The Wizarding Realm

[Albus]

The Wizarding Realm - An alternative Harry Potter Community!

Greetings, I've recently assembled a Harry Potter forum designed to primarily support the posting of fanfics and fanart, as well as the playing of RPG games. While we do have general discussions forums, they aren't focus of the board. We do allow more mature fanfiction and fanart to be posted, however, you will need to acquire a paid subscription to those forums. This is the only way we can be relatively sure you are of age, or have the consent of a parent or guardian. All other fanfics and fanart must be suitable for general audiences. The skin and layout have been totally customized and has several nice features that make it unique.

Please visit us at The Wizarding Realm!

http://www.wizardingrealm.com

I await your comments!

[AN-net]

if you want a successful site i suggest you great rid of that extremely large background and lessen the graphics a little cause it took me a at least a minute and a half to load it which is unacceptable for any page.

the look of it is nice but i think loading time is much more significant that its look;)

[Albus]

if you want a successful site i suggest you great rid of that extremely large background and lessen the graphics a little cause it took me a at least a minute and a half to load it which is unacceptable for any page.

the look of it is nice but i think loading time is much more significant that its look;)
Thanks for the input. I will remove the background if it becomes a problem. I do apologize, however, my network is being heavily indexed right now (I own my own servers), and the whole thing has slowed to a crawl right now. It is usually very fast. It took almost three minutes to load your reply. It should resolve soon though. Bandwidth isn't an issue, I host a great many sites.

[AN-net]

oh if it is a server problem then i apologize but i thought it may have been the graphics;)

[Albus]

No problem. Actually, the original idea didn't include a bg image at all, but it's not that big, just tiled. I host a good number of sites, both paid for, and as a favor. One of them is an image site (http://starletrealm.com) and has frequent large uploads/downloads at peak times. The owner is looking for a more dedicated solution though, so once that's off, the network will be back to it's normal self.

[msimplay]

graphics are ok once they are cached

[Tony G]

Very slow loading. You'll have to remove images, or just get a better server.

Generally, the style is great. I like how you have house points and such too. How do they work? :)

I suggest you work on building your community up now. :)

[Albus]

I plan to. My wife is expecting any day now though, so a few things may get put on the back burner. :)

[Albus]

Oh and the house point things is just a simple hack to index.php, an adjustment to FORUMHOME, and a new template. Basically, it sums reputation for all users in certain groups and just spits them out. If you need code samples, email me.

[Albus]

I've optimized my images and reduced their size to a third of what they were. I took stock of their initial sizes and they were, in fact, fairly large. It should now be within an acceptable range. Speed will be better too once I get the hosted sites off my server. Anybody care to return to the site and review speed for me? Thanks!

[Tony G]

Alot faster loading now, but it could get faster still. But it's at a much more tolerable rate now. :)

[Albus]

Thanks. I'll leave it as is for now. If things slow down too much after people start posting regularly, I'll make more adjustments. I look at a few other sites that seemed to be popular and some of them had image sizes with a greater total than mine does right now. I hope to have my extra traffic, from the hosted sites, removed soon as well. Thanks for all the input guys!

[Tony G]

Those sites probably changed their styles after getting a decent no. of people visiting their forum. Also some forum administrators just shun dialup users and code style for broadband connections only, which I think is totally wrong. Compensate all connections and speeds and you'll get alot further.

Flooding a style with images isn't the only way to make one look good. :)

[Albus]

Well, after much thought and deliberation, as well as getting my site professionally hosted rather than continue doing it myself, I've redone my style completely. It still isn't appropriate for dial-ups, but I once this one is done, I'll be making a "Lite" version of it. Comments?

EDIT IN: the link so you don't have to scroll for it...

http://www.wizardingrealm.com

[Dean C]

I quite like it, I'm not sure if the green links go well with your layout though. I do like your clipboard idea.

[Reeve of shinra]

I couldnt get to your site. It timed out.

[Albus]

I couldnt get to your site. It timed out.
Interesting. Maybe the host was bogged at the time??? Thanks for looking though. Dean, I do plan to rework some of the icons and a few minor color changes. I haven't decided what I'm going to put in box four yet either.

[Rick Sample]

I like the overall design and colors of it!

[Albus]

I like the overall design and colors of it!
Thanks MM. I just adjusted my index a bit and added a Latest Users hack of my own coding. The nice thing about it is that if you hover over a name it gives the users reg date and current usergroup. This is nice because it helps me know who's joined but not verified thier accounts and so on. Take a look. If anybody wants the code just email me at albus@wizardingrealm.com and I'll send it to you.