Forum Upgrades

Hey guys,

Just giving you an update on some of the changes we're trying to get done here...

1. I've added an Image Resizer which should fix our issues with gigantic pictures breaking my layout. Images larger than 700 pixels wide will be resized.

2. I added a new video player that should make the interface a little better. I haven't really explored it but hopefully I'll get to do that soon. This one might require me to write a tutorial for it.

3. Moving to WordPress. I'm pretty sure that at some point in the near future I'm going to move the current SubDreamer frontend over to WordPress. It's just better all around (and free) and I can't see a reason not to.

4. New chat system. The flash chat system just hogs too many resources to keep it going. We're going to switch over to a vB integrated chat known as ChatBox. Hopefully I can get it to allow multiple channels (or run an instance for each forum section). I've also looked into having a supplemental Meebo chat room but unfortunately I think that would be too hard to moderate and doesn't integrate into the forum.

5. Pet system. I'm looking to hire a designer to get us a battle pets system. There are some options but just about all of them are going to be ridiculously time intensive on my part. We'll see about this one. We're trying, I promise.

6. Revenue. I'm experimenting with a few ways of getting some revenue for the site both to pay for its hosting as well as paying for improvements. I'm in college, not all of this can come out of my pocket. So I'm toying with a few different ideas including a subscription based "premium member" service. Everyone would still get access to the forums but a section of the site and some resources would be set aside to serve members who pay a small fee. It's likely that the Battle Pets system would fall under this area. I've seen it done on some other sites and it seems to be popular. Let me know what you all think of this idea.

Another idea for revenue I'm playing with is building out some of these PCs that I've been suggesting people build. I figure I could do it pretty well while still saving you guys some money on PC costs. I'm looking into some sponsors to bring the costs down even more so that more revenue can go to the site.

7. Facebook Logins. Wow I almost forgot about this. What an idiot. Anyway, I installed a "Connect with Facebook" plugin which will allow you (and your friends) to login to the site using your Facebook account! This is pretty cool because it allows you to receive notifications when someone replies to a thread you've subscribed to, or when you received a PM. It's very functional. Plus your buddies can't complain about having to register anymore. Now they don't have to!

To connect your Facebook account to your existing account, just click the "Connect with Facebook" button and hit "Use an existing profile" and then enter your StarCraft2Forum.org login.

Another bonus is that you can login with one click if you're already logged into Facebook before visiting the site. Coolness.

 

Sweet. I like it. Good choice with moving to Wordpress, it's got a much larges userbase. (so better support) I do hope we won't lose the current portal layout?

As for the premium member thingy, would that require paypal or something? Would be good choice. Remember that people in Europe don't rely on creditcards as much as Americans. Most people don't even have one, and people below 18 can't get one.

Suggestion: if you might eventually get the battle system up, then we require more minerals. Battling with just a few pets sucks. Like playing pokemon with just a weedle and a magikarp.

 

No, inflation needs to be restricted as much as possible.
1-4 and 7 don't really affect me, so I'm neutral about those. 5 sounds nice but I think it's impossible to do properly. The stats are constantly changing and this wouldn't be the usual RTS setting so stats and balance would have to be done from the ground up - good luck with that. 6 I feel is just as impossible to do. I can't imagine any premium service that would make the subscription worth it while at the same time not be too cheap to raise a noteworthy sum.

 

awesome, will have to watch out for these.

 

make it harder to spam the forum..

 

finally a chatbox, i always wondered why we didnt switch to this instead of chat, not sure if i requested for it...
meh... thanks for the implement Jon

 

Now I can't see the chat thing anymore, the one we had yesterday. What I do see, is a bar at the bottem of the page that says "loading". Epic.

 

Is the journal idea still on the drawing board at all?

 

Haven't gotten to it. Still on the list.

 

Do you mean by journal the private notepad everyone used to have? If yes, +1 to that.

Jon, do you take suggestions here or is this just for informing us? A few minor things like the post reporting cap and such could be reduced, and a post requirement for reputation changes would be nice. Possibly a threads per week ratio until a set postcount would also help reduce spam/duplicate threads/ads.

Keep up the pace, it's nice to see the forum improve.

 

Kuvasz there is both a post requirement and a rep requirement for giving out rep.

 

I must've missed that update then.

 

This probably shouldn't go here, but didn't want to make a new topic about it.

Can you change the censor? The asterisks were a lot less annoying than 'I like to think of women as objects'.
Also, a$$ shouldn't be censored... It's used in too many words, class, mass...

 

It's already being disscussed overmind.

 

lol, i never noticed that


ass
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also, cant guys have buttocks we can ogle, so it should at least be changed to men/women

 

Lol, if you preview a post now, you can still see the original words below your post preview. Just tried it.

Dumbass.

 

hey asshole, get your ass over here and kiss my ass


ya ass

 

You know, this isn't space junk. A mod will soon come to whoop your ass.

By the way, since when did insulting women became a good way to sencor the best part of them? (But seriously, this is quite insulting, ask your girlfriend. Or mother if you aren't that lucky.)

 

ass