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Oops! Sorry Kura, here's where I've tested it to make sure it wasn't an issue with the code itself.
lorsynth.boards.net/

I've tried resetting all templates to default and testing the new boards, no luck, also reset the css and turned off all the plugins. Thanks for the 9% tip off, I'll tinker with that one now. <3 Appreciate the help!
last edit on Jan 25, 2019 20:42:15 GMT by Lorsynth
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felthsheart.forums.net/board/50

So I've been working on a board remodel for my forum, which works absolutely perfectly on my testing site, but for some reason when I try and put it onto my current forum everything goes crazy. I've tried resetting my other templates to default (To try find which area might have had the issue) and disabled all my plugins, the issue still persists though and I'm at a loss.
last edit on Jan 25, 2019 10:17:55 GMT by Lorsynth
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Site name and link: felthsheart.forums.net/
Site genre: Organic Sci-Fi, Apocalyptic/Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopia
Opening date/expected opening date: Just opened, finishing late next month.
Site info:
Felth is a world greatly separated from our own, thriving with alien culture & landscapes of a different evolutionary path. A fetid and highly polluted planet covered in fungi, anthozoa, parasites and symbiotes. Nevertheless; Felth's surface and water dwellers are thriving and many races both native and alien have found their own little home and niche here, the diversity of which has transformed Felth's landscapes & cityscapes like no other planet before.

My name: Lorsynth
Contact info: Discord or Here! Lorsynth#8776
My staffing experience: Ran a forum for 4-5 Years back in the early 2000s, moderated on six others over time for short periods.
My abilities:
Art, coding, skinning.
My disabilities:
Socially awkward, over thinker.
Positions hiring for: 1.Moderator, 2.Fun Organiser, 3.Advertiser, 4.Mini RP Admin, 5.Admin
Information about position 1:
Just a general second hand to help me roam around the forum, answer any questions and bubble around in the social chats to encourage enthusiasm for the project.
Information about position 2:
Organising games, short roleplay events, writing contests, lore quizzes & other generally fun and engaging things.
Information about position 3:
I hate advertising. All you'd have to do is keep a document of all the places you advertise and affiliate with anyone our standards enable. (We're only starting out, we won't be able to advertise if they expect high activity)
This job will also be paid for, not much but still something. $0.25c an ad, $1.00 and affiliate and $2.00 for any voting site listings. It all adds up. Get it? ad, adds.

Information about position 4:
The basic idea behind this is that I have an area within my forum dedicated to RPs that don't match the current theme. More or less it's an area we planned to have our own mini games on like warrior cats, fantasy animals, animanga fantasies etc. We'd absolutely love for some people to come in with some RP ideas, let us code you up a dedicated area, and you moderate it and treat it like your own mini-forum. I can even help sort out personal affiliates and ads.


Information about position 5:
I'm in desperate need of a small team to help me with the harder areas of forum management, keeping rules up to date, organising events, checking out profiles, managing staff run features, maintaining member behaviour etc. The forum is very complex, we use a lot of dice rolls and random generators, lots of stuff that needs strict admin supervision. I'm confident in handling it on my own for the next few months but as our member base grows I will desperately need some help beyond standard moderation.

Other notes:
You have to put up with my poor humour and overzealous juvenile enthusiasm for the arts.
last edit on Feb 12, 2019 5:14:17 GMT by Lorsynth
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I have to admit, when it comes to a keen eye for good design I'm pretty lacking, there are so many talented people here I just feel out of place, haha! I have this application sheet I've designed but besides being loaded with juicy info the overall aesthetics are pretty lackluster, and it'd probably look better wider and more streamlined. I'd love if it could all fit length wise with an overflow for height, but I'll leave that up to you with a better eye for design, haha.

This is the current app

felthsheart.forums.net/thread/7/sirysian-character-application

And thank you so much for any help! (I'm happy to pay for the time, too)

Design wise, I'm thinking something a little like this:

last edit on Jan 22, 2019 8:09:22 GMT by Lorsynth
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it was never going to be the full skin but I got attached to it and went with it, I ended up putting a lot more effort into it then I intended though
you say that like it's a bad thing lol. Honestly, when I first saw the site, I could immediately tell that you put in a lot of effort. Skinning/designing is not easy by any means at all.

I see you're considering doing a complete reskin so I'm actually going to try to dissuade you from doing so unless you really want to because of a specific reason.

Disclaimer: I don't play tabletop rpgs and my advice is just based on what I know second-hand, sorry.

