IMPROVEMENTS!

[takyoji]

[Anónimo Juan]

There could be a shout box, ya'know, it's easier for new people that way.

[Lycanthrope]

The number of posts shown in the users profile is often incorrect. Could that be fixed?

[Midnight]

Lycanthrope, I think that's deliberate... posts made in the "forum games" section (or whatever it's called) aren't counted towards your post count.

[Wulfur]

You touch our emoticons other than adding more you will suffer!

[Berserker]

I don't think the main page needs improvements so much as completion. I mean, one of the sections that is complete ("How to Join") has spelling errors. "Packwere" is pretty much unnecessary at this point; pack merchandise doesn't seem likely to come to fruition. Then of course, there's "Local Chapters," "The Pack Alphas," and "Links," which are all in limbo. Not to be one of those guys who complains and does nothing, but these sections can't be that difficult to finish. I mean toss two hours towards it and call it a day.

If not, it would be better to ditch the front of the site completely and just have a simplistic gateway page leading directly to these forums.

[takyoji]

The homepage and such wasn't my work, and I'm even unaware of who even made it, and it's been like that for more than a year or two from what I know. I think a lot more could be done, and have it text-based rather than being in an image. I'm considering on just remaking with a completely different layout and perhaps along side with some new things, like a news section for example.

Of course it could be completed; however, I don't have the source document (most likely .psd) that was used to make it thus I can't exactly edit it. And besides, I'd be for making it better and much different. I just simply need ideas on what things could be added so that it doesn't just end up being a bunch of plain pages that'll probably rarely ever be read.

[Berserker]

I think it would be best to just have a gateway "click here to enter" page that goes straight to these forums until the overhauled site is complete.

Maintaining a "werewolf news" section would be difficult and hard to keep up to date given the obscurity of the topic, but its always a possibility. Otherwise, I believe the final front page should be simplistic, with standard sections like "Site News," "Introduction," "Links," "Chat," an "About Freeborn" page with a link to AB's site, and of course, this board. Honestly I think this forum should be 99% of the reason to come here. It's a great community that practically advertises its function to visitors. All of the content and interactivity is centralized here; too much else seems superfluous in my opinion.

I'm working on some flyers to leave around to generate interest in Freeborn and The Pack, but I hate to think of some newbie checking out the site and being disappointed by dead pages. No offense of course.

[Berserker]

Its been over a month. Has there been any progress on the site?

[takyoji]

Its been over a month. Has there been any progress on the site?

Maul me with a messy shoe, I haven't been able to keep up with all my work. Otherwise the whole IRC PackChat is near completion (still awaiting Lupin to get the web client to do what we want it to...) But when I have less of a work load (if ever) I will go ahead with the forum upgrade and the rest of the changes/improvements. No, I'm not lazy I'm just insanely busy like everyone else has been.

[Midnight]

"Report this post to the moderation panel" (or similar) buttons might be a useful idea...

makes growly snarly sort of noises at the porn spammer that's just defecated on the video games forum

[takyoji]

"Report this post to the moderation panel" (or similar) buttons might be a useful idea...

makes growly snarly sort of noises at the p*** spammer that's just defecated on the video games forum

Yep, that's one of the features we'll have once the forum is upgraded. And luckily the upgrade will hopefully be done within this week since I'm near completion on the new layout.

[Howlitzer]

I think there should be a "Smite" button next to every user's Avatar.

What this button does, and just how useful and satisfying its function is....is up to you.

[outwarddoodles]

This is definitely a topic worth while.

I always enter the forums through the front page, and I've felt rather disapointed by the unfinished state the website has remained in ever since it's first conception.

I totally support:

A New layout. Yes. Yes.

News. Admins/Moderators should have access to post on the news section on the front page. This section section should include information about updates and events in the forum. It should also inform about new werewolf related books, movies, documentaries, games, Pack meets, etc. (Looking for the information for the news section would not be required -- all news would come from here, of course, from our informed posters.) I also support the idea of posting interesting finds, such as sculptures and posters, regardless if they're new or not.

Pack Gallery: What happened to it?! I believe the gallery is a great feature to our site, and very appealing to visiting werewolf enthusiasts.

Multimedia: Book and movie reviews. Links to werewolf related art and music. Quotes and/or historical data. Also: Poems and Stories from our pack members.

Links: Obligatory.

Chat: Obligatory.

