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    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 14th 2012
     

    As some of you may or may not have seen, I was tinkering with the font sizes a little earlier. Of the sizes I played with (deliberately and accidentally), 14pt seemed to be the nicest balance between large enough to read, but small enough not to be eye-burningly huge.

    I think we can all agree that it would be best to avoid this:


    (I think it wound up being 3pt font, or something.)

    You might also notice a more shiny Readability button + options beneath the logo in the screenshots. I think they look a little more integrated and visible than the current text, though the text is nice and simple. It just resists any sort of formatting I attempt to throw on it. >.>

    In any case, some of the things I hope to do:

    - Reorganize the article lists by categories so that older articles are easier to find
    + Maybe include a list of articles by author and/or series

    - Perhaps organize the tags (somehow, most likely into alphabetical categories)

    - Add some design elements to differentiate quotes, comments, titles, etc.
    + They’ll probably just be slightly different shades of backgrounds/borders

    - Add some navigation
    + We might want to revamp the About/Mission Statement page
    + What about a Submissions page? How do/shall we bring new article writers into the fold?

    Input on the above as well as things you’d like to see in the shiny new site would be much appreciated. :kitty

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeFeb 14th 2012
     

    The title brought me here, I have to be honest.

    So the main site hasn’t been changed yet, then? Because I didn’t notice any changes yet!

    From the screenshots, though, that size font seems better; the huge font is just really difficult to read on a large screen. I also like the Readability buttons (they’re shiny, as you say!).

    I’d like to see some more playing around on the front page and with the comments, but I suppose all shall come in time. :razz More accessibility to tags/categories would be great, though. If we aren’t going to have links at the top of the page to, say, news stories (or are those totally gone now?), tags, submissions information, the forum, etc., then maybe at the bottom of the page. But they need to go somewhere.

    The “new comments” page also still links to the old style. If we’re sticking with the new, very minimalistic look, then that page needs to be updated to match the rest of the site.

    If I think of anything later, I’ll let you know! But nice job so far. :grin

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 14th 2012
     

    So the main site hasn’t been changed yet, then? Because I didn’t notice any changes yet!

    I wanted to get some opinions first before I stuck on any changes permanent-like, see. ;P

    But they need to go somewhere.

    Agreed. XD

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 14th 2012
     

    Maybe this is a bit nitpicky, but what the hell.

    1. You can get to the Comments page very easily from the front page, but there’s no “back to the front page” button once you’re there.

    2. The comments section under each article needs a lot of work. I don’t know much about how the main site is designed and how much can be (easily) changed, but for starters there needs to be more distinct borders and separation between comments. It could be something as a box surrounding every other comment. For this example I just took the background color and decreased the RGB values by 15. It isn’t a huge difference, but it makes it far easier to distinguish comments from one another.

    (I’m just going to directly link to the images since they’re fairly large.)

    Clicky

    Better separation of comments is one thing, but I also think that we need a better system for adding comments to articles. I’m going to use the site “reddit” as an example here.

    Clicky

    I’m not saying we should clone reddit’s comment section, but I definitely think it would be better to have the comment box up top instead of down low, and I also think it would be nice to be able to reply to other people directly. Again, I don’t know how much work this would require, but these are just my 2 cents.

    Anyway, as for the main site itself, I mentioned that there was no “back” button on the comments page. I think we need more navigational tools on the front site. I simple navigation bar like we have on the forums could be quite handy.

    But instead of Categories, Search, Settings and Account it would be like, “Main Site, Discussions, Comments, List, Search, Submit, Staff, etc.” If this bar was always present at the top of the page it would allow people to navigate between the forums, front page and comments easily, without being overly obstructive or distracting.

    That’s all I can think of for now.

  1.  

    We have a dedicated comments page? :gasp

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    I’ve updated the site with smaller type and navigation on at least the bottom of every page.

    I’m going to be keeping the Comments system as simple as possible. It’s a lot of coding, even if I manage to find a template to base things off of. If I find myself with tons of time and enthusiasm, then maybe, but that’s unlikely.

    @TheArmourer

    Yup, and it’s now a part of the navigation.

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    I like the current comments system, it does everything it needs to and no more. I also like 14pt as a font size. It is a nice balance.

    • CommentAuthorNo One
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    14pt looks good.

    + Maybe include a list of articles by author and/or series

    DEFINITELY. It was very annoying to finish reading an article that was part of a series, then click on that “Older” button (or at least when I last did that; not sure if it’s still there) repeatedly until I found the next article in order of sequence.

