[06/02/11] Completed Refurbishment

[XenLár]

Hey everyone!

I hope you like the new look to the forum.

Just so that you all know exactly what's been done to the lovely place I'll explain:


NEW STAFF APPOINTMENTS

You may have noticed a few more colours about the place. As the site has now grown by a few boards and is looking a lot bigger and snazzier I appointed some emergency staff places. Basically I simply gave up waiting for seconding over in the staff appointments thread. Therefore we have a few staff places that need to be congratulated:

Icebladeaskante >> Journals Mod
The Jim >> Video Gaming Mod
Shima >> Anime and Manga Mod
Flawless Flower >> Yaoi Mod.

Renbutterfly >> has become Section Moderator for the Japanese Culture Category.

Colocrowbal >> is now Twitter Mod as well as his previous responsibilities as Introductions Mod.
Neko Sojo >> Facebook Mod.


Congratulations everyone! I hope we can rely on your to keep the site running smoothly.

For future reference these appointments are as valid as any others but we shall be returning to the normal method of appointing staff after this. As I have said, with the new refurb the site has grown spectacularly and I shall soon be starting off on a severe advertising plot so I hope for there to be a lot more members on the site. As such we needed staff members quickly and I simply appointed those who had volunteered in the staff thread.


NEW BOARDS

As I have mentioned there are now new boards in place.
- - The Hentai board has been separated into it three.
- - The Music and Fashion sub-boards for the Japanese Culture board have been moved and made into boards in their own right.
- - There is now a new Networking Staff board available to those it applies to.
- - There is a basic advertising board for other sites to advertise themselves in. This is different from the Know Your Cons board which is only for conventions.


NEW FEATURES

There are also some handy little new features dotted about the place.
- - Twitter feed above the forum.
- - An instant chat CBOX at your disposal.
- - Quick links in a welcome message above the forum.
- - Quick button links to our Networking Pages below the logo. If it takes you to the main page of the Networking site instead of ours it is because ours has not been properly set up yet.
- - The forum is now wider for your ease.
- - There is a new style personal messages link below the logo.
- - The profile page has been totally recoded so as to offer a new look/style to the place.
- - The miniprofile to the side of your messages has been slightly revamped.
- - The Kudos points system has been simplified so that in adding Karma you add directly to the points. It is also a working system now so that points can be added or deducted for buying and selling GFX or whathavyou ^^. We'll get on to that a little later ^^.
- - The Staff members now have rankings for their post count just like everyone else so that you can see how long they have been on the forum. (This is not applicable to Admins).


NEW LOOK

And the most obvious - the entire images/skins/colours of the forum have had a complete overhaul and the results are what you see. I hope you like the new design. Apologies for the loss of the other skins (as they did not fit the new layout) but we shall be on the way to creating new ones soon ^^.


Hope you all like the new changes - feel free to comment below ^^.

[Flawless Flower]

First of all: Thank you very much for appointing me as Yaoi mod! *does happy dance*
I shall take good care of the yaoi and all its fans!

Secondly I really like the new design, the colour scheme and the layout are indeed better than before, and it's so new and shiny!

It takes a while to load, though that might be my connection, not sure.

I'll have a good long browse and see how things have changed.

Congrats on the new layout, me likey!

[XenLár]

Lol! You're welcome Flawless ^^. I'm sure you'll take very good care of the board ^^.

I'm glad you like the new forum/layout ^^.

With regards to the slow upload - sorry about that. It's probably because the site is so image heavy now. I've replaced a lot of the boring Proboards default with original images.

It's usually slow for the first few walkabouts and then your cookies and page history should kick in and give your faster uploading of the pages... So maybe have a look at those settings?

As I've been about nearly every inch of this forum now it's loading on my page just as fast as the old one...

Send me a PM if it continues to be slow after you've put the site through its paces ^^".

[The Jim]

Well, despite the fact I've barely been here since Xmas, it seems I've been made a mod. Cheers, and with that appointment, I'll try to improve how often I'm around

Just to say, I don't see any image on the main index for forums that have new posts, instead just [/li][li]. There is the basic image for forums with no new posts, but nothing for the alternative.

Also, considering the size of the header image, is there the possibility of finding a way to hide the intro box for those that want to see it every time. It's pushing down the actually forums, and some people really don't like scrolling and instead just leave.

Just a couple of things I've noticed anyways. Other than that, it does look great and it's far better looking than it was before.

Edit: A couple more things. The image for "Delete This Post" button is the same as for the "Modify" button (i.e. It says "Modify"as well).

