79 replies to this topic

[Frigidman™]

After much thought over the week about a method of madness to get everything squared away here at IMG, I have come to a final result after 5 failed ideas. I am going to attempt to do something this weekend that puts the forum as the homepage, and the old homepage as an archives landing page.

The current index for insidemacgames.com goes to the homepage, where it promises news and reviews, along with advertisements and other stuff that (was) regularly updated. And the current forums are located from a link off that to /forum/index.

Well, I'm going to bomb that root index.

The root path of http://insidemacgames.com/ will bounce to http://insidemacgames.com/forum/. So any newcomers or oldercomers alike going to insidemacgames.com will land at the home of the forums.

Then, I will make a new app called /archives.php (I might SEO it up to just /archives/). This will be a static landing page that will have all the links to get to all the historical content. The core (where you normally would see the latest news and that roundy bubble thing of reviews), will have basic information about the depreciation of the website proper to the now Historical Archives, and mention nothing will be updated so on and so forth.

Then, I will alter the link up top on the forums to be "IMG Historical Archive", and link to the archives landing page.

This will pave the way to then allowing me, or us, to upgrading the forum structure and maybe giving it a little face lift (since the current skin is not supported in the newer IPB code). I do know when/if the forum gets the version upgrade, the Pimpbot 4000 will be destroyed, but thats ok, as nothing new should be posted in the historical archives ever again.

I foresee adding a few things to the forums root page:

A block listing out newest game releases posted on the MacGameStore (consider it to support the ongoing free public forums).
A block listing out latest News postings in the news subforum.
A block listing out the latest Reviews postings in the reviews subforum.

Also depending on the flexibility of the new forum code, we could come up with a more unique graphic 'look' for the forum root. The skin and template tools are vast and powerful... depends just how far someone is willing to go with it.


So, feedback?

[Frigidman™]

My main focus for this is to keep all the 15 years of data accessible, but it not being the focus of the domain anymore. Also, keeping all links working. If I moved the forum to /, all links and bookmarks would break. If I moved the site files into a sub directory, same deal. So I think by just manipulating the root behavior of the homepage, it will nail all stones with one bird.

[the Battle Cat]

Sounds like a plan.  See if you can spruce up the staff lounge a little too.  Needs a lot of paint, some new furniture, and the organic detritus scraped up off the floor.  We will get a lot more booth babes into our office parties if the place didn't smell like the public restroom in the Star Wars cantina.  And a new refrigerator that can not only hold enough beer, it can get it cold enough too.  And the parking sucks.

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Would it be possible to get wiki-like topics introduced? They recently got them on Macrumors, and they work quite nicely. Would make it a lot easier to participate on topics that regularly updates links.

Also.... I love the current skin. :'(

[Frigidman™]

Yeah I like the current skin too. I'm hoping either it will magically work when the forum is upgraded, or there is one very very similar. As for wiki stuff... dunno. Sounds like another package of software to install and setup.

[macdude22]

[the Battle Cat]

No you don't.  No.  You.  Don't.

[Frigidman™]

He only knows, "oh" "yeah" "I" "know" "some" "of" "these" "words", only... and exclusively in that order.

[the Battle Cat]

My understanding is that he only recently learned the word "these", and that's thanks to missionaries who visited his home and started a small crude school there.

[Frigidman™]

My plans got delayed today fighting off some combo-list crackers. Nice waste of my time.

I did manage to get some updates setup on MGF to fix some broken things, and to link to the forum's News Topics instead of the now defunt News area of IMG. So MGF is all squared away for this round of edits.

I also did manage to get reacquainted with the lay of the land in IMG. My god this code is old and horribly clumsy. Many ideas I had to simply 'do this' or 'do that' with design changes, were thwarted when I kept running into walls of HTML1.0 code lol. *sigh*

Also, I found a nice module that lets me make custom sidebar blocks for the forum home. So I may be able to construct some lists of current media. I was thinking of making one to list new games released (obviously ala mgs)... then a list of the latest news posted in the news forum. And I also was thinking of doing our guys at MacGamerHQ a shoutout and list links to their recent posts (I'll have to see how my time goes when I get into building the sidebar blocks, and if they have an API to get recent post id/titles for links).

Anyway... slow going, but going.

[the Battle Cat]

You no talky talky!  You no looky looky!  You worky worky!!

[Frigidman™]

All done for now.

I'll have to look into the new IPB 3.4x upgrade next. But the rest has been swapped around and done.

[macdude22]

Frigidman™, on 22 February 2015 - 01:37 PM, said:

All done for now.

I'll have to look into the new IPB 3.4x upgrade next. But the rest has been swapped around and done.

That front page redirect don't look too bad chupafrigidmanbraj.

[Janichsan]

Yup, looks good.

[the Battle Cat]

I still can't get your Sims II run on my Fat Mac!!!

[Frigidman™]

Hahaha, gotta love this comment: http://www.macgamest...ment-1867698722

My thoughts exactly. When do we draw the line on 'pure garbage' ? Is saying such subjective... or is there a quantifiable way to go about it?

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Let the stars speak for themselves? Some people might find it funny to play once.

[Frigidman™]

I wish people would USE the stars more often. Its not difficult to click them and be on your way ... although we don't allow the "1" star by completely anonymous users, as in the past some unscrupulous publishers were mass rating "1" star on other products... as well as some random jerks who would mass "1" star all new releases every time their ip changed. So I had to put a stop to the low rating spam.

[Thain Esh Kelch]

I rate all the games I play, thanks to the credit I get for doing it. Have already earned a few games from it, so I am a happy camper. 8)

[Frigidman™]

Yeah, our really loyal customers who have hundreds of games, who DONT write reviews for each are just throwing money out the window. I mean, come on ........ FREE MONEY!!! Even steam doesnt have a rewards program