I agree that the overall aesthetic, while not my personal cup of tea, is really reminiscent of tabletop games. So if you are aiming to get members who like those kinds of things, it works. It is an aesthetic that appeals to your intended audience and is familiar to them at a glance. I don't think you need to do a complete overhaul on the design at all because of this but changing just only a few elements can vastly improve things.

There are a whole lot of information going on for the eyes all at once everywhere. Could it be neater? Yeah. BUT from what I know of the gaming community that enjoys this type of aesthetic is that they generally like having as much necessary information upfront as possible and a lot of them seem to prefer function over clean design as well. It's one of the reasons why a lot of mmos tend to have that same """clunky""" look to them. I personally do not like that general look tabletop rpgs and mmos have at all but I don't know if you should scrap everything and go for a "cleaner" look. It MIGHT actually be detrimental to attracting fellow tabletop rpg nerds. Keep in mind that a lot of members on PP like myself probably prefer a less heavily stylized and more stream-lined type of site but I don't think most of us are your intended audience. As a result, I am hesitant to suggest any design changes other than what I mention below. 

I like the vertical boards. I think they're very unique and interesting but for the width you've chosen, they aren't very good for paragraph text. If you keep them, I suggest either keeping the board description REALLY short/non-existent or go with a bullet points. If you want to keep the info as it is, then I highly recommend adjusting the width so it's wider. It's hard to read a block of text that's only 3 words a line.

Like for the market and residential boards, maybe change the width so each individual one is as wide as the space the two of them currently take up side-by-side then move the other board below the first. From a glance, it is the only design issue that impacts readability.

Font and text-color wise, it's fine for readability. For the actual font itself, this may be too much of my own personal tastes coming in here but I think it might be best if you choose a different font since this might even turn off your core audience. I don't think it is the right font to use for your cool post-apocalyptic super alien world as it does nothing to add to the overall alien mood and tabletop look. I feel like it takes away from it by making it less serious and more amateur. Even the designer poked fun at his creation by saying the name means “not knowing how to create fonts right” in its description.

For the green borders, it really is harsh on the eyes. I tend to keep my screen brightness on the dimmer side and it's still pretty popping. I like the added glowing effect it does to that green crystal-organ thing in the forum's footer image but having it everywhere else is a bit much. If you like green borders, I would suggest choosing a less saturated/darker green. That way it's easier on the eyes and doesn't clash as much.

Alternatively, you can try changing from green to one of the other colors you used for the skin so it looks more harmonious.

The overall world is super interesting and I am just amazed at the amount of effort you put in and how you're even so willing to do a complete reskin for your site if necessary. It's extremely admirable! I know how hard skinning can be. I don't know of any other potential problems you need to look out for just glancing at the info and stuff.

Oh, and in terms of gaining members, I suggest you remember to advertise in places dedicated to tabletop gaming as you're more likely to find members there. Maybe posting about it on Reddit in the right subreddit if you haven't considered that already. I know that there is a big community of tabletop rpgs fans there that would probably be interested in joining. I can't point to any particular subreddit because that's as far as I know.

Good luck with your site! I hope it does well. Sorry for so much text or if it but I hope at least some of my advice is useful/relevant to you. I genuinely want to see you succeed so I guess I may have rambled on too much as a result. haha
Oh gosh, thank you for the awesome review! Lots of good stuff in here. I did decide on a reskin but it's planned for much later in the year to give me an opportunity to work on and improve anything that we notice to be an issue or not quite seamless over the next few months. I'm also definitely going to redo the category area, it was my first attempt at a multi table layout and it worked out pretty poorly, I've learned a lot since then, so once I streamline that I'll be making the long side images wider so they don't look so awkward with their descriptions.

The font is actually the third one I've tested, I always seem to get some dispute with them and I can't find a decent font that really fits the forum. I might eventually just make my own custom font but beyond that I have no idea what font to use. 

Thank you for all the wonderful feedback, you've soothed a lot of my nerves about the layout, and I've had a few people lately join the discord and they're just as positive about all the content, despite it being a bit in your face. When I do the re-skin I'll remove the side tables, I actually have a semi planned layout set up. Animated buttons and sounds when players click/hover, more like a game interface. prntscr.com/m8btrc

I'm definitely going to fix up all that green, but I'll leave that again for the reskin, it's a bit of a pain to go back and edit it out of all the images so I'll have to let players know it's planned but not for a bit. I get a lot of mixed feedback for it, some people love it, a lot of people don't. <3

Thank you again for all the wonderful feedback, and I'll definitely look into reddit. I hadn't actually considered reaching out to table top gamers, I'm so used to going about it just by posting ads on other forums, but it might be a great way to bring in the hard-core players. <3


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I posted this idea to another forum a little while back, figured I'd shove it up here too.