    •  
      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    Something about the main site just indefinably annoys me, and I think it’s the centering of text. See how the articles are all huddled together for shelter and it bleeds out into this vast expanse of nothing on both sides? Maybe a vertical line down the left side or something, I dunno.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    OK, having looked at the updates now, I have to say that I like it. That font size works very well, I think. Much less overpowering, at any rate. I also tested it out on my iPod Touch, and while it’s a bit small if I look at it vertically, it’s still readable, and if I switch it to horizontal, it’s a very good size for reading.

    I like the little bar of directional links. Having it at the top of the page might be nicer than just the bottom, but I’m glad it’s there, at least! It’s going to help the whole “navigation through the site” thing a lot. I also like that there’s a space for a witty quote again! I’ve been missing those. :(

    I have to ask, with the current homepage, do we really need a separate page for all articles? I guess it lists more than the homepage, but they both are pretty much just a list of articles now. But I do like that it, the tags page, and the comments page are all changed over to the new theme now.

    Here’s another thing about the comments: I wish we could set it to remember us again. Not that it’s a huge trial to have to retype my name/e-mail every time I want to leave a comment, but it would be more convenient if it just saved them for us.

    • CommentAuthorSen
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    This is so fun.

    •  
      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    Ahaha, I forgot about that. Reginald Timbleywick III, the world needs your funk.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    Oh my word, Nate’s picture. I forgot about that one. Also, Virgil’s bio is still awesome.

    •  
      CommentAuthorSoupnazi
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    The articles’ text still looks bolded, which creates a very heavy and tiring effect when reading it. If the letters could just be thinner?

    •  
      CommentAuthorWulfRitter
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    Oh my word, Nate’s picture.

    I know. I nearly shot cherry Pepsi out of my nose.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    @Soupnazi

    What browser are you using? The text looked fine when I tested it with IE, FF, and Chrome, and there’s no reason CSS-wise that it should be bolded.

    @Swenson

    I have no iPod/Phone, so it’s nice to hear that things are nice and readable.

    The current article page is just temporary. Once I figure out the best way to do so, the page will link to articles by section (at the very least), which should make finding things a little bit easier.

    The reason why the navigation isn’t at the top of the article pages at the moment is because it messes up the Readability view (which is also messed up a bit by the comments/tags sections. If I can figure out how to fix that, I plan on putting the navigation at the top of the article pages too, instead of just at the bottom. Make the site more unified in look and all.

    @The Staff Page

    I was thinking of incorporating individual author profiles (little bio + list of written articles) somehow, but we’ll see how that goes. I’m still learning textpattern, and it’s a bit more challenging than I was expecting. So many tags that do so many things. ._.

    •  
      CommentAuthorSoupnazi
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    Website.
    Forum.

    It’s not that it is bolded, but that it’s so thick that it looks bolded.

    •  
      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    Wait, what browser is THAT? Not Firefox, for sure. Mine doesn’t look anything like that.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    I will ask again: what browser? And if it is one of the the three I tested, which version?

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    Well, it isn’t Chrome because everything looks fine for me.

    •  
      CommentAuthorSoupnazi
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012 edited
     

    It’s Firefox, last I checked 4.0 or whatever. Here’s what my screen looks like currently. Could either of you give me a screenshot of what your articles look like, for reference? It’s possible I’ve zoomed in, because when I zoom out it almost looks right.

    EDIT: No, if I zoom out it effects the forum as well and the forum looks tiny.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    The first screenshot in the first post is how the articles look for me. I have Firefox 7.0.1 The text is a little bit thinner in Chrome and IE, otherwise, the site looks pretty much identical in all three browsers.

    If you are zoomed in, Ctrl + 0 should reset the view. Otherwise, I’d recommend updating to the latest version of Firefox if possible. 4.0 is a couple of years outdated.

  2.  

    The most recent Firefox is 10.0.1

    •  
      CommentAuthorSoupnazi
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012 edited
     

    4.0 Must be incorrect, then, because I remember being a part of the beta for a new version about a year ago and it looked like this. (Plus, Firefox tells me I’m updated.)

    Trying to replicated your picture, I ended up with this which looks about the same as yours.

    EDIT: Gak, no, it doesn’t. It looks larger.

    EDIT TWO: Resized it to the same as yours, looks like this as opposed to your this. Mine got a bit squished, but it’s the same.

    EDIT THREE: And here’s my full screen when looking at an article.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012 edited
     

    Help > About Firefox

    That will tell you the exact version you have.

