself, I don't really like anything about it. I deactivated mine for the longest time, until work made me bring it back up out of necessity.

[Kimiko]

Ditto @ reasons not to use Facebook. I don't actually have an account, but keeping work/family/other RL stuff separated from online/fun/NSFW stuff is a good reason not to link this site to FB.

[negzee]

Like noodles, I would prefer to keep my Facebook identity separate from my general online presence.

[PLA]

Facebook is weird.