New Forums, but RedWolf needs your input on 'em.

Post by **STrRedWolf** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 6:47 pm

Okay folks. The time of reckoning is here. phpBB 3.0 has been released.

We haven't upgraded to it yet. I don't know if Kisai has looked at it yet, so I'm holding off on it. I know it'll break two things: Siteadmin and the main site's news page. So until Kisai's looked at it, I'm holding back.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't plan for how the forums will look like, and how they will be arranged. So post your ideas here. I'll put mine in a seperate reply.

Post by **STrRedWolf** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 6:59 pm

Here's my thinking:

Fold Off Topic into General Discussion, and yank the comic only silliness I put on GD. (I give)
Put Community Get-Togethers and Forum Games as subforums of GD.
Create, for the time being, an Art Studio forum of GD (for the jams)
Put Messageboard Requests and Technique Tips and Tricks under Help Center. Put a link to TT&T in the Art Studio.
Split Dropdowns and Crossovers into Dropdown Requests in the Help Center, and Crossover Events in GD.
Split various games in Forum Games into subforums.
Allow a limited amount of subforums in each comic forums.

More input until Kisai looks at phpBB 3.0!

Perk_daddy · Post by **Perk_daddy** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 8:23 pm

Will there still be a Comic Pitching forum?

Kaloo · Post by **Kaloo** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 8:32 pm

I kinda like your Comic only silliness...

Warofwinds · Post by **Warofwinds** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 8:33 pm

I LIKE it that GD deals only with comic-related discussion. OT gets so cluttered with random threads I hardly know what's going on. I don't really even check it, because I'm interested in comic-related discussion only.

Perhaps in changing GD to OT, you could create another forum specifically for comic discussion, or just switch the priority of the two forums?

Ataraxia · Post by **Ataraxia** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 8:39 pm

warofwinds wrote:I LIKE it that GD deals only with comic-related discussion. OT gets so cluttered with random threads I hardly know what's going on. I don't really even check it, because I'm interested in comic-related discussion only.

I agree with this. I mostly stick to GD because it's the comic-related discussion that I'm interested in.

Jim North · Post by **Jim North** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 10:01 pm

Hurray, PHPBB 3.0! Another forum I go to has been running the beta version for a while now, and it's pretty slick. I was hoping we'd get it 'round here eventually.

As for the proposed changes, I approve of most of them, and the rest I don't care about, so huzzah! The "GD vs. OT" thing is one of 'em I don't care about. I remember that everyone was all like "aw" back when the split first happened, and I find it amusing that everyone's gonna be all like "aw" about putting them together again now.

Folks do like to get set in their ways.

The Neko · Post by **The Neko** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 11:05 pm

I guess if you just make the names more specific, there'd be less confusion.

GD could become "Comic Talk" with a description saying it's about comics, and comic-making, etc.

OT could just be "General Discussion", which makes more sense name-wise.

Post by **Kisai** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 8:53 am

I haven't looked at the code yet, but suffice it to say we are not switching to it yet untill I check how or IF I migrate the siteadmin to use the new template engine. Chances are no, in which case the phpBB2 code will just sit sidebyside untill I port the siteadmin over, if that ever happens. Part of the reason development stopped on the new siteadmin was because I was waiting for phpBB3 and did not want to have to redo any fancy thing.

First things first. Someone design a new template for phpBB3 that resembles either our current template or front page, or is "better" that what we have. We are most definitely not moving over with generic templates.

Second, the newspage stuff runs off a slave copy of phpBB2, with the new version, there might not be a need to run a slave copy anymore, as the intention (does anyone even look at the news page?) was to keep an operating copy of the forum engine to update the news page IF the forums were down and was an experiment in load balancing the forums because phpBB2 is not smart. I may just switch the news stuff over to being generated from the Wiki plus or minus some formatting. Too soon to tell. I just hate how the existing version turned out.

Rkolter · Post by **Rkolter** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 9:01 am

I like Neko's suggestion regarding renamaing.

I think that OT and GD should remain seperate for the reasons given too - it turned out to not be a bad idea StrRedWolf. Most other sites have a forum for related topics, and a forum for "whatever" type topics.

I don't know that splitting various games up into subforums makes sense in the Games forum, because there aren't that many active games to where people need to jump off the first page to get to the game they want to play.

The Art Studio forum isn't a bad idea per-say, but I think it might spawn too many jams that might not go anywhere.

Those ideas in mind, here's my thought:

GD ("comic talk") as a main forum, with Get-Togethers as a subforum. Archives as a sub-forum as well, as well as Crossover Events.

OT ("the new GD") as a main forum, with Forum Games as a subforum.

Help as a main forum, with Messageboard Requests, TT&T, and Dropdown Requests as subforums.

Dr Neo Lao · Post by **Dr Neo Lao** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 2:47 pm

^ Agree with rkolter. Simplicity is good.

