SocomCity

[Kirk Y]

Resource site for SOCOM News, Cheats, and Glitches.

http://www.socomcity.net

While the Portal can be viewed by Guests, to gain full access to the site you'll need to be logged in:

Username: vBoRG
Password: test

Comments and criticism, please and thanks.

[filburt1]

While the Portal can be viewed by Guests, to gain full access to the site you'll need to be logged in
Very bad idea. Always let guests see your threads or you'll get registrants who just never post.

[Tony G]

Agreed with filburt, you're basically hiding the content of your site and nobody will hardly be curious to see what it is, rather see what it is and see if they are interested or not.

[Kirk Y]

Okay, I made the forum viewable to Guests as well.

Any idea as to how I can get rid of the Private message in the Last Post row, but keep Guests from viewing the actual threads?

[Zachery]

EAsy way? upgrade to 3.5
Hard way? Hack the funcitonlaity in.

[Kirk Y]

I'm using 3.5.0 RC3...

[Blindchild02]

wow, alot of forums there... lol

[Zachery]

I'm using 3.5.0 RC3...

Their are already permissions to do this then :) check the forum manager.

[Kirk Y]

Found it, thank you Zach.

[Tony G]

The portal is quite slow loading. Maybe need to ease up on the queries on that page.

As for your forum, there are two main problems.
-WAY too many forums. It will just intimidate new members, no idea where to post, too many places to post, will deter people joining up.
-Move all your What's going on junk to the bottom. You are just creating scroll for members to scroll down to the start of your forum list. You want to make it as easy as possible for members to view forums and post etc, so that stuff at the top doesn't help and it makes it look like who's online and statistics are more important than posting and viewing your forums.

[Kirk Y]

Well, the WOL is more important for me... lol. I like to know who's on, who's been on, and I'd like to see the latest S3 Blog. As for cutting the forum's down... I don't know what I could take away... all those things are neccessary, in my mind. I can think of maybe 2 things I might be able to get rid of... what do you think I should take off? The Portal seems to load fine for me... what do you suggest I do to reduce the amount of queries on the page?

[Tony G]

So what's important to you is more important to everyone else, too? As an admin, you should put the needs of the members in front of your own. It's pretty selfish to say that because YOU want to see who's online it should make an unnecessary scroll to your forum list on your forumhome. If you want to see who's online, scroll to the bottom, and if you want that to be easier, take some of the forums away.

And even if the forums are all 'necessary' in your mind, there are stil too many. Merge some, make the forum names more general so more can fit into one forum. You should really aim for a number under 15 AT LEAST.

[Hawkbizkit]

or do like i did and make it userselectable where the whats going on? box and my shoutbox and my welcome panels are displayed if at all. :P

[Kirk Y]

I'm not being selfish, that's just how WE as the Administrators, want it. If you think that moving your mouse's scroll-wheel two times is "unneccesary", then perhaps you should try exercising your thumb. (Don't take this negatively, I appreciate your criticism, but that's just how we want it...)

I suppose I could make it User-selectable with IF Conditionals, would that be better?

And you never answered my question as to which forums I should get rid of... they all seem unique to me.

[Princeton]

good start but, there are many issues that needs to be addressed

why 2 LOGIN? (view attachments)
why column/block width different? (view attachments)
bug in calendar (shouldn't the start of the month be at the top?)
what's the difference between titles in center column and "Recent Threads"
why have the "What's Going On?" table at the top? Do you really think that your readers/members are interested in these stats? Everday?
why is your "What's Going On?" table breaking out of the layout? (view attachment --without looking my bet is that you have "nowrap")

I notice multiple font sizes on your portal page. Normally, this is not an issue but, you are using different font sizes on your content. eg. center content vs. birthday content vs. post content

What this does is it confuses the reader. (eg. The bigger the font size the more important the text -- So, why does your center content has the smallest font size?)
It also makes it hard to 'scan' the page for something specific.

[Snake]

Not bad not bad, its alright.

[bigcurt]

Ok, I just have a few things to add




The "Whats going on Box" at top, needs to be moved in my opinion. It looks ridiculous up there. Just my opinion though :).
Also, those are WAYYY to many forums, I see atleast 10 of them that can be removed because they either have 0 thread in them or they have like 10 lol..get rid of some, it will help activity...trust me.
Also I agree with princeton, make your font 1 size on front page or changed it around to make your center font bigger. ( I know this is not your fault, as you did not make skin..I believe KALL did.)

Thats really about it for me, do some of those things and I believe it will help you :).



~Curt

[Kirk Y]

good start but, there are many issues that needs to be addressed

why 2 LOGIN? (view attachments)
why column/block width different? (view attachments)
bug in calendar (shouldn't the start of the month be at the top?)
what's the difference between titles in center column and "Recent Threads"
why have the "What's Going On?" table at the top? Do you really think that your readers/members are interested in these stats? Everday?
why is your "What's Going On?" table breaking out of the layout? (view attachment --without looking my bet is that you have "nowrap")
I notice multiple font sizes on your portal page. Normally, this is not an issue but, you are using different font sizes on your content. eg. center content vs. birthday content vs. post content

What this does is it confuses the reader. (eg. The bigger the font size the more important the text -- So, why does your center content has the smallest font size?)
It also makes it hard to 'scan' the page for something specific.

The login in the header is what's normally included with vB & the other login comes default with vBACMPS.
The width difference is caused by the news posts. Some of them are retrieved via RSS from a SOCOM blog. As they're HTML, sometimes they mess with the page alignment.
There's no bug in the calendar, it's showing the rest of September at the top & then continuing with October.
Threads in the Center Column are News Posts and "Recent Threads" are threads most recently replied to in the forum.
We've already had this argument about the WGO box... we want it like that.
I don't see it breaking the layout when I view it. (See Attached)
As for the multiple font sizes, I cannot get the Birthday font to change. There's no template for it... just birthday.php, and I've tried (to no avail) to get it to be identical with the others. The font sizes on my Center Content are identical to those of the Post Content, aside from some of them being bolded and perhaps the next font size up since they're titles. (Assuming I understand what you mean by Post Content and Center Content)