Also running Firefox 3.6, the link buttons for the Social Networking sites don't look right. I can get you a print screen if required.

Edit 2: The link buttons look the same in IE, but the way they are laid out can't be what was intended.

[XenLár]

Thanks for the comments Jim. And yeah you applied for a Mod position a while back and as the site was getting much bigger (and will hopefully have some more members soon) I needed the staff so wasn't prepared to wait any longer for people to be seconded. If you don't want the position any more then just let me know.

Thanks for the comments though.

I shall have a fiddle with the introbox and see what I can do...

Also with the delete and modify buttons - crap it, that was me. Apologies. I was copy and pasting about a hundred image URLs from one site to another. I've already corrected a couple of those double images and I'll do the same for this one now. My bad, I'm sorry.

Can you get me some screencaps of those two browsers Jim? It might make it easier to see if there is anything I can do about them. The site was designed in Google Chrome so it makes sense that they'll be a few bugs between browsers.

edit: corrected the modify/delete image thing.

[The Jim]

I can understand the buttons not being right, as I've had to do the same sort of mass import in the past, and little things like that can easily happen. Just thought I'd point it out so ya can do the easy fix

And here's the screenshot:

img651.imageshack.us/img651/7577/jpscreen.png

[XenLár]

Right, have made a slight edit which should have gotten rid of that thin line underneath the logo table.

The blocks around the images I don't know what to do with. The coding states that there should be no borders around them which is what it looks like it's done (put borders around them I mean) as the borders are in the same colour as the link code. Other than placing a message on the board telling people that we're best viewed in Google Chrome I really don't know what to do about those boxes... :S I thought the code I have would get rid of that border... :S


On the subject of the intro box - I realise that it's annoying to scroll down. I've had a fiddle with it as you might have seen.

The options open atm are really -
- have the box permanently hidden with the option to open it. Which I really don't want to do - I'd prefer it open for new members to see.
- have the box permanently seen with the option hide it. Which I'm perfectly happy to do but it will likely reopen to default with every different page you click on as the code will reset itself. I'll have a look and see if I can find a slight alteration to that code, as that would probably be just as annoying as the scrolling.
- have the box in the main headers rather than the global ones, which means it would appear in the main page but not when going through the boards. This is what I tried to do just now and it failed because of the global box around the boards which I need to keep in the global headers.


So yeah, I've tried and failed on that one but I will try and look out for an alteration to a "hide and show" code...


edit: Have re-uploaded a "new post" side image. Hope it's more obvious for you now Jim ^^.

[renbutterfly]

Well I'mma say I love the new layout etc.! I like how you have moved my sections around to make them more visible to people >3 AND NOW WE SHALL TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

But the twitter feed etc. at the top is awesome!!!! <3 Nice touch to make the place generally snazzier

The new header is awesome coz there is a bass man (Y) haha XD The general background is OMNOMNOM too >3 It excited me >3

But yeah - The forum is definitely looking a lot more professional and hip and cool - like whachu done with the place almight admins! <3 haha :3

[XenLár]

Haha thankies Ren Ren ^^.

I'll let you in on a little secret too that you reminded me of when you mentioned mr bass man ^^. I was going through a load of sites making an advertisement list and found one that had the Gazette as it's skin layout - all the images were based around them. It totally got me creative for making a new skin for this layout based on J-Rock ^^. The only thing I've gotta do is try and work out how to use this piece of code which is a pain in the rear end to get working. Once I've done that we can start making new skins of the new layout ^^.

edit: Think I just found a way to fix that border issue on the facebook images etc, Jim. How's it looking now?

[The Jim]

Much better now that the borders are gone. Looking right in both FF and IE.

[XenLár]

YAY!!!

*feels so much better after that* lol. I'm glad my nagging brain picked up a clever idea and wouldn't let me shake it til I tried it ^^ lol.

[The Jim]

Out of interest, what was the solution to the problem?

[XenLár]

It was one of those small things that html is fussy with. The "border="0"" was in the wrong place. Well... it was the right place for Google Chrome but not for IE so I copy and pasted it and doubled it - one in each position so now it works apparently ^^ lol. But yeah, it wasn't anything amazingly spectacular - just a nagging idea.

[`AdeRin]

Glad I could be of service with my "nagging idea"...? xD Unless of course you came up with it on your own and forgot that I mentioned that idea yesterday haha

[The Jim]

Well, considering it affected IE and Firefox, I see Chrome as being the weird one in this case

Plus ya really should test your site in multiple browsers XD Don't forget Opera and Safari