Hydaelyn Role-Players

It’s finally here~. The new site design is officially live with all its fancy goodness. More minor alterations (in coding and images) will continue to be made over time through ninja edits and the like. But for now, take a gander at the new shiny look! Be sure to refresh your browser a couple times for all of the graphical elements to reload properly. You may have to refresh multiple times on different pages for a short time until your browser fully updates cookies. I apologize for the delay and for how long the site was down today. There are some things I'm still tweaking as I write this (such as the linkshell section colors, sticky updates, etc).

Domain name and web space has been renewed for another year!

The forum color scheme and overall appearance has seen a drastic overhaul. Please refresh your browser in any circumstance that something seems ‘off.’ If refreshing doesn’t fix it, please report it. More than one refresh may be needed in some areas. For your reference, the site /should/ look like the below images (save for some minor tweaks since these are pics of the test forum) so long as your Internet browsers are up-to-date.

Depending on feedback, tweaks may still be made. For instance, the use of two different borders depending on the page (brown borders for posts and content, and green/beige for tables) may be changed to only one type of border if people feel the use of both is out of place.

Forum main page:

Post page:

Control panel:

New buttons have been added for new topics, replying, etc. In addition, numerous icons throughout the forum have been changed/updated. These may require refreshing the page to load properly.

Forum categories can now be collapsed/expanded upon a single click. When logged in, these settings will be saved no matter what computer/ISP address you log in from.

Zam tooltip support has been added. Simply add a link to an item in the Zam database and hovering over it will allow for the item to pop up on your screen. It should be noted that Yellow Gremlin tooltip support is also still usable.

Hovering over links (image links included) have a much more visible effect now, including rainbow colors (for text) and slight movement (text and images). The sole exception for this are the banner images, which will remain in a static position.

New navigation buttons have been added, along with fancy hover effects!

Certain navigational items have been relocated for better visibility, such as searching active/unread posts, marking forums read, etc.

The following users have been given moderator status: Rain, Sha.

A recent events block has been added to the sidebar. As such, events will no longer display at the top of the forums. At this point in time, the calendar block on the main page differs from the one on the forum index due to coding complexities. The calendar on the home page is NOT in sync with the actual calendar itself and can only be edited by administration. However, I will keep it updated as soon as a new event is posted until it can be synced with the calendar itself. The recent events block on the forum index is in sync and will appear as normal when any user adds an event.

The signature box in the user profile page has been merged into another box for a cleaner look. As a similar move, the "image description" box in the gallery's view image page has been merged with the "image details" box for a cleaner look.

Users will now have an “online” icon show up when they are currently online. The icon can be found in the user’s posts, profile page, and in their private messages.

The Users box has been merged into the Statistics box at the bottom of the forums.

A “Like” mod has been added. You must be logged in to use it. You can find the like button in the row along with the “quote” post button, etc. I will hopefully ninja edit the icon in the near future to make it stand out more. Likes given and received will display in the following areas: User profile, post sidebar under the avatar, and under signatures if that particular post was liked.

The current time (as recognized by the forum OR your user account) is now situated in the footer of the forums. In addition, the default date/time format for the forums has changed to: Abbreviated month Day Year, Time. You can change this in the user control panel to your own preference if it's not to your liking

The Classifieds section has seen a slight overhaul in order to better match the rest of the site in terms of widget locations.

The “author” column has been removed from the topics list page and is now fused with the post title/time/date.

PayPal donation widget on the home page has been removed. It will be added only in the months leading to domain name/website renewal from here on out.

The Necropolis section, along with the myriad of posts contained therein, has been deleted from the forum database entirely.

The Pub section has been eliminated. Linkshell seeking should now be done in the Welcome Desk section, whereas linkshell specific discussions can now be held in the Assembly Room. Should the Assembly Room become too congested with threads in the future, I will consider sectioning it off into different sub forums (such as general RP discussions, story/event planning, linkshell discussions, etc).

A new cursor has been implemented! For whatever reason, the cursor does not seem to work in Internet Explorer 9 (nor in some lesser used browsers). As such, the default cursor will still be displayed on this browser. The cursor is also somewhat buggy on Google Chrome, though the reason for this remains unclear. It is currently most optimized on Firefox.

Home page’s portal has been updated from version 1.0.6 to 2.0.0. This will reduce the number of queries the site database makes, thus alleviating server lag issues slightly. In addition to this, certain parts of the site will now auto-redirect. For example: ffxiv-roleplayers.com/forum will now redirect to ffxiv-roleplayers.com/forum/index.php. This should not affect bookmarks or any other navigational issues. These redirects may be better optimized at a later time.

A gallery block has been added to the sidebar of the home page and forum index to show recent images.

New randomized banners have been added. A total of 10 images will randomly display upon each page load. Images can easily be added/replaced later down the line.

The link to the "Info" page in the home page's welcome box has been removed.

Some stickies have been updated.

186 users have been deleted from the forum database due to prolonged inactivity or duplicate accounts. More may be deleted gradually over time. Here's the full list:

Several bug fixes have been implemented. Further optimizations and ninja edits will occur as needed. Please point out any bugs, graphical or functional, should you find any.

The wiki and forum databases have been refused together once again. Your login on the wiki will be identical to your login information on the forums. Those without a forum account cannot edit the wiki. This may be reversed again if any problems arise from the database merging.