    Otherwise, the only thing I can think of is that it’s your screen’s resolution that’s making things looks bold. In which case, there’s nothing I can do.

    —-

    Edit: I just noticed that the letters are shaped slightly differently. I don’t know why, but it looks like your browser is using a different typeface to show the articles’ text. If you go into Tools > Options > Content, there should be a Font and Colors option you can change. You can use it to set which serif/sans-serif typefaces your browser uses if the one being asked for on a webpage is not supported by your computer/browser.

    The typeface the main site uses by default is Georgia.

  3.  

    If you click on a tag on the tags page, they go to an error page instead of a list of articles.

    I also agree that the main page is looking a lot better.

    •  
      CommentAuthorSoupnazi
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    10.0.1 for me.

    I have the font Georgia, and nothing from my options says that I wouldn’t be using the right font—and when I look at my screen versus your picture, it looks the same.

    The thing I’m talking about isn’t the font being bold, or looking weird; it’s that the size is still large, and when compared with the forum font is larger and thicker. IIRC, the old site had text roughly the same size as the forum, but no longer.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    Until I figure out how to make the tags page work again, it shall remain disappeared from the navigation. But I did add back the Search, which, while not as pretty as it will be, works well enough.

    @Soup

    I don’t know why it looks so thick on your screen, but since no one else is having an issue, it sounds like something on your end. :/ And the old site’s text always looked larger than the forum’s. Not by as much as now, but it was still at least one size larger. TBH, the forum’s text always struck me as being a bit on the small side.

  4.  

    I love how the search thing says, “What shall we find?”

    •  
      CommentAuthorSoupnazi
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012 edited
     

    I mean even in your pictures though, Kyllorac—could it be tested by making it a bit smaller? I’m also not sure how the forum text size is small—as far as I can tell, it’s the same size as most webpages.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012 edited
     

    @Platy

    I’m glad it amuses you as much as coming up with it amused me.

    @Soup

    Since most people like the 14pt size, I’m going to leave it be for now until after I get some more functionality.

    Speaking of which, check this out!

    Ignore the By Author category for the moment. I’m using the Info section as a placeholder to check that things work since, in order to make it really work, I’ll need to make profiles for each individual author. And then we shall have to see if the profiles display all the articles by that author correctly (as well as the bio).

    Until then, the By Section and By Category links should all be working properly.

    Prettiness, at the moment, is purely optional and determined by one’s relative position to the lunar cycle, solar zenith, and astral alignment.

  5.  

    @Platy

    That’s a new one.

    Speaking of which, check this out!

    Awesome!

    One thing: If there is a link to the forum and recent comments at the top of the home page, do we still need the “Welcome. 8 new comments today. View our forum.” with links to the same things?

    And then we shall have to see if the profiles display all the articles by that author correctly (as well as the bio).

    Cool. And just a suggestion, but we could use the sketches by Virgil and Kitty for the author bio pages (if the author has a sketch. I just think the sketches are cool.

    EDIT:

    I’ve never seen this before. It’s nice. Anyway, the submission form is a dead link.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012 edited
     

    One thing: If there is a link to the forum and recent comments at the top of the home page, do we still need the “Welcome. 8 new comments today. View our forum.” with links to the same things?

    Probably not. I was just too lazy to remove them. XD

    And just a suggestion, but we could use the sketches by Virgil and Kitty for the author bio pages (if the author has a sketch. I just think the sketches are cool.

    Ideally, the authors themselves will maintain their own bios, but I suppose they would work well as bio placeholders. :kitty

    Anyway, the submission form is a dead link.

    Yes. Yes it is. No. I am not fixing it right now.

    nudges towards “placeholder” mention

  6.  

    nudges towards “placeholder” mention

    Oh, yes, that’s right. I realized that none of that stuff had been fixed yet once I looked at the rest of the stuff under the placeholder, so never mind.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     

    Hey, Kyllorac, when you look at Soupnazi’s screenshots, is that the same thing you see? Because I see the same thing as him, and it’s true, the article titles appear to be a different font than the rest of the page. It does look a bit odd.

    •  
      CommentAuthorSoupnazi
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012 edited
     

    I feel like the site now has a smaller text size and I think it’s just an issue on my part ‘cause I still don’t fully care for it. XD

    Also, I think the lines on the comments look like they separate comments, making it seem as if the “by X” is after the comments. Which it isn’t, which is confusing.

