Known forum issues...

[Holy_Diver]

^Oh?

I guess since the image is not even transparent might as well use gif/jpeg

Still this is pretty retarded

[dmpdesign]

Well at the moment it looks really good on my browsers.

[Holy_Diver]

Dunno why, but it seems duller now to me. Still looks good enough. The Som.com logo seems like it could use a whole different angle, but we can live with this I think until someone feels the need to come up with something original. We've never changed the logo in the digitaldevildb.com forums after all this time.... it still uses some pixels we just ripped off an old version of the website

We've discussed it. I think the only way to make a really good logo is to draw/stencil it by hand.

[Holy_Diver]

I just made some symbolic links on the server that make this forum use the source code and themes from the digitaldevildb.com forum. This way I can do work on both forums simultaneously, so whenever one gets an upgrade so does the other.

There are still some cosmetic problems which I intend to take care of today. But everything should work fine, so I thought might as well not keep the forum in maintenance mode all day while I fix some things.

First plus is this forum shouldn't be seeing anymore bots / Todd can stop worrying about screening newly registered users. I will take care of that right now.

After everything is back to normal I will take out the Google crap too.




============================

Btw, do any of you guys have a computer on normal broadband internet that stays on all day? If so I really need someone to setup a YaCy server which would in theory be our new Google (for crawling/indexing website(s))

I have personally just had no luck with YaCy unfortunately. It won't work on my home internet because my ISP blocks incoming ports (not that it would be any use for websites anyway)

And I have a remote Linux server on a family members internet, but YaCy just refuses to setup a "listening port" in that (Debian) environment for some reason. It's not a very well vetted project I think, but people are using/doing good things with it (if you can get it to work) ...probably it is most compatible with Windows.

I think possibly I could set it up on a new host I'm going to lease, but they want to charge 5$ a month to pay for another IP address which is how they somehow handle services requiring unique ports. But I'm not going to pay 5$ just for that I think (if I did go that way I would probably try to go into business indexing peoples sites for them to pay for the diff)

If I spoke German the development community could probably help me figure out what is wrong, but the English YaCy forums are just a black hole. YaCy btw is how we will be searching the internet in the furture. P2P (fuck Google/wannabes) like Seti and Folding @home. You don't have to connect your server up with the "freeworld" p2p network, though it would let YaCy users (mostly/currently Germans) find som.com etc.

[Holy_Diver]

I think everything is fixed for the most part. Except the banner is now taller, and fixing it is not really worth it. I think it's probably time to seriously rethink the SOM graphic

I will try to come up with something. I think it will be necessary to de-emphasize the SOM and just go with something like:

SWORD OF
MOONLIGHT

or:

Sword of
Moonlight

[Holy_Diver]

Here is a preview of a new look for the forum (just tossing it out there)

I'd like some impressions versus the current banner. All that is really on display is the font/placement. The font was the only thing I could find from my combined Photoshop 6 and Corel Draw 8 fonts that appears remotely acceptable. Maybe you guys could do better. It's really a hard space to satisfy I think.

If I can commit to this lettering I will start working some effects magic on it to make it hopefully appear more innocuous in marketing terms.

PS: Sorry for the crap run up, but FF crashed on my first post attempt when I tried to add the attachement... so I'm no longer in a groovy mood


UPDATE: Uploaded a new/final preview...

[Holy_Diver]

I had it looking perfect as it was going to get, and Vista/Photoshop fucking crashes

Why me

[Holy_Diver]

Ok, not quite the same as the original, but a bit more eye catching / what just happened on replay...

New preview/proposal, 2 posts up^

[Holy_Diver]

I have a hard time finding any font that doesn't look ridiculously inappropriate/goofy... but maybe it's just the pool of fonts I have to draw from (mostly fonts shipped with Corel Draw 8 back in the 90s)

It's also hard to make anything not look stupid in the banner space here, but that official SoM graphic is just too good to toss.

So without further adieu here is a general shape of a replacement I threw together... just to get impressions (versus what we have so far)

[Holy_Diver]

I went ahead and uploaded the new banner graphic (proposal)

I hope everyone likes it. It goes well with the general look/feel already established by the SMF theme.

If everyone agrees this is an improvement the only prob is the official som logo stands out like a sore thumb next to this one, so I guess I will/would have to rework it somehow

Or make the banner one line and just remove the logo???