Another idea I've been fiddling around with is an 'articles section.' This would include muses preferably from our own pack members about the history, nature, and science about werewolves. These would preferably be informative and interesting reads for visiting werewolf fans.

I realize my idealistic plans for a perfect werewolf forum would include a lot of work -- and preferably cutting off close ties with Freeborn past an "about page" with The Packs history and so forth. If this is too much work or seemingly imposible, then I personally MUCH prefer the option of having the domain directly linking to the forum -- or a simple news page for website/forum news, and an easily accessible link to the forum and chat below.

Thoughts anyone?

[takyoji]

This is definitely a topic worth while.

I always enter the forums through the front page, and I've felt rather disapointed by the unfinished state the website has remained in ever since it's first conception.

I totally support:

A New layout. Yes. Yes.

News. Admins/Moderators should have access to post on the news section on the front page. This section section should include information about updates and events in the forum. It should also inform about new werewolf related books, movies, documentaries, games, Pack meets, etc. (Looking for the information for the news section would not be required -- all news would come from here, of course, from our informed posters.) I also support the idea of posting interesting finds, such as sculptures and posters, regardless if they're new or not.

Pack Gallery: What happened to it?! I believe the gallery is a great feature to our site, and very appealing to visiting werewolf enthusiasts.

Multimedia: Book and movie reviews. Links to werewolf related art and music. Quotes and/or historical data. Also: Poems and Stories from our pack members.

Links: Obligatory.

Chat: Obligatory.

Another idea I've been fiddling around with is an 'articles section.' This would include muses preferably from our own pack members about the history, nature, and science about werewolves. These would preferably be informative and interesting reads for visiting werewolf fans.

I realize my idealistic plans for a perfect werewolf forum would include a lot of work -- and preferably cutting off close ties with Freeborn past an "about page" with The Packs history and so forth. If this is too much work or seemingly imposible, then I personally MUCH prefer the option of having the domain directly linking to the forum -- or a simple news page for website/forum news, and an easily accessible link to the forum and chat below.

Thoughts anyone?

Otherwise I pretty much completely agree. I'd love to have more content on this website especially that the content will help us get higher in search engine results (if done correctly). As for the chat, we're working on getting an web-based client for our IRC channel which will be better and of which will use basic authentication. As for the disappearance of the gallery, it was getting plastered with spam (as I haven't written an anti-spam solution for it yet) but apparently someone wiped it off the website completely since I didn't get to that in time.

As for the whole redesign thing, I'm under the process of writing a special program that'll help make a control panel for things like this so that it'll be easier to manage. Thus when I'm done writing that, I'll be able to write a basic software solution to manage the rest of the website. Additionally I'm thinking we could potentially have a little contest where members of The Packs Den could work on creating a new web design for the rest of the website, however I think we'll probably have that just a little long term (not like something that would only run for 2 weeks, thus it would allow more people to help with it potentially).

As for multimedia, hopefully anything we can find will have loose licensing to it so that we'd be able to have it on our website. As for the articles idea, I completely agree with that as well. That'll also help get more content, and more things people can look/read through. By the end of the whole design, The Packs Den would probably become a rather massive website considering we'll practically be providing everything we can.

Also, there was an idea in the beginning of running an online store system for "Packwere" which would basically be merchandise people could buy from the website. I just don't know of where the idea has gone, but otherwise I'd be able to write a store system for that as well considering that my current job is as an online store software developer (I'm actually working on writing a free open-source online store software now and then as well currently). So if that becomes a big hit, we may actually be able to expand on our server charges thus having more resources available without it getting too busy if we ever get a spike of new users.

But YES! I'm ALWAYS on the insight of improvement. So I'd be glad to do a handful of this on my spare time.

[outwarddoodles]

I thought the same thing when it came to the "design contest" idea. Added new content to the website will be a great way to encourage participation from Pack Members in new, creative discussions, instead of complaining that we're 'already discussed everything' or 'been there, done that.'

Also, about the PackWere: There were T-shirts designed once upon a time. We also have necklaces and ID cards.

[Scott Gardener]

I'd love a blog, preferably one that gave us the option of sharing with non-Pack-members versus Pack members only. Blogs would make it easier for us to know about goings-ons in each others' lives.

[Spongy]

How about making it so that the Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, etc crawlers/bots don't show up in the "active user" thing at the bottom? Those annoy me.

[outwarddoodles]

I'd love a blog, preferably one that gave us the option of sharing with non-Pack-members versus Pack members only. Blogs would make it easier for us to know about goings-ons in each others' lives.