    EDIT: I find that, to my personal preference, zooming out the page twice works. And since I can just zoom back in for the forums, unless it’s an opinion many others share it’s “fixed” for me. :D

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeFeb 16th 2012
     

    The lines between comments actually works quite nicely, in my opinion. It’s not a hugely out-of-place, glaring thing, it’s subtle and fits with the rest of the page. Perhaps remove the line between the “by X” and the comment to make it clearer who goes with which comment, but otherwise, I think it works just fine.

    I found another page for you with the old style, though. :) I managed to get myself to the 404 page (I mistyped the address for the forums—it’s /forum not /forums), and it still has the old look.

    •  
      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeFeb 16th 2012
     

    I was playing around with the articles listings and read that Twilight Abridged thing by Artimaeus. And it only goes up to Chapter 9! What is this?!

    •  
      CommentAuthorSoupnazi
    • CommentTimeFeb 16th 2012
     

    The lines between comments actually works quite nicely, in my opinion. It’s not a hugely out-of-place, glaring thing, it’s subtle and fits with the rest of the page. Perhaps remove the line between the “by X” and the comment to make it clearer who goes with which comment, but otherwise, I think it works just fine.

    I like them too, I just think they imply the comments are by different people because I’d expect them to be separating comments completely.

    I found another page for you with the old style, though. :) I managed to get myself to the 404 page (I mistyped the address for the forums—it’s /forum not /forums), and it still has the old look.

    Is “you” meaning me?

    •  
      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeFeb 16th 2012
     

    I would assume it’s Kyllorac.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 16th 2012
     

    @Inky

    That’s because the category changed between articles 9 and 10 from pitfalls to spork.

    I may mess around with the categories and recategorizing articles later, but that’s for later.

    @comment lines

    Now that I’ve figured out where the information that controls the comments (and what things appear where in what order on the individual article pages) actually is, I have plans.

    •  
      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeFeb 16th 2012
     

    Ooh good. I was worried it never got finished. :D

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 16th 2012
     

    Again, just being nitpicky, but the diamonds (♦) look a little out of place in the overall style of the site.

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeFeb 16th 2012
     

    I actually like the diamonds, they give a little bit of graphical balance to all the text. I think the hr line could be between the body and the menu, rather than on the outside, but I do quite like the way the menu has been set up right now.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeFeb 16th 2012 edited
     

    @Soup – the “you” was Kyllorac, yes. :)

    On the comment lines, I think they’re backwards now. They appear to be between a person and their comment, which makes it look like they actually said the comment previous to their own. Dem comments! They’re probably going to take up most of your time with all our quibbles about them!

    On recategorizing articles, don’t sweat it, in my opinion. That can be dealt with later, maybe even by some other poor soul you dump the job on. For right now, so long as things are actually showing up when they SHOULD be showing up, consider that a victory.

    Re: divider between menu items: you’ve been messing with them, I totally caught you in action this time, but I do like the ones which are sort of like a tilde (~) with a slash across it. Less bold than the diamonds. I also like how the text has been shifted to the left somewhat. It seems to balance things out more. And it still looks OK on mobile devices (or my mobile device, anyway!), so that’s a great thing!

    EDIT: Or the fancy diamonds, with the concave sides. The other diamonds just looked too big and bold, I think.

    •  
      CommentAuthorSoupnazi
    • CommentTimeFeb 16th 2012
     

    I don’t care for the things currently replacing the diamonds; they look too ornate for the website.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 16th 2012
     

    Oh. Em. Effin. Gee.

    You would not BELIEVE all the insanity I subjected myself to in order to create functioning author pages that display the bio AND a list of articles by ONLY that person.

    Those of you with the ability to do so may notice a new field to the left of the Write box entitled Writer. Use it. And be sure to type in your log-in name. OR ELSE. :headache

    Anyway, I’ll be busy making articles for the ALL the authors. Yup. And then the fun will really begin. :dead

  7.  

    You would not BELIEVE all the insanity I subjected myself to

    Were you hearing two of your own voice again?

  8.  

    Those of you with the ability to do so may notice a new field to the left of the Write box entitled Writer. Use it. And be sure to type in your log-in name. OR ELSE.

    Would you like us to go back to the old articles and type in our log-in names in the “writer” box? Also, if you are going to have type in the names of all the authors for all the articles and re-save them, I’m pretty sure I would be authorized to help with that. I know nothing about coding, but I can type in names if that is at all helpful or necessary.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 16th 2012
     

    O Platy, if you would help, that would be lovely.

    Also, since they’re now pretty darn redundant, while you’re editing in the author’s names, be sure to take them out of the Keywords list (if they’re there).