Kisai wrote:(does anyone even look at the news page?)

There's a news page? I've been coming here for a while and this is the first time I've seen it mentioned. Do you mean the front page?

Edit: Oh, just found it. No, I'd never followed that link...

Post by **STrRedWolf** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 7:18 pm

We may have to slip a "short news blurb" on the front page then, Kisai. Maybe make the news page itself PHP. I doubt it gets hit all that much.

But everyone likes GD to be "Comic Discussion" (CG and outside comics, electronic and print) and OT to be GD (Everything else)? Gee... okay.

I can pull a copy of PHPBB 3 and slap it on a virtual linux box easily enough. I got to build a few...

Dr Neo Lao · Post by **Dr Neo Lao** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 2:19 am

Is there a way in phpBB3 to have a little box at the top of the main forums with the latest new article? That would be convenient because if there was something that you needed to tell everyone (such as "servers not updating, we know, we're working on it" or w/ever) then it'll be front and center on the forums when people visit.

And if you can do that, it shouldn't bee to hard to export that so it also appears on the front page.

Yes? No?

Post by **STrRedWolf** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 3:29 am

Once we work out the details of how to do the news, Kisai and I can code it. Our main disappointment is that formatting is broken. (Although, my mind is in a state that maybe grabbing the first paragraph, slapping that up, and pushing a link to the full newspost would be a good thing to try)

Post by **Kisai** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 10:38 am

Dr Neo Lao wrote:Is there a way in phpBB3 to have a little box at the top of the main forums with the latest new article? That would be convenient because if there was something that you needed to tell everyone (such as "servers not updating, we know, we're working on it" or w/ever) then it'll be front and center on the forums when people visit.

And if you can do that, it shouldn't bee to hard to export that so it also appears on the front page.

Yes? No?

The problem is that if the problem is with the FORUM server, there is no way to let people know other than to draw attention to something on the MAIN server, and vice versa, redundancy in this regard is a good thing, however all that's ever come of that secondary copy of phpBB is some experiments untill the spammers found a way to use it to send a blank message to everyone (does everyone remember the "you have a new private message" only to click on it and nothing be there? I know I got a lot of bounce messages and people going "WTF I haven't been to CG/keenspace in years",) and then I disabled pretty much all of it.

When the web servers are down, or the server is down itself, you'd think people have enough sense to try the other server.

Anyway.

One thing that needs to change, and I'm not advocating this lightly, is there needs to be a replacement of the 'footer' on all comics on CG. This really needs to be changed to a "hosted on, copyrighted by, help, privacy" set of links. The reason is that I think our content may be getting scraped and repackaged and sold on eBay or other sites. Believe me, the amount of stuff that is 'free' on the internet being sold on eBay and like is staggering. One way to cut this off is to have, on EVERY site at the minimum a "hosted by Comicgenesis a free host for Webcomics. (comic name) is Copyright 2008 (author name) all rights reserved." This includes the forums.

I note at least one "package" of eBook content I recall seeing had thousands of stuff I recognized.

Yeahduff · Post by **Yeahduff** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 11:05 am

People say they like GD and OT seperate, but then they put comic-related stuff in OT and don't really post in GD. There's no real reason to keep them seperate.

Comic Pitching is pretty useless.

Prettysenshi · Post by **Prettysenshi** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 6:35 pm

yeahduff wrote:People say they like GD and OT seperate, but then they put comic-related stuff in OT and don't really post in GD. There's no real reason to keep them seperate.

Comic Pitching is pretty useless.

I agree. Maybe it can be merged into TTT?

Warofwinds · Post by **Warofwinds** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 7:46 pm

Well, there's comic related discussion and then there's jams and sketch threads and "ooo, let's see what we all look like and make fun of each other" threads. While that's cool for those interested, I'd rather not have to sift through that to find threads relevant to a discussion, not share-image-funtime.

Comic Pitching is pretty useless now that only pitching is allowed, and not critiques. Really, I think overall critiques should be allowed there, but if someone is asking for specific stuff, that belongs in an art discussion/techniques forum. No one has anything to discuss in comic pitching since their opinions have been quashed.

I love that word, "quash." So fun.

Ahem.

Yeahduff · Post by **Yeahduff** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 7:16 am

Well, there's been no quashing. You can give an opinion, but it's not a critique forum, so if you're specifically looking to critique or be critiqued, you should go elsewhere.

That stance is all about giving Pitching its own identity. Adding criticism just makes it another TTT thread, and I don't think redundant is any better than useless.

Also, I'd rather sift through the garbage and have people post than have things well organized with very little discussion (which is the current situation). We're too compartmentalized. We need a change.

Yeahduff · Post by **Yeahduff** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:14 pm

In a related story, I think people would notice this more if it were in OffTopic Junk.