I'm personally not into blogs, but I know there are several packmembers here who are. You could always try creating an official The Pack livejournal?

[takyoji]

I'd love a blog, preferably one that gave us the option of sharing with non-Pack-members versus Pack members only. Blogs would make it easier for us to know about goings-ons in each others' lives.

I'm personally not into blogs, but I know there are several packmembers here who are. You could always try creating an official The Pack livejournal?

A blog is mostly meant for a specific individual, a news section would be something for a whole company. So we could pretty much have a combination of both.

[Midnight]

I know there's a couple of the Pack on Live Journal (at least, that I've managed to find and add to my "friends list"). Live Journal allows users to create "communities" for users to join, and to have several different levels of restriction on the content they post themselves (everything from "the whole world can see this" to "nobody else can see this except the actual site administrators") and users can create custom groups of people allowed to see posts on various subjects.

I probably wouldn't get an additional blog here (I'm finding it hard enough to find material to keep my Live Journal running, let alone start up a serious blog) but would be interested in reading blogs if other people here (most of whom have more interesting lives than mine!) set them up.

[takyoji]

I've just been hit with a rather interesting idea. It's mainly based on allowing writers to post their short werewolf-related stories on the website. However, the twist to it is that it'll have:

• A decent online editor that can be used for writing stories which will have the same features as your usual text document writing program.
• It'll have nightly backups (so if you're a writer, and you don't want to lose all your work that you've written electronically, it'll be automatically backed up every night on other servers of ours).
• It'll help with the preproduction of writing, such as planning out the basic storyline and characters.
• It'll have a built-in license chooser that you'll be able to compare between which licenses you'd like to publish your work electronically under (i.e. full copyright, Creative Commons, etc).
• It'll be linked to your forum account. Thus anyone who has a forum account will have access to it by default. I understand it sounds silly to make such a service that barely anyone will use, but still, it'll be a handy resource that the local writers can use on this forum.
• It'll mainly be geared towards short stories and something that will be publicly published electronically since we wouldn't want to be taken to court if hell breaks lose and someone broke into the user's account and stole their work. However the software itself would be completely able to work with long stories
• It'll allow you to view/edit basic notes you have while you're writing, such as an outline or character description
• Could be used for collaborative writing

It's just a general idea. I'm not guaranteeing it will be made, but it's simply a suggestion and I wanted to run it by the public first before I do anything. Also, this will probably be something I'll work on in a couple months from now, it's not necessarily a top priority thing since there are other things I have to finish on this forum yet beforehand. Last of all, it might be something that would either barely take much time, or take a long time. We'll see.

[Midnight]

I've just had my first go at reporting spam posts with your report tool, and while it seems to work all right, there's a bit of an issue with the size of the screen... maximised, on an 1152x864 monitor resolution, I still have to use the scroll bar to go to the right hand side of the drop down list.

[takyoji]

Here's the ideas built up throughout this thread:

• News section
• Blog section (or allow each member to have their own blog)
• Shoutbox (might be another thing to be spammed IMO. Otherwise registered users would only be able to use it)
• Online store (discredited once)
• AJAX IRC client instead of the Java client (this a WIP though. Nobody's going to stop me from doing this. xP)
• Reviews of multimedia, for werewolf-related books/movies
• Resurrect the gallery, or otherwise start a new one if a backup isn't found
• A Frappr-like map only accessible/editable by members which would NOT be hosted on Frappr and would be linked to the forum account
• A short story writing tool (low priority)

Again, feel free to suggest more things and/or disprove of certain ideas. Also, please help elaborate some details on some of these ideas. For example "the shoutbox could only be usable by registered users" or "Allow people to write their personal comments about a movie and it's review". Come on now, I need more details before I can do anything. And I'm certain there's others here that have ideas that they haven't shared yet.

[Berserker]

When a website redesign is ready, I don't think all of those features should also be ready all at once. That would slow down deployment. Start off with the easiest and most critical sections (Site News, About Us, Links) and then add features one at a time.

We also need to consider just what the purpose of this site is supposed to be. A resource about werewolves? A community for werewolf fans? The latter would desire a shoutbox, blog page, and whatnot, and the former wouldn't.

I also think a single "Articles and Reviews" page would be better than a blog page and a separate review page. People are more inclined to look for and read well-written articles than someone's random blog posts. There are plenty of writers here (myself included) who can submit a new article weekly.