    One of the other things on the To Do list is to clean up the tags (for when I get them working again) and make sure all the articles are happily sectioned/categorized. Aside from the username tags, though, I don’t suggest touching anything yet. One thing at a time.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 17th 2012
     

    Made it all the way through K. L and onwards is in need of writering, and I am in need of sleep. :dead

    • CommentAuthorNo One
    • CommentTimeFeb 17th 2012
     

    Don’t push yourself too hard, Kyllorac. We would really love to have you still alive and functioning well at the end of the renovations, so that we can all celebrate the brand-new II site. :razz

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeFeb 17th 2012 edited
     

    Not sure the cartouche/stock chart points work as well as the diamonds, IMO. Personally, I’m getting distracted by searching for assumed symbolism. “wait, what does that symbol mean? What relevance does it have to the site?”

    Might just be the Eng Lit scholar in me, though.

    And between the article and the ‘comments’ link, it looks really out of place.

  9.  

    ^^Aww, I like the little squiggly things that are there now.

    Also, since they’re now pretty darn redundant, while you’re editing in the author’s names, be sure to take them out of the Keywords list (if they’re there).

    Can do. I may be able to start tonight, but I can definitely start tomorrow. immediately while doing other things at the same time, and also later.

    One of the other things on the To Do list is to clean up the tags (for when I get them working again) and make sure all the articles are happily sectioned/categorized.

    I’m also willing to help with this when the time comes.

    EDIT:
    And if anyone who can’t edit live articles wants to write their bio and give it to me, I’ll post it. I could also help with bios for people who aren’t here anymore.

    •  
      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeFeb 17th 2012
     

    My author page makes me nervous.

    What do I make you see? It’s either red or dead people, and neither bodes well for me.

    Also, I see no Write box or anything, even though I did have a txp account at one point – troubleshooting help, anyone?

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 17th 2012
     

    When you log into Textpattern under Content and Write you should see the “Writer” box to your left.

  10.  

    There’s a box that says “writer” to the left of the big input thing. It’s under the rating and spoiler boxes.

    The comment you made about your author page rhymes.

    •  
      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeFeb 17th 2012
     

    Mkay thanks.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 17th 2012 edited
     

    Tags are working again.

    Now, to see if I can track down the reason the header/footer are in just slightly different positions on the Search and Tag pages. It’s been bugging me for days.

    —-

    Then again, I could always go and catch a pounding head cold.

    At least most everything is working now. XD

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeFeb 17th 2012
     

    Kyllorac, you are awesome, you know that?

  11.  

    I agree about you being awesome. You’ve done so much to the site already.

    Something I found while writering articles: Lionus’s bio link actually links to Lord Snow, but the name after the / on both Lionus and Lord Snow is Lionus. And I’m guessing Willow has a mass of articles attributed to her because you were testing something.

    Also, can multiple writers be entered? I only ask because sometimes articles have multiple contributors, especially some of the older sporks.

    None of this is urgent or anything, I was just wondering.

  12.  

    Yes, the site looks much better. :happy

  13.  

    I hadn’t looked at the articles in a couple of days, and now they’re different. They look so much nicer now!

    I’ve writered everyone L-K but Sly and Virgil (and Rorschach, but I think he did his own articles because they were done already), who I’m going to do after I write my second draft of a story for school. They have so many articles.

    Issues I have encountered besides what I already said:
    Reginald Timblywick whatever’s bio just says “Reginold” at the top, which is his log-in name, but all the articles say “by” the full name. Do you mind if I change the title of his bio to the full name?
    Stellar Jetman’s article is not showing under his name. I think it’s because it’s in the “critique” category, which also have a lot of stories that people had written for the site when it first started, which I assumed were not displaying on purpose.

    And when I put in Willow’s name for her article, all of the mis-attributed articles disappeared from her page. I also moved her name from “keywords” to “writer” on her bio because it looked like she was only one whose name ended up there, so I thought it was an accident.

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 17th 2012
     

    Yeah, thanks Kyllorac! The author pages and the site in general look great. I think that the “≬” look far better than the diamonds, but for the Archives it might almost be better to separate the “By Section” and “By Category” with simple commas. It’s nice that the “By Author” section is already in alphabetical order, but it still looks a little cluttered. I was going to suggest columns by the first letter of the name, but that could potentially result in 26 columns. I’m not being very helpful, I know. But again, thanks! The site looks much better now.

