TF Views

We could, instead, put a review subforum inside the existing forums we have. Like, you'd be in G1, and then you'd go to G1 > Reviews.

It wouldn't be too dissimilar to the existing threads we have now, actually.

I'd like to see a seperate review section, one that can be linked to from the front page along with "News" and "forums". If it's a subforum for ease of use by all board members, that's fine. Otherwise board members would have to submit reviews and have one of the mods add them to the review section.. which might not be too bad given the current board membership.

I do like centralization, putting review forums in each separate section would make for less of a "database" feel.

Ok, for right now, we'll go with a Reviews forum and will create sub-forums as needed.

I've moved the Animated, Universe, and about to move ROTF review threads into their new homes. This leaves a "shadow" topic in their existing forums, which I do like, but I don't like having all those extra sections.

Moving a few more threads into the general "reviews" section for anything that's not in the 3 subforums. It kinda of looks like a mess without section breakdowns, but I am curious to see how it goes. The good thing about this is I can always just move all those threads back and kill the forum at any time.

Feedback at this point would be most appreciated.

We'll see how it goes.

The big sticking point for doing this in the first place--for me, anyway--was to eventually stick a big ol' link at the top and go HEY REVIEWS LOOK ACTUAL CONTENT to maybe promote some more people coming here. Not that I'm in any way dissatisfied with our group here, or anything.

Onslaught Six wrote:We'll see how it goes.

The big sticking point for doing this in the first place--for me, anyway--was to eventually stick a big ol' link at the top and go HEY REVIEWS LOOK ACTUAL CONTENT to maybe promote some more people coming here. Not that I'm in any way dissatisfied with our group here, or anything.

I had always planned to put a link in the header to the section, even if it is just a forums reviews section right now. But I have to MAKE the graphic and re-code the headers. I'll make the graphics now and see how that goes.

If you want more people in, it would really help if we did more news, even if it's just links to other sites. I'm more than happy to add more reporters to the system, but I've got too much on my plate to do the bulk of the work. The news and links will help get search engine results (the forums do a great job of that as-is, but news gives it a context).

I actually like the "Reviews" graphic for the forums header best of the 3 links, it looks great. Now to do the news header version, and then link them into the system.

EDIT: Crap, the front page design will need to be changed, the code altered and the existing graphics widened. I hadn't considered that "Reviews" is a wider word than "Forums".

Forums header is updated. I am not entirely sure of the spacing, I made a change to move stuff a little closer and am not sure how it looks. It's a minor thing though, so I'm gonna leave it until someone has a suggestion, then I can easily try it because I set it up with local CSS to control the height, so it's quick-code based (thus if anybody has a suggestion on this, LMK).

Now to work on the front page header, which is going to be much more frustration.

Ok, the links have been added to the news system as well, wasn't as difficult as I feared.

It doesn't look too bad in the news header, but it is a little cramped and IE6 & 7 doesn't parse the code quite right so there is a slight 3px height difference from the other browsers (FF2+, IE8, anything that runs W3C standards) which you guys probably wouldn't notice but is absolutely driving me crazy. Go ahead and hit me with any thoughts about the changes.

The cool thing is, if we end up going with a different system for reviews in the future but somehow I've not updated the other systems' themes, I can just change the URL in those links (news header, news navigation, forums header).

What, exactly, does reporting news entail? I mean, I literally have hours and hours of free time (My job is a bit...empty?) and I'm sure it doesn't sound all that hard...

Also, maybe it's just me/my browser/my resolution but on the forums, the Forums image comes up on an entirely lower area than News and Reviews. Not sure if it's just me. I don't really find it too bothersome, but I don't mind the layout much to begin with.