I'll make it pretty if it gets any traction, but I love aliens, giant alien plants, cute alien monsters and pets and HARDCORE SURVIVAL.

I’m always a big fan of survival games and it’s something I’ve wanted to do for quite a while but I’m not so sure how well it’d work as an rp, since most of the ones I do find tend to die pretty quickly compared to other rps.

It’d probably be alien themed so I could include some gnarly looking monsters and aliens pets, could probably involve genetic mutation, parasite alien babies or 'mind control' for a zombie-esque feel among survivors and plenty of stats and dice roll events and conflicts. I’m also a big lore junkie so the world would have plenty of juicy detail.

I love survival inventories so I’d definitely spend some time on items and the like. Though it might be more geared towards personal rp than a complete stat system. (Or it’ll be a moderated stat system.)

Not much of a sales pitch yet so I’ll spend some time and invest in the idea over the weekend, but wanted to get it out there and see if there was any interest for something like this first.

I also already have this theme, I decided against using it for my own forum but it could definitely be tweaked to look sufficiently end of worldy. Though if I took this on I'd probably make something new for it.

If random encounters where handled well by moderators it might also force players into grouping up on a larger scale, for two or three players if a random encounter was a bus full of alien zombies then they'd probably get eaten alive. Could set up special boards/open locations where these happen often and then safehouses for people to rp on smaller scales without threat.

Might also be interesting to have a safe house hoard too, items collected out in the open areas are brought back for the entire team, and the team can decide how to use them to upgrade things like defences or weaponry. It'd also mean players would have to strategise amongst each-other and group leaders before the start rping in open areas.

Another bonus too would be moderators have large power over rp sway, so it'll be harder for players to predict how all their characters will interact and what they'll do.


last edit on Jan 17, 2019 8:31:37 GMT by Lorsynth
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I saw the new HTTYD movie and it really solidified an idea for me. I've been wanting to start up a casual HTTYD rp for quite a while now, close to a year really, but I've been busy with other projects and not really had the time for it. Though thinking about it more seriously I'm pretty sure I could manage it. I was sort of held back for lack of ideas that didn't involve the cannon characters, but the movie obviously gave me some inspiration for it.

So it's no secret I'm obsessed with fungus and seeing some of the darn beautiful aesthetics of the hidden world I just couldn't resist trying to come up with a setting to match. Lots of really crazy locations, fungi, coral, luminescence, cannon and new dragons. Probably wouldn't have some grand plot, just lots of little nooks to rp in, and fun things to interact with. I'd probably throw in a bit of an item based trade system among players for things like dragon armour, but nothing major and probably not anything that really effects the rp. I'd gear it towards a lot of player based site-wide & group plots, and tweak the world as they progress things in whichever direction they like.

HELMVALE
(Working title, please suggest)

A village is raided.
Survivors drift out to sea.
Horrifying waterfall swallows them up.
People who didn't die establish a new homestead further in.
(Probable somewhere hidden, like a giant multi leveled plateau of fungi climbing up a cavernous wall of tunnels. Perfect for early settlers to avoid attracting the attention of dragons.)
Befriend Dragons . ? ? ? . Profit

I'll flesh this out slowly, but I'd love to see how many people would be interested in something like this!


last edit on Jan 13, 2019 7:49:40 GMT by Lorsynth
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I've also been told all that green is overbearing and hard on the eyes
The site's aesthetic, at least to me, feels a lot like a classic tabletop or something. It's not super clean, some images appear way too sharp and there is a bit of clutter, but it feels incredibly stylized and I think that can be a really good and charming quality. A complete overhaul on the look probably wouldn't ever be necessary, unless you REALLY wanted to take that route.

That said, the green - not necessarily the color, but the sheer amount and the BOLDNESS of it all - can certainly be a bit too much. Most of the greens are fine, and far from problematic; however, I'd say that all the areas with the thick green borders can be cleaned up and it would probably vastly improve the look. That's just my take though.

Really digging the effort put into this either way.
Thank you! I'm definitely gunning for that feel.

The whole forum is actually really really rough, it was never going to be the full skin but I got attached to it and went with it, I ended up putting a lot more effort into it then I intended though, and now it all feels too slapped together. The art up top was actually my second go at sorting out a more streamlined design, but again I tried a lot of new stuff with it and I could do a much better job of it if I gave it another go. 

