I was thinking about promoting our site more by entering the competition on "RPG-Directory" forum, Forum of the week

http://rpg-directory.com/index.php?showtopic=12398

But I think we would need to get some ideas of how to increase the appealing of our forum. Hyn made a great job so far but with our help, we could increase the number of ideas.

Previous winners :
http://tallygarunga.com/forums/
http://www.aztersil.net/
http://www.sapphirecourt.com/

Banner is fine I guess
I don't know if Cbox is resizeable and if it's needs to be resized.
A nice 'Entry' would be nice "Welcome to.." - if anyone has an idea, please post it. I believe we have quite a powerful team of writers here.

Features to forum - we have mIRC, we have cbox. Chat option is unavaible, I would erase the link and option.

All ideas are welcome.

I may suggest Avatar and/or Signature of the Week Contest. There's Sasaki and I at the least, and I know a few sites to some GIMP tuts (that also work with GIMPshop) that will help a person improve :D They would start on Sundays and end on Fridays(for the winner to decide a theme for the next contest), and it would go by a certain theme each contest. Like one week it would be "The Ocean" and the next it would be "Flames".

Also, Drawing Contest - No photo manipulation here--strictly hand drawn art with NO PS or GIMP enhanced entries. It'd go along the same lines of ASotWC, it would end by the end of the week and have a theme for participants to go by.

Slogan...I'll have to think it over to decide on one...

We have a pretty good banner IMO, it goes with the skin we have, but if you desperately want a new one I could try something.

Role-Player of the Week - I know we have our Oscar Awards but they just don't seem to be active anymore...this could perhaps be a bit more active. Or we could put Role-Players of the Week if we wanted.

A thread or even subforum dedicated to RP ideas that players would hope to develop and get off the ground. We have such a thing in Alternative RPG, but that seems to be more dedicated to the S&M RP atm. Perhaps we could create another subforum in Alternative RPG or elsewhere that will have threads for helping materialize RP ideas into full-blown RPs. Remember how I brought up a Gundam RP? Even if it would be complicated, with this it would be possible to discuss how we could make it work.

A General ChitChat thread - If you look at OMF there is what's called the Shout Out Thread, aka SOT. It's strictly for general discussion with other members, such as stuff about a recent joke you heard, other RPs, getting a new game for your Wii or 360...you get the gist of it. It'd be a nice addition IMO.

Give the Alternative RPG it's own forum - as in, make another forum right alongside the lounge and Extra Scenes, and move what we had in the old subforum to there. If it's possible, it can make things more organized. We could have the S&M RP in the main forum, and the RP Ideas would have its own subforum in Alternative RPG. The OOC would be in Lounge, but everything else for it would be in that forum in general.

Reorganize our characters into more specific categories - As in, we would reorganize our characters so they would be grouped together as Claymores, Yoma, Humans, and Awakened Beings. The Claymores would have their own subforum for profiles, and the ranked ones would be pinned, and Yoma would have their own subforum, as would ABs and Humans. All profiles that are in need of pending though, would still go with in the Pending Character's Profile Subforum, as would all deceased characters go in Endless Gravestones(the subforum). It just makes things cleaner and maybe even look more professional.

A Music Feature? - Not sure if it's possible or not, but if it is maybe we could add some BG music to the main page? Though my main concern is lagging...

New Forum Skins - AFAIK there is only ONE forum skin on here. I'm not too sure how it could be done(I'm working with an Admin CP in a different forum on Invisionfree, it's still new to me), but designing and adding new skins for members to use when they log in to the forum would be great if possible.


I may add new ideas but this is what I have so far for ideas.

For all the options, I got reminded all the time how little players we have here. The contests would be fine if we had a variety of choices

The slogan would be most important one. I don't even have a way to advertise our site on other forums ;p

Alternative Sub-forum was my selfish request and I didn't dared to ask for it to be moved onto main page ;p

I was thinking about cathegorizing them on the race but it would make it really messy - and considerably we don't have so many Yoma and Awakened beings - if someone has problem locating them, I had made it clear in sub-titles.

I am against automatic music feature and it would be a pain to actually find a good song ;p

The choice of forum skin would be nice - to have either one like that or brighter.

I was thinking about something like Levels - the place where all you have those black heads or something and I have supermoderator, we could have something that indicates our level on this site.

I see it as a blade who acts like container - More red it is on it's blade, the bigger level it is.