Known bugs: (to be fixed as soon as solutions are available)


Delayed/cancelled:

Please report any unlisted bugs you may see here, graphical or otherwise. About 85% of the site's files have been changed and as such, there's no doubt going to be some hiccups here and there. Other feedback is welcome as well, as some modifications can be made if enough demands are made. Just be nice about it . I slaved quite a bit over all of this xD

A number of things will continue to be tweaked over time. The scroll background will likely have a shadow effect added to better flow with the background image. The background image itself will also be tweaked. I had planned to add a flier above the paladin's head to spruce up that part but it turned out badly so I'm waiting on that a bit. I also intended to add a black mage lalafell /behind/ the scroll for the times the site may load slowly in order to give the viewer something nice to look at. But the blm image turned out to not look too great on it so I'm holding off on that a bit longer too. Some text colors may need brightened a bit more as well.

Going to take some getting used to after having the same exact site for, well, ever since we left the original RPC forums. Speaking of, this colour scheme actually reminds me a ton of the old, old RPC forums. ^^

Shaping up very nicely. Great work, Cas. Thank you (and everyone who assisted) for putting in the effort!

Being brand new to the forums I have to say I really like this set up and scheme, not really sure what it might have looked like before to compare it to though.

Yeah! This theme is pretty boss! I especially like the Chocobo Cursor~!

The theme is rather nice, but there is one issue:

The colour for the name of registered users really hurts my eyes and is hard to look at... it's a little too light for the background, at least on my screen

I haven't been satisfied with the registered users color myself either. So I'll keep on playing around with that until I find a happy medium. Took me a bit to find a good blue hue for moderators that I'm content with (Admin color may still be a bit bright as well...).

Other suggestions are of course welcome, though just don't get too crazy with anything

On my browser, the two banner pictures are stacked on top of each other, so there's a huge empty space, which looks awkward.

Some of the text is hard to read, at least on the scrolly bit.

Chocobo cursor? I no has. >.<

I like the new background image. Yay for Sylphs!

Other than that, I don't have a whole lot else to say. I realize it's a work in progress. Just letting you know how things are working from my end. ^^

I personally do not like the websites redesign. Not trying to be a jerk at all, and I did take web design courses so I know how much effort goes in to this stuff, but I think as roleplayers, we need to present ourselves more professionally.

-There needs to be some conception of how this could look, perhaps ideas from the whole community.
-One colour scheme, and colours that compliment each other.
-Graphics that give the website a kick, not distract the eye.
-No rainbows, please.
-The option to change the cursor. Some people do not like things on their computers changed for them, myself included.
-High quality images, I don't want to see pixilation in this day and age.

I have a few ideas in mind for concepts if you want me to throw together a mock-up and stick with the parchment-y feel. If you want to stick with this, that's fine, though it is not something I will be opening up at work at all.

Mouse Icon: Annoying.
Also: the site is extremely slow on college computers, mobile phones and other non-home computers, too many things are loading, too many images, shiny thigns and basically bad coding.

there is only one thing that I have a problem with...rainbow flashes on the font...no thanks they're just distracting

i Second Kass's feelings on the links. They're like vampires, they're not supposed to sparkle D:

I can see a lot of time went into this.

And I like the cursor and havent had any issues with the site loading on any device so err... yeah

My steam web browser is finally up to date...

if it takes that long to refresh cookies, then I think at least a little optimisation needs to be done on the coding.

That's my only concern thus far since my last post.

Also, there seems to be some debate over the cursor, but I actually like it.

The coding has zero bearing over cookies refreshing. That's 100% web browsers. If you keep getting old images from the old site design (like I did for awhile), there's a way to delete all cookies related to this site manually (either by clicking the delete cookies link at the bottom of the home AND forum page or by going directly through your browser and deleting the ffxiv-roleplayers folder in the cookies list).

Alothia, which browser do you use? Can you please provide a screenshot of how the banner looks? If the problem hasn't resolved itself yet, can you take a quick peek at this phpbb template? Do the three banner images line up correctly on it for you? <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.phpbb.com/styles/demo/3.0/?style_id=425">http://www.phpbb.com/styles/demo/3.0/?style_id=425</a><!-- m -->

I'm a bit surprised at some of the 'hate' toward the color scheme/images, especially considering I asked for feedback/help multiple times over a month ago (along with an actual screenshot of the forum index page rough draft) in the Lounge and received very little feedback then. Text colors will continue to be tweaked as necessary, though I see no issue with any of the images or overall colors, and no "pixilation" on my end (unless you mean the sides of the scroll, which is designed that way to give a lighting effect until a shadow effect can be added).

Cursor: Option to have/not have is not possible through a phpbb coding standpoint. It either has to be one way or another >.>.

Rainbow text: I'll (reluctantly) remove it when I find a prominent means to display text while hovering over it.

Loading: It's not really that much more image heavy than the old site design. The borders surrounding everything caused a lot of memory issues then too. The scroll and background /are/ a bit more heavy in loading than the previous backgrounds though. I don't know how much more I can optimize them but I'll try.

On a final note, and I don't mean to sound defensive, but saying things like "I wouldn't open it up at work" or comparing the site to Twilight stuff are kinda rude ways to get a point across in my opinion. Yoshi-P put it best in one of his semi-recent posts on the Japenese forums--encouragement will cause me to move heaven and earth to satisfy the community. Insults, on the other hand, can cause one to stop caring. But thank you all for the feedback nonetheless.