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| HSF July Revamp; 7/15/12 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 15 2012, 03:45 PM (358 Views) | |
| AUREL1EN | Jul 15 2012, 03:45 PM Post #1 |
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"Your life defines you, but you define your legacy."
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Hello, folks, and welcome to the the July HS Revamp! Things might not look too different to you yet, but once I point out all the changes to you, you'll see why I had to shut the board down for a bit. So let's go, try not to get lost! Announcement Box: So in the last update, I asked you guys if you wanted to either add an announcement box at the top of the forums or move the shoutbox up there (or neither). Well, the votes were tied for announcement box and shoutbox, so I just decided to try out both and see which looked better! Unfortunately, the shoutbox was way too huge and clunky up there, and just made the forums sink a lot more than I had anticipated. On the other hand, this announcement box is very thin and doesn't move things down too much, so I decided to just go with that. You can expect to see small announcements up there a few times a week. They'll be about anything going on around the forums, whether it's new content from a member, a random event, or a public service announcement (for example, "there seems to be a lot of flaming in the halo 4 topic. Anyone caught flaming will be super duper banned!"). Hope you guys like it! Community Events: So it was suggested that we should try to host community playdates from time to time. I think this is a fantastic idea, so I decided to change the "Contests" forum in the HS Community category to be a general "Events" forum. This will now host not only contests, but also playdates, the first of which has already been posted! Joinable Group Forums: The joinable group forums are gone. I'm sorry to everyone who liked them, but they just didn't get enough attention and I felt that, as a whole, they were rather unnecessary. The joinable group system, however, is still intact for various reasons. For now, most of the groups (such as HS veterans, active members, friendship is Halo Sprites, etc.) are nothing more than a badge to indicate that you are a part of this group, and have no additional features. However, 2 groups remain; Pro Spriters and In Extremis. Why? Well, keep reading and you'll find out. Pro Spriters Forum Moved: None of the joinable group forums were very active (except maybe the Active Members group, unsurprisingly), however they were also not particularly useful. Their forums were either unnecessary extra places, or places that weren't needed as much as I thought they would be, and thus remained deserted (I'm looking at you, Araden's Minecraft Server). Pro Spriters, while still not all that active, actually served a pretty valuable purpose. It gave spriters a place to post a work in progress that they didn't want others to see, that way they could get some early critiquing from other spriters of their caliber. Or, if they wanted to post some super awesome sprites but didn't want the sprite thieves that had gotten past our state-of-the-art security system to get their grubby hands on them, they could post the sprites in this secret forum. Thus, since it proved to be a rather useful forum, I decided to keep it and just move it to a different place (since the "Joinable Groups" category is no longer). It is now housed in the regular sprite workshop, and is simply a hidden sub-forum that only members of the Pro Spriters group can see and access. Hopefully this streamlines things a little bit, while still keeping everyone happy. Featured Projects Category: Remember back in the old days of HS when rtm2 decided to make a category named "Hosted Works" or something of the sort? In it, he would give various projects their own forum in which they could post all of their content in a more spread out and organized manner. The only problem was that the only project that ended up getting it's own forum was OWaW, and I feel like not enough attention was given to other projects, even if they were a tad smaller, that deserved a spotlight like this. Those of you in the In Extremis group will realize that this is largely what the private In Extremis forum is. With the joinable group forums now gone, though, I didn't really want to take away Mik's hard work and organization that had gone into the forum. So, I decided to resurrect the old "hosted works" category into the new "Featured Projects" category! In it, you'll find the In Extremis forum as well as a new forum for Andrew Kleiner's Phoenix Seven comic and all of the other side works that come with it! In the future, you can also expect to see an additional forum for my project, Halo: Sprite Fight, but I decided to hold back on that for now since I don't have that much content to show. As you can see, these projects are not limited to halo or sprites, thus making the category much more versatile. If the staff sees a cool new project popping up and deem it worthy of having it's own forum, we will contact the creator and they'll get the chance of having it featured! Pretty cool, right? Unlike the last system where we created an entirely new group (and matching icon) for the creator(s) of the featured project, this time we're going to be using a local moderator system. This means that the creator(s) of the project will be made a moderator for their forum and their forum alone, but not be in their own group. There's already a built in feature for that, so no need to make things more complicated than they need to be. As a side note, at Mik's request the In Extremis forum is still only visible to those in the In Extremis group, so be sure to send a join request if you would like to be a part of it. Board Feed and Blog Roll: I'm sure some of you use the portal, and those of you who do most likely appreciate the "recent posts" feature. However, it has come to my attention that there is a page that Zetaboards provides that is even more ideal for this! With a little bit of coding that the ZB support forum kindly provided me with, I added the "Board Feed" to the top menu, along with the FAQ, Rules, Portal, etc. This board feed will not just show you the most recent posts, but also new topics and shoutbox posts! I think it also does new blog entries too, but if not then no need to worry, because we also have a nifty "Blog Roll" in the top menu as well! This page will show you the latest blog entries made by anyone on the board. This, along with the new blog subscription feature, really bring out the awesome blog feature that ZB provides. So with these two new pages, you'll always know what's up on the forums! Sprite Help/Discussion Forums Merge: So the Sprite "Help and Tutorials" and "Discussion" forum seemed to be a bit unused, but had a similar purpose. Thus, I decided to merge the two in an attempt to streamline stuff even more. If you need some help or are posting a helpful tutorial, the new and improved "Help and Tutorials" forum is still your place. However, if you'd like to discuss some issue about sprites, "Help and Tutorials" is also the place to go since "Sprite Discussion" no longer exists. I have edited the description of the forum to make this clear. New Theme: A51 and Mik went scouring for new themes yesterday and brought me back two really awesome ones. One of them isn't in complete working order just yet, so I'm holding off on releasing it for now. However the other one, "Black Tie" is now available for you in the same place you pick the rest of your themes! It's a cool mix of dark and light, while keeping with our "innerrayg green" theme that we sort of have. Pretty sweet right? I'm going to stick to this for a bit... As for the other theme, you can expect it in the next week or two. So that's about it! Tons of new stuff, and some stuff has been taken away. However, there's room for more new things, so be sure to check the poll in the latest News post and give your opinion! Aside from that, I hope this revamp makes the forum better and more enjoyable for everyone, and if things don't work out you can bet that I'll fix what ever it is that needs fixing. Thanks for your time, fellow spriters! -AUREL1EN |
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| Mr. Skeli'n | Jul 15 2012, 05:02 PM Post #2 |
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Call me Mik
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This was SO much to update. I'm so proud of everything that's been done today and this week. Can't wait to get the other theme up and ready, it's so amazing. |
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| Insert | Jul 15 2012, 08:33 PM Post #3 |
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Level Over 9
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I approve of all these changes. |
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| Spark | Jul 15 2012, 08:34 PM Post #4 |
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Wake Up.
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Random Insert Appearance #??? for July 2012. |
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| Mr. Skeli'n | Jul 15 2012, 09:07 PM Post #5 |
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Call me Mik
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I have a feeling this won't be the last time we see that blue name. |
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| smeagol92055 | Jul 16 2012, 11:29 PM Post #6 |
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Really sweet theme! It totally fits Innerrayg's color palette. |
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