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 17th 2012
     

    Oh, I also added the II caricatures that Virgil drew to their proper profiles.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 17th 2012 edited
     

    Stellar Jetman’s article is not showing under his name. I think it’s because it’s in the “critique” category, which also have a lot of stories that people had written for the site when it first started, which I assumed were not displaying on purpose

    Exactly. Especially for the folks no longer around, I figured it would be safer to keep their original works hidden.

    Lionus’s bio link actually links to Lord Snow

    Fixed.

    And when I put in Willow’s name for her article, all of the mis-attributed articles disappeared from her page.

    Which is why it’s so important to remember to put the writer’s name in the Writer field. Now that each profile has at least one article assigned to it, the worst that will happen is newer articles won’t show up on the page. If there are no articles with the author’s name filled into the Writer field, then the profile displays ALL the articles it can.

    Reginald Timblywick whatever’s bio just says “Reginold” at the top, which is his log-in name, but all the articles say “by” the full name. Do you mind if I change the title of his bio to the full name?

    Go right ahead. My blessings be upon you if you find another instance, yadda yadda.

    Hopefully all the articles I said I tagged are tagged. And I assure you, Rorschach did not tag any of his articles (including his newest one :glare). That was me. And that was because I was sorting all the articles alphabetically by author login, and his login happened to start with a K. He, falconempress, and lccorp are the reasons why I didn’t finish filling in the Writer field for all the articles. XD

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 17th 2012 edited
     

    As for multiple Writers, it’s not that difficult, but there is a limit to how many custom fields I can add, and each Writer field will only accept one name. I was considering adding another because I ran across a couple of pair-sporks, but yeah. For now, just go with the person responsible for posting the article.

    And commas refused to work properly as separators on the Archives page. And so we get not tildes instead.

  14.  

    Exactly. Especially for the folks no longer around, I figured it would be safer to keep their original works hidden.

    That’s what I thought (and I think that’s a good idea too), but in this particular case, the article was recent (it’s still on the homepage) and is a spork rather than an original story. Unless he just doesn’t want it listed, which is possible.

    And I just noticed that there’s a little chair/couch thing by the readability button. Did you do that? I like it.

    And one more thing that is not urgent but just a wondering is if you could make the author’s name on the articles (like where it says “by whoever”) link to their author page.

    And so we get not tildes instead.

    I think those look good, actually.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 17th 2012 edited
     

    And one more thing that is not urgent but just a wondering is if you could make the author’s name on the articles (like where it says “by whoever”) link to their author page.

    Been working on it (why do you think I created author profiles anyways ;P). However, you can blame people like Stellar Jetman and Lord Snow for having spaces in their name that keep breaking all attempts at linking thus far.

    That’s what I thought (and I think that’s a good idea too), but in this particular case, the article was recent (it’s still on the homepage) and is a spork rather than an original story.

    I just bumped it over to Criticism. Critique and Criticism are uncannily similar, hence part of my desire to reorganize things. Later.

    Meanwhile, I’ve fixed the formatting issue on the Tags page. It was a really simple id-confusion issue, and it’s really sad how long it took me to realize just what it was. XD Still no clue what’s going on with the Search page, though. I think it might be the actual search thingum itself.

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 18th 2012 edited
     

    Now for something purely stylistic!

    This isn’t important right now, bit it would be cool if the main site and the forum were more “in sync.” The main site looks fine right now, but visually it still looks different compared to the forums. I did a quick edit in GIMP, if you scroll to the bottom of the image hopefully you’ll be able to see what I’m talking about. Link. The “We need a snappy catchphrase” should be bold because it’s the title, but the line between that and the navigation bar is too strong and thick. It would be nice if it was like the forums, a bit softer, thinner and easier on the eyes. Again, this isn’t important right now, heck, I don’t even know if it’s possible, but it would be nice if the forums and the main site looked similar visually. :)

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeFeb 18th 2012
     

    regarding Puppet’s linked gimp-edit:

    J’approuve. Puissamment.

  15.  

    The only person not “writered” yet is Sly. I will do that tomorrow. I also wrote a couple bios. And I copied/pasted the bios of Reginald and Legion from the old staff page since they are not around anymore.

    And I like the soft line idea too.

    And I approve of the sketches in the bios.

    Now I’m going to bed.

    • CommentAuthorSlyShy
    • CommentTimeFeb 18th 2012
     

    You are my hero.

    Seriously. Thank you.

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 18th 2012
     

    Kyllorac, you are seriously amazing.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 18th 2012
     

    The formatting is doing things for no apparent reason. Now all the content is indented. At least it’s consistent. And at least now the Search header has decided to line up with the rest of the site.

