Future board update

[Maxine MagicFox]

ItL will be making a switch over some time in the future to phpBB3

Ok, I'm making this topic for several reasons:

1) Hopefully to keep me 'interested' in keeping up with it until it's complete. To keep me "inspired". It's been on the back burner for so long and I'm getting miffed at myself.

2) o_O; I've never used these boards. I'm hoping someone has been through as a mod or admin of phpbb3 forums and can give me some tips. I'm learning as I go along but to be honest I have no clue what the full capacity of it is and all the things it CAN do. I know that you can do subforums, but that's it. I've never even seen phpbb3 forums in my life. If you know a place that's using them (effectively) could you link me so I can get a working/nice demo?

3) I figured it would be a great time for you people to post up comments about what you would like to see for the future of the forums. If you think that it needs a different organization or something? I dunno - just gab about what you would like to see more of or if you are just satisfied with the way things are now. Also: don't be afraid to speak up if you think we should just keep the forums as phpbb2 and not disturb the peace.


Here's the link: http://www.intothelabyrinth.net/phpbb3/ ... um.php?f=1

DON'T FREAK!! That layout that is currently there is just a "base". Like this layout, the original base was . I updated it. I intend to do this with this new layout. Unfortunately it is slightly different. Nosebleed is not updated or supports phpbb3. So while I will try to make it as close to our current layout as possible, there is still going to be some differences. Not to mention there are other differences that are just inherently included in the upgraded board.

With this said, I'm going to begin updating the layout. If things seem... strange or broken at any time, meh, relax. It's just going to be like that as I change everything.

DO NOT POST or ATTEMPT TO REGISTER. I've still gotta figure out how to turn that off (at least the registering thing). When the layout is complete THESE forums (all of our posts EVERYTHING) will be moved over. You can see that Archaic already did that when he first put the board up (like... two years ago). So it can be done and will be done. I do want you guys to feel free to play around. I'm going to be o_O; 'cause I've got no idea. Auuu~~

I just hope bridging everything goes right when everything is complete *worry worry* So... everyone... help keep me inspired to continue working on this project and see it through. o_O; I gotta try to prioritize my life a little better.

[scy]

Dear god almighty when I quote someone can there be no nested quotes. It's annoying to quote and have to go back and delete their quotes.

Image linking would be cool, I suppose, but the above dear lord.

[fauxsquared]

I guess I'll come out and say it. It's been bothering me for some time now while I love EO I have wondered should this board be EO in name? Considering a good deal of the posts are non-EO related. <---just me speculating.
I like the look so far and interested to see how some of the design choices will pan out.

[negzee]

Man I am the most useless staffer ever. OTL

I started looking into porting the Golden Deer Pub theme over to phpBB3 a while ago and just forgot about it.... <_<

[Maxine MagicFox]

The worst part of doing this is I pretty much have to go back into this template to figure out what I did and did not do and it's like relearning everything. I've spent all afternoon trying to do this. >_>; working without work being shown for it, I feel. *sigh*

@Scy: I dunno if there's anything to be done with that, but I'll definitely look into it as I tend to agree.

A persona worry, I dunno if I'll be able to bring over our
[spoiler]spoiler tag[/spoiler]

The "hide" tag, though, is easily addable. I've discovered a wonderful feature they installed making it easier to insert BBCode tags. (at least I hope it is easy)

@faux - I dunno about that. While I agree that most of our forumers are not EO-fans, I do feel that they came BECAUSE they heard about EO or were brought over because EO fans recommended them. I do think we COULD think of ways to making the forum more... appealing for non-eo fans, but (as I've said and was comically quoted by Kino) this forum is attached to a site. And the site is EO. ^_^; I don't really want to lose sight of that.

@negz: you can try to make up for that by at least starting the coding for our poor signature project >_>; at least get a start on it because I'm clueless where to go. To at least see SOMETHING working with it so I know what the heck I'm doing and able to possibly take off wtih it from there.

[scy]

A forum I (used to) visit a lot was for an old EverQuest (and then WoW) Guild. It was primarily for the Screenshots (which, really, was a catch-all general non-gaming off-topic) and Non-MMO Gaming forums. But it was still known as "that one EQ Guild" website despite many of the people who came to it probably didn't even play EQ or any MMO.

Also, no spoiler tag isn't that big of a deal for me, personally. I mean, I use the fuck out of them but I'm more used to the [hide]hide tag method of spoiler tags[/hide] than the box. I really just keep using the box because I'm used to typing spoiler over hide.

[zamisk]

We'll still need something to hide multiple images, otherwise a page can get really long. I like the site how it is now, as far as features and stuff goes, but the color scheme and artwork could be updated to the EOIII colors and artwork.

Oh, shit. That would make this the "Butterfly Bistro"... Nevermind.

If you keep the site EOI themed, it would be neat to have something like the General Discussion thread under the name "Golden Deer Pubs General Discussion" and the introduction threads under "Guild Hall and Registration Thread" ect. That would add a bit more [s]geekiness[/s] charm to the site in my opinion. I'll post more as I think about it.

[Maxine MagicFox]

Oh, I wasn't going to change the colors and layout. That would take far more time than I'm willing to invest. Maybe in the future I'll create a secondary skin for something like that, but the lack of good quality images would probably deter me. Unless you can find a quality image of the Butterfly Bistro that can go into the banner above. The image size needs to be AT LEAST 836x169 (which is the size of the image displayed in the upper banner). Knowing that size, you should then be able to note the impossibility of maybe attempting to pull something from a screenshot as the game size dimensions are 256x192.

THAT BEING SAID: I DO know there was an image of it in the EO3 Artbook that came with the game's pre-order. And my scanner takes really good scans. In the future... if I could bring myself to break the spine of my beautiful artbook, I might think of looking into scanning the image and seeing what comes out and how successfully.

However, my intent at this time is not a re-design, just a software update.

Also: I DO NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOTNOTNOTNOTNOTNOTNOTNOT want a "HI I'M NEW" section on the forums. I like the one-thread idea, though we do need to look into ways to make it more obvious. Those sort of forums just foster spam that could be better posted elsewhere in the bulk of our main forum. This is a point I will never concede on. I'd much rather have people doing as they are now - posting in our forums rather than just saying 'hi this is me". Seriously, I don't think people missing our "hello" thread is that big of a deal.

@multiple images: yeah, this new one does not have the lightbox feature installed, which if you look in the wallpaper thread can be kinda... traumatic. I like that the images do not break the design but they still look awkward. I'm going to look into that, too.

@Scy: LOL, yeah, if I cannot get the other feature re-installed, I'll edit so that both spoiler and hide will work to do the same thing.

[CD-Man2021]

I'm pretty sure is a phpbb3 board, but I'm not an expert so I don't know for sure. It has subforms though, which I think is something this board is missing.
The mods/admins there are real friendly too, though a few of the members can be dicks to some of the people who are new to the interbutts. Anyway, I really like how they set up the Zelda game area and would like to see EO's set in a similar fashion (Clicking on the EO board would lead you to three subboards, one for each game, which have threads inside of them discussing the game.) Though to be honest I haven't played much EO so I don't know if my info on three games is right.
Something else I would like to see would be a video game board, an art board, and any other board that would seem necessary. Have a single thread talking about every video game like the one you have now seems a bit overwhelming to me, and it's easy to lose track of conversations. The Art board would be there for artists, writers, and maybe a subforum for fanfics.
Anyway, these are just the ideas of one forum-goer.

[scy]

[Kimiko]

[Maxine MagicFox]

[CD-Man2021]

[Maxine MagicFox]

[Sampson]