Thanks for the praise Kolox. :D
Also thank you SB for the suggestions, they give us cool ideas that can be implemented.

It's to my regret and embarassement to mention that the banner is actually whipped out by Riful's friend in a rush as a temporary banner when it was uploaded onto the forum. Its suppose to be temporary till a cooler and more awesome banner is produced but seems like EG members were not into banner making. I also chose the forum skin for I think that it matches the banner; I'm thinking either go dark skin or light skin. Either will do as long as its not that original lifeless skin that we previously have. :)

With regards to the cbox, I can change the color (limited colors available); size (width and height) and some minor other changes. However, it would be nuked whenever a change is made so it'll be without words again and start from stretch. This, I don't think anyone will mind.

I'm glad that there's a discussion for forum improvement and below are some of my ideas. With have our limitations and it'll be good if everyone or anyone who has some free time help us with the below.

• Banner - If anyone can come up with a banner that can beat Riful friend's workart, we'll definitely use it.
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• Favicon - Favicons are those small icons that will appear when you save a site as a favorite. Instead of the ugly "i" looking icon that we have now, maybe we can come up with something nicer looking favicon.[/strike] (Done)
• As suggested by Kolox, a nice entry to welcome guests is a cool idea. Anyone wants to try to come up with some welcoming lines?
• If we're to enter any competition, our forum should look neat and here's my suggestion. Avatars to be 150 width max as anything larger would shift the forum border lines and make the post looks out of place. (I think...lol my avatar is the smallest...lol...)
• Different forum skins - raised by SB. The problem would be creating forum skins for the current skin is found from some other site (Acknowledgment on the top of the site). The skins also have to match the banner. Hence, banner can be created first or banner and skin can be made together concurrently. (Elcura raised a good point on color of words + CC support. Able to add skins but it's complicated with repercussion, idea dropped)
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• Icon for members and staff - as mentioned by Kolox. Anyone feel like giving it a try? I've been able to make those hence I spent time looking for those black smiley heads and whipped up some temporary icons for the staff.[/strike] (Done)
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• Forum and category descriptions - I sometimes find the words crammed and hard to read. I might "re-describe" the forums if I have the time, to tag the forums clearly for new members navigation.[/strike] (Done)
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• Forum reorganization - Are there any forums that need to be combined or moved? Feel free to suggest![/strike] (Done)

As for the music feature, I'm quite against it for it will not only lag the forum, finding the right music would be a problem too. Invisionfree is a free forum and there are certain times when the forum itself is super lagging. Throw in music and it will take ages to load. I've tested once with the scroll moving words before and it seems like even that lags the forum. Auto music might just lag it even more.

Feel free to suggest or to help in any other way. /thanks

I'm against changing skins to the degree that if we do have multiple skins, they'll have to be a similar style. Meaning black/dark backgrounds and white fonts, this way people don't get boned when using colours (which would be a pain to read on one skin but easy on another). If we add more skins like that, we'll have to stricken colours from posts.

No skin changing please. It hurts really bad.

Alright, the tribe has spoken. No forum skin change it shall be. :D

I just left a line before and after each forum description so as to make the words look not so crammed as before. Might re-write some of the forum descriptions but will do it gradually.

Keep the suggestions and comments coming ya. :)

I'm back from my exams. :P I'll be around daily to check on the forums and will be clearing/updating the forum. Please bear with the changes and inconveniences, /thanks

I'm done with reorganizing and renaming the forum's categories, moving on to handle the other issues below.

1.

Anyone has any suggestions for the cbox and any suggestions for a welcome message?


2.

^I can get the Oscar Awards started again.


3.

With the recent forum merge, I guess the General Discussion Forum can contain any topics under the sky, that includes SOT or rants. (:


4.

^Done. :P
But do let me know if there's a need for any sub forums in the Alternative RPG section. I'm not a frequent there and am unaware what the section needs or lacks. Also, should I create a forum for all the ABs and Yoma characters? We seem to have a handful of them now.


5. Team icons, avatars and favicons.
6. Slogans, advertisements, banners and skins.
I'm still working on points 5 and 6 and am taking all the previous suggestions into consideration. I'll also be dealing with the issues one by one. Please feel free to suggest anything else. /thanks

Hyn's agenda for now

• Skin and Banner. And with the new skin, new cbox that matches the skin color.
• Member Icons