The green borders are definitely getting the sack, was sort of okay but I have to admit it does make it all a bit much on the eyes. 
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HOLY SHIT THIS IS BEAUTIFUL.

Seriously, it's obvious the amount of work you guys have put into this site. Just looking at the preview forum online is mind-bogglingly beautiful. Are the images all pixel work? Plus I adore the consistent and just, really cool aesthetic.

I will definitely keep an eye on this. This is an ambitious project for sure, but considering the effort put into it already, I have a feeling it'll be a success. The world, too, seems very original and exciting.

EDIT: The only thing I would say is that the amount of tables and links makes everything look crazy busy and confusing. Maybe find some way to streamline the formatting of the forum for easy navigation & readability?
Thank you so much! Gosh, I really hope it does well, for all the effort that's gone into it. Haha! I've actually done most of it on my own over the last year and now that it's almost finished I'm really tempted to scrap the skin completely and go with something cleaner. A lot of the design was planned when there wasn't much info going into it, so I got away with all the clunky boxes. Now though there's just so much going on, I could even redesign a lot of the art since I'm finding I've got a lot of wasted space, especially the front page banner. (Not to mention, I've learned a lot about coding since I started!)

I've also been told all that green is overbearing and hard on the eyes, so I wouldn't mind getting rid of that, it's a 50/50 decision though, since it'd mean even more time before I actually open up for people to rp.  x_x

(Honestly, if I had extra income I'd probably take the time to make every single box a fully painted image, so the site looks and acts like an interactive game interface instead of a forum. I love interfaces. SO. Much. Sort of like these:)


last edit on Jan 2, 2019 7:20:53 GMT by Lorsynth
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Could probably move this to reviews instead. :S
Considering a complete reskin, there's lots to be desired from the one that's up now, but I'm really 50/50
What kind of features would you like to see?
Does the world interest you?
What do you think of the overall look, do visual issues cause any problems for you? Would you consider the forum more with an easy read version (low sat images, light theme, dark large standard font etc)
What do you anticipate going really wrong? Or really right?
Felth
Felth of the Adeous Cluster; a post-apocalyptic planet many centuries rebuilt, now a fetid and highly polluted world covered in fungi, anthozoa, carnivorous and symbiotic plants. Surrounded by a swathe of postapoc dead satellites, debris and ship wreckage Felth is considered the garbage heap of the solar system, heavily stigmatized and cut off from the local inhabited planets. Nevertheless, Felth's surface and water dwellers are thriving and many cultures both native and alien have found their own little home and niche here, the diversity of which has transformed Felth's landscapes and cityscapes like no other planet before.




Basically it's a moderators nightmare. Felth is supposed to be 'sort of' like a forum-based tabletop rpg. It has stats, skills, dice rolls, fights, inventories and a trove of lore. It's a really big test for us with a world-space we've been developing for over five years now, we're hoping to run it for six months as a bit of a beta to iron out an faults or inconsistencies in the system before we invest some money into making it a fully automated, possibly client-based game.

Lore wise, it's a planet that's rebuilt itself after an apocalyptic event over hundreds of years. The event caused the extinction or mutation of pretty much everything on its surface so now it's a world of fungi, giant bugs, semi dinosaurs and many many symbiotic or parasitic things. The same goes for the tech of the races you can play. Everything is technically made from living plants, so your computer is alive, your car is alive, that stop light is alive etc. You can check out more of the lore stuff in the game guide, things are being added there every day as we work, some of the tabs are empty but there's still some substantial chunks up and running.

I'm basically trying to set it up barebones, I don't have much time to code elaborate systems yet and would rather have some funding for it later on so right now everything is run through moderation. Clunky, awkward and time-consuming but as long as it works I don't mind. Again, I'd like to redo the entire system in six months time, by then I should know exactly how everything should work so I can safely develop any automated services without having to go back and tweak them too much. (Saves me a lot of annoying coding trial and error, too).

I'm going to run through some of the systems here soon and see what you guys think about them, this post will be pretty rough but I'll smooth it out as I go.

Houses, Pets, Fighting, Random Encounters, Inventories, Shops, Multiple Currencies, Basics Economics, Many Many Items, Group-Based Upgrades & Expansions (to the forum and to rp locations) Cooking, Crafting, Farming, Fishing, Gathering, Many Unique Races, Many Locations, Huge World Map, Tons of Lore, PvP, Contests.
last edit on Jan 17, 2019 23:49:10 GMT by Lorsynth