    •  
      CommentAuthorSoupnazi
    • CommentTimeFeb 18th 2012
     

    The website looks so nice now! Thank you, Kyllorac.

    But, just a final remark on the whole font size issue: currently, the font is a bit larger than standard, which creates a thicker, bolded look. Example. Then, if I zoom out, I get this, which as you can see doesn’t have that bold look. I can take it further, if I want, and get this, which I believe is about normal text size.

    Personally, I prefer the second two, as they’re more in line with most websites and make it easier to differentiate between bold and non-bold stuff. However, I want to ask all of you which you prefer because so far this issue has just been with me, and I don’t want to be demanding some change that only I care about. XD

  16.  

    Sly is writered.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 18th 2012 edited
     

    @soup

    I’ve checked on several computers and in several browsers, and in all of them, the text does not appear anywhere near that thick at the current size. This is what I see.

    I played around with some other smaller font sizes (like 12 and 13 pt), and while they were readable, they made the front page feel like a vast abyss of whitespace.

    •  
      CommentAuthorSoupnazi
    • CommentTimeFeb 18th 2012 edited
     

    Derp, I didn’t realize that particular bit was on my end. :blush

    EDIT: Tried it on IE, got this. It seems that for some reason Firefox is scrunching everything together a little bit, causing it to look bigger. Now if I could just figure out why this is happening…

    EDIT TWO: Tried downloading Google Chrome, got the same problem. IE still works right, though there’s no way I’m using IE. Guess I’ll just have to deal with it.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeFeb 19th 2012
     

    Site looks awesome! Puppet’s ideas about making it look a little bit more like the forum was great, I think it looks even more awesome now. And the author pages are pretty sweet now.

    I noticed articles on writer pages are in ascending chronological order. Would putting it in descending order (from latest to earliest) make more sense? I guess I feel like seeing their recent work at the top makes more sense to me. Anybody else have thoughts on that? I don’t think it’s bad how it is, it’s just something I noticed.

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 19th 2012
     

    While the archive page is quite handy, it would be nice if there were numerical pages like in the top right corner of the forum. Right now you can only see the 10 most recent articles on the front page.

  17.  

    noticed articles on writer pages are in ascending chronological order. Would putting it in descending order (from latest to earliest) make more sense? I guess I feel like seeing their recent work at the top makes more sense to me. Anybody else have thoughts on that?

    I thought the same thing, and I can’t decide if I like ascending or descending better. Descending is definitely more standard, though.

    And the softer lines look great.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2012 edited
     

    Right now you can only see the 10 most recent articles on the front page.

    That’s… not supposed to be happening. There should be navigation buttons letting you see older articles.

    Oh dear. It was working before. I shall have to see why it stopped working.

    Fixed.

    As for the archives order, since they’re archives, I figured emphasis would be on finding things (especially the older stuff) rather than seeing the most recent (which is what the front page does). Originally I had the listings in ascending alphabetical, but that really messed up the order of articles in series with written-out numbers. And so the next-best thing was ascending by time.

    Unless you guys want to/are fine with changing the titles of articles in series with written-out numbers to numerical digits (and keeping that standard), then it will probably stay ascending by time.

  18.  

    I like ascending much better than alphabetical for the reasons you said.

    Something else, is it possible to hide the author pages of people who don’t have actual articles (the ones who only had nano and and stuff posted for critique)? Except for Sayere (sp?) because I like giving her credit for creating the impies.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2012 edited
     

    That’s one of the other things I’ve been trying to figure out. The easiest way I can think of is to either delete those folks’ profiles, or move them to a separate section.

    Which I think I’ll be doing the latter.

    And done.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2012
     

    MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

    I finally got links to author profiles working!

    And I feel stupid now because I tried the exact same method before, except I forgot to switch the plugin on. Of course it wouldn’t work when it was off.

    • CommentAuthorSlyShy
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2012
     

    We might be interested in using this to setup a randomized list of catchphrases or quotes to be displayed on the main page.

    But we need to collect some quotes first…

    The banner phrase used to be updated through this Twitter account but I think we should move away from that technique given how long of a latency there can be while connecting to Twitter.

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2012
     

    More input! I think there should only be one line right above the username in the comments section. That way there’s a line where the comment begins and ends. Right now there are two lines, one right above and below the username. All this does is isolate the username, what the lines should really be doing is grouping the username with its comment. I did another quick GIMP edit so you can compare two lines to one: http://i.imgur.com/XjoNZ.png

    • CommentAuthorSlyShy
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2012
     

    Ooh, one more idea.

