Wow! After many, many hours of hammering away I'm proud to present the latest iteration of Elektron-Users.com. Revising the site has been such a major undertaking, and it wouldn't have been possible without the help of a few select people who I’d like to thank:
Jon Mårtensson from Elektron – his support, encouragement and feedback from the beginning and throughout this project have been indispensable.
Thomas Ekelund from Elektron – his aesthetic sensibilities, graphic contributions, and feedback were a great help...he's a graphics badass.
Matthew Dye – the database master…without his help I would still be trying to migrate the old data onto the new site...and he did it all while enjoying some special beverages
(thanks also to Papertiger for being a sounding board and text editor in drunken times)
Ok, so what's new? Everything! ...well, everything but the old data – but that's a good thing. Here's the break down:
Logo: New logo, new site favicon. Both influenced by early eighties gaming and the graphic sensibilities of that era. I found out later from Jon that Daniel was also a big fan of early eighties video games and was influenced by and drew inspiration from them.
Main Navigation: The new navigation has been streamlined to focus on the heart of the site: Home, Forum, Science Lab, and Files. We've eliminated the 'Infobank' as it was never used during its 1 year lifespan. Radio and Members, which is now called ‘User List’, have both been moved to the lower right side navigation. ‘User List’ appears under ‘User Menu.’ If you can’t see the User Menu, it’s because you’re not logged in.
Right Side Navigation: Pretty self-explanatory. User Menu, has a couple new additions: Show Latest Posts, User List.
Home Page: Sweet new welcome graphic from Thomas.
Forum: Lots of changes here. Most importantly it's pretty damn bug free (I have yet to find any bugs...I said, yet!). Many subtle features to enjoy. Let's dig in...
- Announcements: I can now make announcements for all to see. This feature will be very convenient for such things as Science Lab deadlines, Polling, site news, etc.
- Forum Tools: Once you click on a category, you'll see we now have 'Forum Tools' under which you’ll find a plethora of handy features, such as "Show Latest Posts" (lots of requests for that one). Enjoy!
- PMs/Personal Messages: You can now directly send Personal Messages/PMs or view user information by just clicking on a user name. You will be sent an email every time you receive a personal message. You can check your message via the User Menu/Inbox.
- Subscribe/Favorite: At the bottom of a thread you have the option to ‘Subscribe’ to or ‘Favorite’ a thread. Additionally, in your 'Forum Profile' you can edit your Subscriptions and Favorites.
- Quick Reply: actually works now
- Avatars: We have employed a system wide default image. Any registered user can upload an avatar of their choosing by going to: User Menu (right side), My Avatar. New size limit is 155x75px - 500kb. Smaller graphics are acceptable.
...there is a little bug when you submit a new avatar. In between confirming your submission the window width breaks. Ten seconds later the page will reset.
- Signatures: Pictures will no longer be allowed – text only! I have tried to post some clear examples to help everyone, so check them out when updating your Forum Profile.
- Images in posts: The old site would truncate any image that was larger then the width of the message window. This limit frustrated many users so I have revised the width restrictions.
Uploading: If you're choosing to use the ‘Upload a photo’ feature, it will prohibit you from submitting an image of 490px or larger.
Linking: Now users can use the [img="width"] tag. This means each user can now control the width appearance of their links! 490px wide is the largest a linked image can be before it starts breaking the width allotted for the message window. If you upload an image larger than 490px, it will just make that thread have horizontal scrolling. I strongly encourage users to only post links that are smaller than 490px, so that site can maintain its overall aesthetic.
- Ranking: I've increase the ranking from 5 categories to 10. The size of the community has grown considerably and so have the number of user posts. To accommodate these increases, we now have an additional 5 ranks. I've also changed the rank names – influenced by Nintendo. You can view my source of inspiration HERE
Science Labs: New graphic and overall look. One asset of Xoops was great polling. The new Polling system is a bit cruder but will suffice for our purpose. Science Lab's Radio is gone. It was a pain in the ass to administer. From now on, user submissions will directly link to the file. You can preview or download there.
Files: New graphic, completely redone. Our old ‘Downloads’ categories had gotten really confusing and convoluted. We've tried our best to simplify the categories. The new Files system allows for previewing files and has loads more user management options.
Unfortunately, there's no more commenting on files...but that was broken in Xoops anyway. In the future I'm going to work on adding voting and comments to the Files section. Soon...
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That's about it for now. There are many more subtle changes but the ones I’ve listed above are the big ones. The biggest focus in this revision was eliminating bugs and finding a good software environment in which Elektron-Users would be secure and have room for growth. We have much more in store for the future. With 3 years behind us we have a greater sense of purpose for the site and have refined the new version in accordance with experience. There're many great things to come...I hope you enjoy the ride!
I have tried in my development environment to test and flex the site, but there's bound to be bugs and issues. Post all bugs and issues here. Please note what you were doing and what browser so I can try to recreate. I will try to get around to issues as they arise but I can't promise a timeframe. So hold tight...
Lastly, I tried to accommodate Internet Explorer 6 and 7 users, but I can’t offer support or guarantee the site in either version of the browser. Firefox and/or Safari are preferred.
/actuel
