City of Gamers Online (Soft Open)

[Digital Jedi]

Let me preface this by saying that I don't normally share my site on community review boards. I take the same approach to my board that Walt Disney took to Disneyland. He said that Disneyland would never be finished as long as there was imagination in the world. That it would keep growing and be ever changing. While the rest of the world had the mentality "if it aint' broke, don't fix it", Walt did the opposite and coined the phrase "plussing". That no matter how good something was, it could always be improved upon. That's how I treat City of Gamers. It's my Disneyland. It'll never be finished.

We were closed for two years due to server issues. And a lot of false starts and money issues plagued my efforts to reopen. But I never gave up and for the last two weeks I've been redesigning the skin and tweaking...well, everything. My host's staff and I are on a first name basis at this point. So while ordinarily one would post this here and ask for a more general review, I won't do that, considering my site's content is more than two years old, and I only officially soft opened this morning. And the skin has quite a few CSS tweaks and graphics to be finished.

No, I'm hoping you can give me some feedback on site performance and general vibe. (Okay, and maybe the skin, just a little. ) I'll edit in a couple of test accounts here in a moment, or, if you feel compelled to join, my registration options are something I wouldn't mind having given a run at. Not everything is enabled. So, naturally, there's some obvious missing features. But any bug reports would be welcome.

Ladies and gentlemen. I give you the City of Gamers Online Community (such as it is):

www.cogonline.net

[ozzy47]

Let me start off by saying the site looks decent, and seems fairly quick.

What I don't like it having to go through two screens before getting to the actual registration page. I also don't like the YouTube thing, IMO it is unnecessary to prevent spam.

To prevent the spam, I would use the following mods:

This mod changes the register.php, makes it just about impossible for bots to find your form, very effective.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=297834

This will stop most of the spam bots that auto-register:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=294651

This gets alot of human spammers because they still use early IE:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=264932

This stops registration by any device on blacklisted host names.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=279110

--------------- Added [DATE]1387427368[/DATE] at [TIME]1387427368[/TIME] ---------------

Just checked my welcome email and it is all in html:

Greetings ozzy47,

<p>Thanks for registering at the City of Gamers Online Community! We are glad you have chosen to be a part of our community and we hope you enjoy your stay.</p>

<p>If your unfamiliar or very new to the concept of an online forum, you may want to look over the vBulletin FAQ to better familiarize yourself with a forum's options and features:</p>

<p><strong><a href="vboptions[bburl]/faq.php?faq=vb3_board_faq" target="_parent">vBulletin FAQ</a></strong></p>
<ul><li>BBCode Help
<li>General Forum Usage
<li>User Profile Features 
<li>Reading and Posting Messages</ul>

<p>Even if your not new to online communities, please be sure to read over our FAQ which outlines our Forum Guidelines. If your planning on trading at City of Gamers, you'll have to read over the <strong>Trading 
& Guidelines</strong> before the forum will allow you to post. If your an artist or writer, you'll also need to look over our <strong>Creative Content Guidelines</strong> in order to avoid any potential problems or confusion.</p>

<p><strong><a href="vboptions[bburl]/faq.php?faq=toc">City of Gamers Forum FAQ</a></strong></p>
<ul><li>General Information
<li>Code of Conduct
<li>Trading & Auction Guidelines
<li>Creative Content Guidelines</ul>

<p>There are a ton of features and options to use at our community,  even more then your typical TCG forum, with more being added all the time. So you'll need to be nosy and explore all the forums and controls to find all the hidden gems. You can keep up with recent updates to the forum in the <strong>City Gazette</strong> located in the <strong>Uptown District</strong> of the City. The hope is to create a unique and administrator friendly community that speaks to the needs of gamers, because the administration are  gamers themselves. We also want to create a community that you can be proud to be a part of and feel comfortable participating in, whether your a gaming guru or a fledgling newbie, whether your a kid collecting cards for fun or a proud parent using the game to bond with your children. Or aim is to create a fun, friendly atmosphere that is both entertaining and informative.</p>

<p> If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to contact the Administrator or one of the Council of Heroes (moderators). Thanks again for joining  the City of Gamers Online Community! </p>

<p>Peace,<br>
-CoG Administrative Staff <br />
<em>By Gamers, For Gamers</em></p>

[Digital Jedi]

Thanks, ozzy. I actually had just found the skip forum rules mod prior to writing this, and only installed it a moment ago. Been wanting to do that for a while now, and just hadn't done the search. And I already have BoP5's registration name thingy. I like that. I plan on rotating that name out from time to time. And, of course, I have Spam Hammer. I haven't had a spam registration since turning the board on two weeks ago.

The YouTube thing was a holdover from years ago. It was partially a conceit. I had created a profile mod and nobody was using it, so I worked it into the registration to try and curb the signature spam bots we were getting. But, yeah, I mostly wanted to see the mod being used. There's also this whole YouTube thing we had going with registrations. So I'm going to reword that to remove the insinuation that it has anything to do with spam. Make it more of a fun thing and encourage the "YugiTubers", YouTubers who played our primary game topic, to join the site. It was actually starting to work there for a minute, before all the server issues forced us to close.

--------------- Added [DATE]1387433823[/DATE] at [TIME]1387433823[/TIME] ---------------

Originally Posted by ozzy47

Just checked my welcome email and it is all in html:

Greetings ozzy47,

<p>Thanks for registering at the City of Gamers Online Community! We are glad you have chosen to be a part of our community and we hope you enjoy your stay.</p>

<p>If your unfamiliar or very new to the concept of an online forum, you may want to look over the vBulletin FAQ to better familiarize yourself with a forum's options and features:</p>

<p><strong><a href="vboptions[bburl]/faq.php?faq=vb3_board_faq" target="_parent">vBulletin FAQ</a></strong></p>
<ul><li>BBCode Help
<li>General Forum Usage
<li>User Profile Features 
<li>Reading and Posting Messages</ul>

<p>Even if your not new to online communities, please be sure to read over our FAQ which outlines our Forum Guidelines. If your planning on trading at City of Gamers, you'll have to read over the <strong>Trading 
& Guidelines</strong> before the forum will allow you to post. If your an artist or writer, you'll also need to look over our <strong>Creative Content Guidelines</strong> in order to avoid any potential problems or confusion.</p>

<p><strong><a href="vboptions[bburl]/faq.php?faq=toc">City of Gamers Forum FAQ</a></strong></p>
<ul><li>General Information
<li>Code of Conduct
<li>Trading & Auction Guidelines
<li>Creative Content Guidelines</ul>

<p>There are a ton of features and options to use at our community,  even more then your typical TCG forum, with more being added all the time. So you'll need to be nosy and explore all the forums and controls to find all the hidden gems. You can keep up with recent updates to the forum in the <strong>City Gazette</strong> located in the <strong>Uptown District</strong> of the City. The hope is to create a unique and administrator friendly community that speaks to the needs of gamers, because the administration are  gamers themselves. We also want to create a community that you can be proud to be a part of and feel comfortable participating in, whether your a gaming guru or a fledgling newbie, whether your a kid collecting cards for fun or a proud parent using the game to bond with your children. Or aim is to create a fun, friendly atmosphere that is both entertaining and informative.</p>

<p> If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to contact the Administrator or one of the Council of Heroes (moderators). Thanks again for joining  the City of Gamers Online Community! </p>

<p>Peace,<br>
-CoG Administrative Staff <br />
<em>By Gamers, For Gamers</em></p>

Ugh, I always hated that welcome email thing. It's almost like the HTML works one day and then not the other. Thanks for pointing that out.