    So my favorite part of ImpishIdea has always been the indication of how many new comments there are. Perhaps the “Recent Comments” link can be “Recent Comments (5)” where 5 is the number of comments today.

    By the way, feel free to delegate any of my suggestions to me. I’m more than happy to do any programming… I’m just happy that someone else is handling the aesthetics.

    • CommentAuthorSlyShy
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2012 edited
     

    Okay, I added that myself.

    Edit: Also, I’m going to remove the Readability widget now, as it slows down page loading, and II is easy to read enough… and the passive income really isn’t worth very much.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2012
     

    @Sly – I’m glad you added the number of recent comments back in, as I had been thinking about mentioning that. It’s kind of nice because that way, I can tell at a glance whether new comments have been added recently or not. And yes, I end up on II’s main page enough for that to be a potential issue. :grin

    This may be more difficulty than it’s worth (and if so, the current method works just fine), but could there be a way to have the number of comments instead show the number of comments since a person’s last visit? The obvious issue with that is that it would be several thousand to a new visitor, so maybe only adjust to people making a second visit in the same day? So for example, right now it’s “[1]”. If anybody goes and looks at the homepage, they’d see “Recent Comments [1]”. But because I’ve already gone to the homepage and clicked on the Recent Comments, it would change to just “Recent Comments” for me.

    Like I say, though, if this is a pain to code (or you just think it’s unnecessary, especially because you’d have to keep track of visitors), the current method works just fine. I like to have some method for seeing whether new comments have happened recently or not, without having to actually go to the Recent Comments page.

    Also, too bad Readability didn’t work out. Are you going to try other methods of generating revenue? I’m still OK with ads, so long as they aren’t obtrusive. Unfortunately most ads would kind of break the “look” of the site.

    • CommentAuthorSlyShy
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2012 edited
     

    I’ll look into implementing that. It’s certainly doable, using cookies or other techniques.

    We should think about merchandising again. The last time around I didn’t go through with it because CafePress is a rip-off. But now I’m a bit savvier and could get t-shirts printed locally to keep prices down. I really didn’t want people paying $20 for a cheap printed t-shirt when they should only be $7 (imo).

    All in all ImpishIdea isn’t expensive to maintain, so it isn’t an issue if we don’t figure something out for a few years.

  19.  

    Just thinking, and this would be a lot of work for whoever does it, would it be possible to get our own server? Not rent, but someone owns it. Then that person could cover the costs by renting space to someone else for their website. :huh

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2012
     

    II t-shirt threads 1 and 2. I’ve been wanting an II t-shirt with the logo on the front and the crow splatter on the back for quite some time. That said, I would also support ads, as long as they 1) don’t play sound and 2) don’t play video/gifs.

  20.  
    Just a thought.

    I understand that the original submit content feature on the main site got taken because of the spammers (rat-bastards) is there anything that could be done to have the submit content button back and keep the spammers out?
    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2012
     

    Mm, maybe we should just implement a FAQ page on the main site like the one on the forum. That would eliminate questions about where to submit, textile, impies, etc.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2012
     

    That’s a good idea. I still have no little idea how you submit things, but at least I know where to go to find out. So even if there was a “Submissions” link that had an FAQ on it, that could be useful.

    •  
      CommentAuthorClibanarius
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2012 edited
     
    bq. Mm, maybe we should just implement a FAQ page on the main site like the one on the forum. That would eliminate questions about where to submit, textile, impies, etc.

    -Yeah, but having to email the article to Sly only to find out that the formatting is off (and you have no clue to how fix it) just plain sucks. Besides, it would make it easier for the people in charge of putting up the articles, yes?-

    EDIT: Never mind, I read that the wrong way.
  21.  

    Kyllorac, I approve of your new default bio message. And you fixed the list of people, yay!

    And can people who can’t publish articles update their bios themselves? Because I had thought about starting a thread asking people for bios and then posting them because I didn’t think that most people would be able to post their own.

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2012 edited
     

    This is more directed at SlyShy than Kyllorac. The “Recent Comments [number]” seems to have glitched out, because right now it’s displaying “Recent Comments [2] [2].”

    Edit: Oh, and if we agree to a general FAQ page I could type it up and publish it as an article, and then we could implement a “FAQ” button to the navigation bar. The advantage of publishing the FAQ page as an article is that it would allow people to comment if they have further questions.