I’m thinking about completely over-hauling and re-designing Diatribe, adding a host of new functionality, a new look and more support for game creators to expand without cluttering the front page (which should fit on two standard screens - ie one PgDn to scan the entire contents)
What are your feelings?
Questions: staying in phpBB? Are we talking about a new template - if so found or designed? What new functionality, and how - mods?
I’d like to stay with phpBB, but install a number of mods like support for child forums. I’ve got a template in mind which is shiny enough to inspire chatter but not conspicuous enough to make it NSFW. Greens and greys like we’re used to.
I want the calendar/ access to the calendar to feature more prominently and I want to put in an RSS feed too. Groups would continue to feature strongly. We’d keep the same database, just re-organise. We could have an “Og” in-character forum without it being on the front page.
I’ve never seen child forums done in a way I liked, but I’m willing to be happily surprised. Usually I find that the layers are confusing and it takes more clicks to get where you want to be.
Maybe if you show people the template(s) you have in mind they can say what they think?
preparing to say what me thinks 
Showing new designs/temlates/layouts/anything VISUAL and with pictures will always attract attention, that’s a very good idea. And you can make poll asking people to choose what they like (though could be good if you can choose more than one option in the poll - then you can get the whole idea of which design is good for most people).
[quote=“Aiwe”]preparing to say what me thinks
Showing new designs/temlates/layouts/anything VISUAL and with pictures will always attract attention, that’s a very good idea. And you can make poll asking people to choose what they like (though could be good if you can choose more than one option in the poll - then you can get the whole idea of which design is good for most people).[/quote]
Diatribe is not a democracy, it’s set up with a single project leader and a task. Of course, if I fail at that task in a big way I’m sure to get my ass kicked. I’ve noticed that Diatribe as it is doesn’t make everyone feel welcome and I want it to.
There’s a few risks in making the site too visual. Firstly, it makes it harder to browse at work (and we get dozens of hours from people’s workplaces thanks) if it’s conspicuous. Secondly, it increases server load and makes pages load slower. Thirdly, and this is super-important, it makes it feel like a TV program and gives the (false) impression that you can just sit back and watch instead of joining in. We want people to join in, bad.
Ok, me shuts up and stays silent.
Didn’t know it’s not democrtic 8) , sorry about that, me didn’t mean to encroach upon anyone’s rights or territory. From now on me will not give any advices on how anything here should look. You’ll know better how to bring people here, me does not say anything.
Good luck.
not broken == don’t fix
invest the time in a game…
[quote=“Aiwe”]Ok, me shuts up and stays silent.
Didn’t know it’s not democrtic 8) , sorry about that, me didn’t mean to encroach upon anyone’s rights or territory. From now on me will not give any advices on how anything here should look. You’ll know better how to bring people here, me does not say anything.
Good luck.[/quote]
Not quite what I meant - I appreciate your input. Feel free to pipe up any time with constructive ideas - or to let me know that one of mine is a shit idea. I have shit ideas all the time.
I guess my point was just “no poll”.
[quote=“Derek”]not broken == don’t fix
invest the time in a game…[/quote]
Thanks, that’s pretty valid too.
[quote=“Exquire”][quote=“Aiwe”]Ok, me shuts up and stays silent.
Didn’t know it’s not democrtic 8) , sorry about that, me didn’t mean to encroach upon anyone’s rights or territory. From now on me will not give any advices on how anything here should look. You’ll know better how to bring people here, me does not say anything.
Good luck.[/quote]
Not quite what I meant - I appreciate your input. Feel free to pipe up any time with constructive ideas - or to let me know that one of mine is a shit idea. I have shit ideas all the time.
I guess my point was just “no poll”.[/quote]
Ah, thank you, I was already preparing to cry for not being wanted here…
Well, no poll is ok, and I can understand that you don’t wanna make it so democratic. About constructive ideas: if you think pictires are too much trouble - go with no pictures, actually, just one banner of some game that appears on top is enough. However, the colour of the layout is something that I would still insist on thinking of. For me personally it’s not that bad now as I turned it to silver layout, and thank you for having this option. This kind of design is a standard one - as I understood that was the reason why you made a different special layout, to make Diatribe special. However, in this case I behaved xenophobically and stuck with familiar stuff. Other people may wanna do that too, so you may just wanna consider that. Colour decision seem to be really important, and that’s the only constructive idea I currently have 
But I really would insist that green is not pretty, sorry 
I agree we need the calendar to be more prominent, although an RSS feed is more a gimmick than a necessity.
Also child fora would be very good, allowing us to have in-character fora as sub-fora of existing game fora. So, we could have an Og in-character forum as a child of the Og forum… similarly for one or more subs of the other game fora.
When I first read this, I actually thought you wanted to have forums for school kids 
I wonder if we’re seeing the same green as me. It looks pretty inoffensive to me, bland in a grey-green way. Maybe your monitor shows it differently? Or maybe its just different tastes.
I’m inclined to agree with Derek. For people who don’t like the colour scheme, clean up the subSilver template a bit (remove the phpBB icon) and let them use that. As for sub-forums… meh, they alway seem to clutter things up to me. I don’t want an IC forum for every larp on here because it would cause visual overflow, but I don’t want subforums either.
I think that any larp that’s big enough to need multiple public forums needs to get its own forum separate to Diatribe, like Mordavia has. If the larp isn’t that big, then all the public activity can happen in the one forum with IC subjects having a title like “[IC] Meanwhile, back at the ranch” to separate them visually from OOC subjects.
Diatribe has the unusual problem of facing competition from the Mordavia forum, where a lot of people were in the habit of hanging out long before this forum came along. That problem will disappear soon. If traffic doesn’t increase here commensurately, then look for solutions. But until then, it doesn’t seem broken to me.