Upcoming Site Changes

Well, here's a few things I want to mention to everyone involved with ZURPG.

First of all, if you haven't noticed, the footer of our site says we run MyBB. Sometime tomorrow, I will be taking the site down for maintenance. What this entails of, is the following:

• I will be updating MyBB to the latest released version, thus patching up some known security holes, fixing up some performance issues, etc.
  
• I will also be performing a FULL backup of the site, should anything go haywire. Thus, once the site goes offline, consider all of your posted content as SAVED, and should any problems arise, we can just roll back to the snapshot that I will be making.
  
• Finally, i will be preparing to work on (privately) a custom design for the site. Currently, we are running someone else's theme that I've modified a bit for our own needs, (mainly the custom bbcode), but I'd rather have something designed by us, for us.

So therefore, I need some opinions.

First of all, let me show you a few other designs I've done.

http://zcu.sephiroth.ws <- Think of the current design, but with a browner, more library-like design.
http://zcu.sephiroth.ws/profile/ <- This is one of the original renditions of this game, and thus the content is still there. You can take a look at how broken quite a few of the abilities are.
Or, do you like the cleaner, black and dark design that we have?

Please respond to this thread and let me know your thoughts.

I prefer our cleaner, black design or the library design. I'd choose the Library design because it looks more original and this game is supposed to be like a tabletop RPG.

The forum upgrade has been performed.

Most notable changes users will be able to see is a revamped user control panel home page, as well as some things moved around in the user control panel. One of those things, is the personal notepad is no longer its own option in the user control panel, but has been moved to the user control panel home page.

There's referral options for the site now, and each user has a referral link they can grab from this control panel home page, as well as some more detailed information such as latest threads, latest subscriptions, etc. There might be some styling issues with some of these options, but will be resolved once the new design is in place.

Do note that we are now running the latest version of MyBB, and a few more new features are for staff users, most notably the ability to set moderator notes on users, the ability to set users to moderated mode for X amount of Y, or even suspend posting privelages (or signature privelages, but we've opted out of signatures altogether) altogether on a per-user basis instead of per-usergroup basis. Some of the inline moderation for threads have been improved, and some Javascript might need a hard-refresh if there's any issues. Another thing you might notice, as since signatures are turned-off globally, the redundant options for disabling signatures on all posting interfaces are now smart enough to decide "hey, I don't need to be here", thus cleaning up some of the interfaces as well.

The memberlist got a few upgrades as well, including the ability to sort users by number of referrals, showing referrals on the userlist itself, as well as a list of letters in the header to better-sort through the userlist. This is more beneficial for larger boards, though.

Overall, I like the ZCU look best. The feel is much more natural for an RPG. One of the issues with the current one is the stark contrast between the black background and the white text... about the only reason it doesn't bug me much is because my brightness is at the absolute lowest. I still think a dark background is the way to go, just not completely black. Dark brown would, at the very least, work really well.


I'll post up suggestions later for potential UI changes/updates, currently I don't really have much... or rather, what I do have is based on what you can do in the Starcraft 2 editor... which this is clearly not, lol.

The ZCU look is fine, but I _would_ like to see the brightness and/or contrast ramped down a bit on the background; it would be a bit distracting when looking at the rest of the page.

So far I have three votes for the ZCU-styled library design, Might I ask what makes you guys like this over the other two mentioned in the OP?

As I really have no strong feelings toward the aesthetics of a forum (unless I'm the one running it) I'll just go with the flow and vote for the library theme.

The old ZCURPG site has issues. Granted, the links make things a little nice when trying to find one thing, but the lack of spoiler-like boxes still makes it a scroll fest... then again, that issue has already been fixed. With regards to the colors, while the lighter outlines and labels are nice, some of colors just contrasted horribly (grey with orange? ouch). In general, the colors for the site are a bit on the bland side.


The reason I'm not calling the current design bland is because it's intentionally simplistic.


Now that I'm posting this and looking at the post options, there's a number of things that can either go bye-bye or change overall.


Post Subject:

• This should be fixed and not even editable, considering that whatever you change it to isn't even visible.

Post Icons:

• The ones listed clash with the site and are out of place. Even with a new theme, I fail to see how they can be remotely relevant in any situation pertaining to ZURPG. They should just be removed.
  
• Or create a new set of icons specifically for use in ZURPG. I don't really have anything in mind, so personally, I'm for just axing the section in general.

Post Box:

• Something to note is that the exterior box clashes with the dark background... badly. It's considerably brighter than even the "grey-white" text. It should be dulled down, or better yet, get some sort of border.

Post Options:

• No one even uses smilies. I'm fine with them existing on the site, but we don't need an option to disable smilies. It's pretty much extraneous and doesn't need to be there.

Thread Subscription:

• Does anyone even use this feature? ... ever? Quite frankly, unless someone requests for the feature to exist, I'm all for axing it.

Post Buttons:

• Same issue as post box, huge contrast with current background.

The spoiler-boxes can indeed be done with the old zcurpg site style, ... mainly because I didn't have the knowledge (and javascript) needed to get it done that I do now.

Post Subject:

• This should be fixed and not even editable, considering that whatever you change it to isn't even visible.

Noted, and indeed will be getting axed.

Post Icons:

• The ones listed clash with the site and are out of place. Even with a new theme, I fail to see how they can be remotely relevant in any situation pertaining to ZURPG. They should just be removed.
  
• Or create a new set of icons specifically for use in ZURPG. I don't really have anything in mind, so personally, I'm for just axing the section in general.

Because I never customized them. So that is an area of discussion. We could either design the new theme with using these in mind, or we can axe them.

Post Box:

• Something to note is that the exterior box clashes with the dark background... badly. It's considerably brighter than even the "grey-white" text. It should be dulled down, or better yet, get some sort of border.

Getting fixed

Post Options:

• No one even uses smilies. I'm fine with them existing on the site, but we don't need an option to disable smilies. It's pretty much extraneous and doesn't need to be there.

Oh there really is a purpose for it, because what if something you were trying to type up in text resulted in getting parsed as a smilie? You can simply disable them on a per-post basis. Going to retain this option.

Thread Subscription:

• Does anyone even use this feature? ... ever? Quite frankly, unless someone requests for the feature to exist, I'm all for axing it.

Can do.

Post Buttons:

• Same issue as post box, huge contrast with current background.

Getting fixed

Code:Select All

This is an example of a new feature.

If you look at the top-right hand corner of this code box, there is a link that says "Select All". If you click on it, you will automatically highlight whatever is in the code box.

This is a feature of the new design that I have decided to add, and figured it's very useful now, so I've backported it to the current site as well, so users can use it immediately.

If (and when) I figure out how to style individual pages of the site, I will begin (slowly) activating the new design on various pages, starting with the board index.

I have decided against making it to where you can just click the code box and it'll highlight, mainly because what if you don't want to select all? What if you want to select just a portion of the code box? ... This feature is meant to be useful, not get in the way.